Hundreds of competitors will soon descend upon the Fort Worth, Texas, area for RFD-TV’s The American, presented by Dish, with the semi finals at Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth on Feb. 20-24 and the finals at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on Feb. 25. 

Watch The American LIVE Feb. 18-25 on FloRodeo

The process to become a champion of The American is varied. There are qualifiers, exemptions, invites, slack, buy backs, semis, and shoot outs — it’s a tricky to navigate and understand. It may only take two runs or rides to win your event, or you may have to make many depending on how you got to The American. 

To ensure we don’t lose you along the way, we’ve put together a guide to watching, and winning, The American.

Step One: Qualify Or Win An Exemption

Qualifiers are hosted all year long in conjunction with many events that already exist. Contestants pay an extra entry fee on top of their regular fees to enter The American side pot, and the top competitors that entered the side pot will have a chance to earn a qualification. 

In 2018, The American partnered with Better Barrel Races, Ultimate Calf Ropings, and the Professional Bull Riders associations as the sanctioning bodies for the qualifier events.

The second way competitors can win their way to the semi finals is through exemptions awarded for winning key rodeo events. The College National Finals Rodeo, Canadian Finals Rodeo, Junior NFR (timed events), National High School Finals Rodeo, Indian National Finals Rodeo, and more all award their winners with an exemption spot to The American semi finals. 

Step Two: Slack

Before the semifinals officially begins, the events with a large amount of contestants — the steer wrestling, team roping, tie-down roping, barrel racing, and bull riding — will have to begin their runs and rides early with slack. 

Steer wrestlers, team ropers, and tie-down ropers will all run two head in the slack with the top 20 times from the average moving on to fill the semi finals performances.

The barrel racers will all make one run with the 30 fastest times advancing to compete in the semi finals. In the bull riding, all qualified rides will move on to the semi finals. 

Step Three: Buy Back Option

As an added opportunity, competitors in the tie-down roping, steer wresting, team roping, and barrel racing will have a buy back option if things don’t go the way they hoped in the slack.

For every 50 entries in the buy back, one spot will be awarded to the semi finals. The steer wrestling and tie-down roping buy backs will run one head and the top 15 will go to a short go, team ropers will run two with a top 15 short go, and the barrel racers will compete in one round only. 

Contestants can also enter the buy back multiple times for more chances to win their way back into the semi finals. 

Step Four: Semi Finals Long Round

At this point the saddle bronc and bareback riders will join the action — because of their lower qualifier numbers, the competitors in these events will not have to go through slack. These qualifiers, plus the top contestants that did go through slack will now compete in the semi finals. 

The top contestants after two days will move on to the shoot out round of the semi finals with two exceptions: 

• The barrel racing is a straight one-run competition split over the Thursday-Friday-Saturday performances with the top 10 moving straight into the finals long round.
•  The bull riding, which will only see competitors in the Thursday and Friday performances with the top five bull riders in the average skipping the semi finals shoot out and going straight to the finals. The bull riding average will be based on a two-ride average, but if not enough bull riders make qualified rides during the slack to fill two performances of competition, they will make a ride each night during the long round and the top five average will be a three-ride total (the slack, Thursday, and Friday performances). 

Step Five: Semi Finals Shoot Out

The shoot out will see the top 10 contestants in the team roping, tie down roping, and steer wrestling, and the top 12 in the bareback and saddle bronc riding earning one more shot to break through to the finals of The American.

In the timed events (minus the barrel racing), the fastest five runs in the shoot out will earn their finals spots. In the bareback and saddle bronc, the highest five scores in the average from the semi finals long round and shoot out will advance. 

Step Six: Finals Long Round

The invites arrive.

Qualifiers that had to earn their way in through the semis, along with the best contestants in the world that earned their invite for their efforts during the 2017 rodeo season, will now come together. Fifteen contestants total in each event (20 in the barrel racing and 16 in the bull riding because there are 11 invites) will compete in a one-head match with the four highest scores and fastest times in each event moving on to The American shoot out. 

Step Seven: The American Shoot Out

One last step, win The American. 

Everyone has a chance to win the $100,000, but only qualifiers and exemptions that battled through the semis are eligible for the $1 million side pot. At the shoot out it all comes down to one — sudden death — run or ride in which it doesn’t matter if you’ve competed once to get there or you are making your eighth or ninth run in just a few days. 

The leaderboard is wiped clean and only thing left to do is win.