Twelve teams come back to the grass Saturday for the Pendleton Round-Up short round, and seven of the 24 men in them are inside $8,000 of an NFR cutline or chasing one.
At the ratios Pendleton paid in 2025 applied to this year’s confirmed round pool, the average projects to pay about $10,769 a man to win, with the short round worth about $1,709 on top of it, plus 150 Playoff Series points to whoever wins the average — the last points available before Monday’s Governor’s Cup cutoff outside of Mandan.
Derrick Begay and Colter Todd lead at 10.6 on two head, 1.3 seconds clear of Luke Brown and Hunter Koch. For Begay, No. 16 in the heading world standings at $103,856, winning it means five spots in the world and a place in the Sioux Falls field. For the six men behind him, it means something different in every case.
The second thing is harder to see and just as valuable. Winning the average pays 150 Playoff Series points, and 150 is the number that puts Begay inside the Governor’s Cup field.
The Pendleton short round
Order on two head:
- Derrick Begay/Colter Todd, 10.6
- Luke Brown/Hunter Koch, 11.9
- Cody Snow/Lane Mitchell, 12.2
- Kolton Schmidt/Paden Bray, 12.6
- (tie) Jhett Trenary/Jason Duby and Clay Smith/Coleby Payne, 13.1
- Nelson Wyatt/Jonathan Torres, 13.2
- (tie) Cash Duty/Trent Vaught and Haven Meged/Cole Clemons, 13.3
- Ryan Wheatley/John Wheatley, 14.2
- Mike Grant/Trevor Schnaufer, 14.3
- Trevor Patterson/Pee Wee Freeman II, 14.6
What it pays
Pendleton’s rounds paid $7,179, $6,243, $5,306, $4,370, $3,433, $2,497, $1,561 and $624 a man — a 23/20/17/14/11/8/5/2 split on a $31,213 pool. In 2025 the average pool ran 1.50 times a round and the short round 0.238. Applied to this year’s confirmed round money, that projects to:
| Place | Short round | Average |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $1,709 | $10,769 |
| 2 | $1,486 | $9,364 |
| 3 | $1,263 | $7,959 |
| 4 | $1,040 | $6,555 |
| 5 | $817 | $5,150 |
| 6 | $594 | $3,746 |
| 7 | $371 | $2,341 |
| 8 | $149 | $936 |
Winning both is about $12,478 a man. Those are TRJ projections off last year’s ratios, not posted payouts.
What it pays in points
Playoff Series points go to the top 20 on the average, scaled by rodeo size. Pendleton pays at the top tier: 150 to win, 130 for second, 113 for third, 98 for fourth, 83 for fifth, 68 for sixth, 53 for seventh, 45 for eighth.
Twelve contestants make the Governor’s Cup field in Sioux Falls — four out of Puyallup, eight through the final Playoff Series standings at Monday’s cutoff. Kaleb Driggers, James Arviso, Luke Brown and Garrett Tonozzi took the four Puyallup spots on the heading side; Junior Nogueira, Levi Lord, Hunter Koch and Trey Yates on the heeling side.
Begay sits 17th in heading points at 829.13. Because Driggers, Arviso and Brown are all inside the top eight in points and already qualified, their spots roll down and the points field extends to No. 10 — Cody Snow at 968.13. Add 150 and Begay is at 979.13, ahead of Jake Smith at 979.00 and Brye Crites at 978.75. Neither is at Pendleton and neither can answer today. Second place pays 130 and leaves him at 959.13, behind all three.
Colter Todd’s half is harder. He is 22nd in heeling points at 761.63, and the last heeling spot after roll-down belongs to Nicky Northcott at 935.63. A Pendleton win gives Todd 911.63 — 24 points short. Mandan pays points Sunday, and so does the rest of the bubble: Rahlmann, Summers, Kelton and Cory Kidd are all in that draw.
Who else has something on the line
Snow, at $118,383 after getting the Granbury win, is No. 10 heading and about $1,100 short of TRJ’s projected cut. A top-three average check clears it, and his points position is already safe. Mitchell, No. 11 heeling at $115,680, is about $7,800 short and in the same seat.
