EIGHT SECONDS

It’s all about keeping your butt from hitting the dirt, for eight seconds.

Eight measly seconds.

That’s not long, is it?

You spot the cowboy. His name is Justin McBride. His face is grim.

Then your eyes focus on the beast he’s about to ride. Its nostrils flare, its horns look like baseball bats, its eyes are full of fury. Fifteen hundred pounds of angry bull named Sports Machine.

An eight-second ride? On Sports Machine?

Not eight measly seconds. Eight long seconds.

It’s Thursday night inside a packed arena at the World Finals in Las Vegas, the year-ending tournament on the Professional Bull Riders tour.

McBride, 28, is in danger.

He is the kind of roughneck who invades Hollywood dreams. He is bedrock handsome: smooth-skinned, square-jawed, with clear eyes that smile. Tour officials say he is the most popular and most successful bull rider going.

He came to Las Vegas with a tall lead in the chase for bull riding’s biggest bounty -- the world title worth $1 million. The honor and the cash go to the cowboy who excels all season, as McBride has, and then comes up with enough good rides in Vegas to stay on top in overall points.

But McBride has stumbled in the opening rounds. Three bulls in a row bucked him off. Now, if he doesn’t stay on Sports Machine for eight of the most hazardous seconds imaginable, he can kiss his chances goodbye.

With his right hand, he holds tightly to a rope around the bull’s torso. An iron door swings wide. The crowd roars. Standing a few feet away, you start counting.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi . . .

Released from its pen, maddened by a strategically placed strap near its loins and by McBride on its back, Sports Machine rears and jolts forward with so much electric force that the ground shakes.

“Man, it seems like the longest,” McBride says in a soft Oklahoma drawl whenever people ask about it. Eight seconds. “Everything slows down. You see those horns in front of you, and he’s slingin’ you around . . . You hold on because you know bad things can happen if you fall.”

Ticked-off bulls want nothing more than to do bad things. They’re bred that way. Over 10 years, as bull riding has grown from a sideshow novelty to a high-gloss sport fed by cable TV and roughly $25 million in sponsorship money, breeders have figured out all the tricks. These days, bulls are monsters.

Especially here at the finals. “Rank bulls,” the riders call them.

Actually, the rankest of the rank.

A rider is a rag doll in a washing machine. All night long, tough guys with names such as Travis, Cody and J.B. have been tossed into the air, spun to the ground, dragged, kicked, stomped and slammed into the arena fence.

Three Mississippi . . .

Sports Machine comes out of another leap, then twists to the right. Now the animal is a tornado. It lurches forward and launches skyward.

Your ears crack.

The crowd roars.

The announcer wails: “Come on, come on Justin.”

Four Mississippi . . .

McBride, who grew up in Mullen, Neb., population 500 on a busy day, rode calves before kindergarten. He knows what he is doing. Keep the feet down. Don’t let the shoulders lean back. Use the free hand like a rudder, for balance.

What he thinks at times like these comes from the deepest instinct we all share: Survive. In this case, don’t fall. Don’t get gored.

If you do fall? Hope you land on your knees so you can scurry away before Sports Machine comes at you with its horns. If you land under its hooves, pray for forgiveness and hope the tonnage doesn’t demolish something vital.

Like the other cowboys, McBride is pockmarked with dents and scars.

This is where he got crushed and his ribs were broken and his lung collapsed like a popped balloon.

His leg? That’s where he has screws and a metal plate.

His hand? Oh, that hand got snapped.

He knows of cowboys whose necks were broken, whose skulls were smashed. His lips tighten, and he shakes his head: A bull killed his maternal grandfather.

Five Mississippi. Six . . .

Sports Machine’s body jolts and contorts.

McBride looks like a dinghy in a hurricane.

Wham. Again the ground shakes. Sports Machine, perhaps sensing that it might lose this fight, tilts and slams McBride into a billboard.

Seven Mississippi . . .

In the stands, large men in gallon hats clutch their wives.

Eight Mississippi . . .

Justin McBride, modern-day cowboy, jumps from the bull, his feet landing solidly on the ground, his hopes for a world title still alive.

McBride’s comeback continued Friday night when he successfully rode the bull Walk the Line. On Saturday, he again lasted eight seconds, this time on Bad Action. On Sunday, clinging to the season points lead, McBride outlasted a bull named Camo and secured the world title.

Kurt Streeter can be reached at kurt.streeter@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Streeter, go to latimes.com/streeter.