LAS VEGAS – The ibis is a bird with legendary bravery during hurricanes. According to folklore, the ibis is the last sign of wildlife to take shelter before a hurricane and the first to reappear once the storm has passed.

During the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PBR was the ibis – the last professional sports league to hold an event with fans in the arena before the country shut down, and the first to hold an event with fans in the arena after things began opening up.

The league’s legendary bravery can be largely attributed to commissioner and CEO Sean Gleason.

Thanks to his efforts in 2020, Gleason is a 2021 recipient of the prestigious Jim Shoulders Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes non-bull riders who have contributed to the advancement of the sport of bull riding and rodeo. Also honored with the Jim Shoulders Award was Michael Gaughan, the owner of the South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa, which hosted the event in its Grand Ballroom.

“In 2020, everything shut down. Except the PBR,” PBR co-founder and Director of Livestock Cody Lambert said to whoops and applause from the crowd. “Because Sean didn’t let it happen. He told us that he’s going to keep everybody working as long as he possibly could. We had bull riding events, and they were on television when no other sport was going because we had a commissioner that wouldn’t quit, because he had the mindset that cowboys aren’t going to quit.”

The Unleash The Beast event in Duluth, Georgia on March 15-16 would be the last major televised sport in North America – until PBR then returned as the first sport back to competition on April 25 with new protocols for successful, closed-to-the-public, nationally televised events that continued until mid-July when added guidelines would include fans back in the grandstands – another PBR first. PBR would wind up delivering a full season to fans, launching the Monster Energy Team Challenge and PBR Air Force Reserve Cowboys for a Cause, and grow its TV ratings at a time when other sports struggled with viewership.

Under Gleason’s leadership, the PBR team wrote a comprehensive 41-page plan laying out new physical distancing and hygiene protocols to help ensure the safety of everyone present at the event as well as the surrounding community.

The Monster Energy Team Challenge, of course, took place in Gaughan’s South Point Arena.

“This means a tremendous amount to me, especially to be nominated on a night that Michael Gaughan receives the award,” Gleason said. “I got to call Michael and tell him that he was receiving the Jim Shoulder Award, and I told him I’ve got good news and bad news. ‘The good news is that you’ve won the Jim Shoulders Award. The bad news is you’re going in with me.’ But it is a distinct honor to be nominated with Mr. Gaughan. He’s done so much for Western sports.

“But this award, really, I’m accepting this award on behalf of every staff member, every stock contractor, every independent contractor, every member of our TV crew, every one of these bull riders.”

Gaughan founded Coast Casinos in 1979 with the opening of Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino. Coast Casinos merged with Boyd Gaming Corp. in July 2004. In 2006, he purchased the South Coast property from Boyd Gaming, renaming it the South Point.

Gaughan was instrumental in bringing the National Finals Rodeo to Las Vegas in 1985 after convincing the rodeo to leave its long-time home of Oklahoma City. He is a member of the National Finals Rodeo Committee, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 2007.

The South Point has been a mainstay on the PBR/ABBI calendar for more than 10 years and has hosted the Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Finals each year since 2016.

But Gaughan has been involved with the PBR since its first time in Las Vegas back in 1994.

“The first year the PBR was here, (my wife) was more supportive than me,” Gaughan said. “We put the bulls up at a ranch, the Rocking K, that first year. An hour after they were there, they broke loose. And that was my first real introduction to the PBR.”

Lambert pointed out that the Gaughans have hosted PBR bulls at Rocking K or the South Point nearly every year for the last 28 years.

“This week, here at the South Point, we’ve got over 800 bulls on the grounds here,” Lambert said. “Something that’s never been done.”

Both recipients are honored to be listed among the most influential figures in the sport with an award named after one of the greatest rodeo athletes of all time.

Following Jim Shoulders’s passing in 2007, his wife Sharon gave Gleason a painting of her late husband that he decided to hang in his office.

“I decided that it’d go right here, to the left of my desk,” Gleason said. “And it’s because I wanted Jim Shoulders to be looking over my shoulder for every single decision I made in helping the lives of bull riders and helping to grow this sport. And he has every day since she gave me that painting.”