Payne, No. 14 heeling at $111,813, needs roughly $11,700. The average win plus the short round is about $12,478, and nothing much less than both gets him there.
For Wyatt and Torres, both at $98,548, and Vaught at $103,326, Pendleton’s remaining ceiling doesn’t reach the line even if they win everything left here.
Who isn’t in it
Wyatt Cox holds the No. 15 heeling spot at $111,653 and no-timed Round 2 with Brenten Hall. Summers, No. 14 heading at $106,068, and Jade Corkill, No. 18 heeling at the same figure, no-timed Round 1. Kelton and Denton Dunning, Egusquiza and JC Flake, Rahlmann and Logan Medlin, Tanner Tomlinson and Wesley Thorp, and Dawson and Dillon Graham are also out of the average.
Most are at the North Dakota Roughrider Cup in Mandan instead, where $60,000 is added on each end and 15 places pay.
The lines, on paid money
Heading: No. 12 Kelton $110,218; No. 13 Dawson Graham $107,278; No. 14 Summers $106,068; No. 15 Rahlmann $105,106; No. 16 Begay $103,856; No. 17 Hall $103,029; No. 18 Wyatt $98,548; No. 19 Riley Minor $97,527. Above them: Crites $119,386, Andrew Ward $119,217, Snow $118,383, Egusquiza $111,933.
Heeling: No. 13 Flake $111,933; No. 14 Payne $111,813; No. 15 Cox $111,653; No. 16 Thorp $106,380; No. 17 Medlin $106,072; No. 18 Corkill $106,068. Medlin and Corkill are $4 apart. Above them: Ross Ashford $124,287, Douglas Rich $121,984, Trey Yates $121,469, Jake Long $119,217, Dunning $119,073, Mitchell $115,680, Dillon Graham $114,573.
Thorp deserves his own line. He was No. 25 at $83,087 on Sept. 6. Third in Pendleton’s second round moved him past Medlin and Corkill to No. 16, $5,273 from the last NFR spot. He has no average at Pendleton, and will rope at Mandan fourth out Saturday.
Where everything else stands
Nothing else from this week has paid.
Mandan, Sept. 18–20: Tyler Tryan/Nicky Northcott and Korbin Rice/Cooper Freeman lead at 4.3; Driggers/Nogueira 4.7; Trenary/Braylon Tryan 7.4, with 24 teams still to rope.
Albuquerque, Sept. 16–20: Hiyo Yazzie/Doyle Yazzie lead at 4.4; Begay/Todd tied second at 4.9; Clay Smith/Payne fourth; Brown/Koch fifth.
Abilene, Sept. 15–19: Kolby Krieger/Brock Borkman lead at 4.7; Snow/Mitchell second at 4.9.
St. George, Sept. 17–19: Cole Eiguren/Arye Espenscheid and Casey Thomas/Caleb Hendrix lead at 5.1; Begay/Todd fourth at 5.5.
Othello, Wash.: Riley Kittle/Trey Yates lead at 5.5, worth about $2,346 at last year’s ladder — enough on its own to take Yates past the projected heeling cut.
Granbury, Texas, is the only rodeo besides Pendleton that has paid: Snow and Mitchell split the win for $987 each.
What we don’t know
The Pendleton average and short-round dollar figures are TRJ math off 2025 ratios, not posted payouts. Mandan’s 2026 ladder isn’t figured yet; TRJ’s preview notes $60,000 added and 15 monies, with Andrew Ward and Jake Long winning $9,798 a man there in 2025.
More important: we don’t know how many counting rodeos each of these men has left, or where they’re entered between now and Sept. 30. The season closes Sept. 30, and the schedule is full of smaller rodeos paying two and three thousand dollars a man that don’t have daysheets up yet — the kind of money that decides a $4 gap between Medlin and Corkill, or a $1,250 gap between Rahlmann and Begay. Yates slipping into Othello as a walk-up, and Begay and Todd entering St. George are two examples already on the board this week. There will be more, and some won’t be visible until the money posts.
Any projection of where the cut finishes — TRJ’s working numbers are about $119,500 heading and $123,500 heeling — assumes we can see the whole field’s remaining schedule. We can’t.