MBN Judging
Hello Bill,
I definitely agree that something has to be done about judging and it needs to be done now and hopefully the MBN will discuss this at this month’s Q Ball. I have been competing for 7 years and started with MIM events and then it changed over to MBN . I heard there were many problems with the MIM current list of judges and this is the most important thing a competitor needs in order to win some money. Well, I find the problems with the current system if you can call it a system the same. I attended an all day judging seminar to become a certified judge and was actually a bit disappointed because there was not a lot of information given out. I suppose some of it was very interesting for a person off the street however, when these people get to the competition they are informed who are the top teams at the event and hang around them both before and after the competition so they know who they will be giving the top scores to. The only difference that one can’t do is to talk to a blind box and see who entered it but if you have judged enough blind boxes then you pick up distinct characteristics that go along with a team and this is absolutely true as a handful of judges have told me this. Also, there is continued cheating in the cooking process. I was in an event and another team got there at eleven pm and had to get set up and then get their hog on and their shoulders. The next morning I passed their smoker as they were preparing their shoulder blind box and noticed that they had to use 3 shoulders to get enough to fill a blind box because the meat was not quite done. I saw that they had 4 more shoulders on the smoker for the 3 judges and one for finals if they made it. Well, they made it in to the finals and I walked by to see what they were doing and now I noticed they had 3 shoulders on the smoker, so they pulled out 2 more shoulders they brought that were already smoked and used them for the finals and yes they came in second place because they are the tops in the circuit. I was furious and even spoke with one of the cooks and he told me the meat was not done. You did not get in to the penalties that a team should receive for cheating and they should be banned from that particular event plus some time off on the next competitions like perhaps a week or two. Anyway, I have a lot of money tied up in my equipment and trailers to haul to an event and only did one competition last year because I would find out who was entered in the upcoming events and knew right away we would not do well because of the certain teams that were there. I can easily tell you who I suspect of cheating at a competition because I am filthy dirty, exhausted from all the work and the cheaters are just happy, carrying on as if they had done very little and yet they entered shoulders and ribs. I walk around and never do see some teams pull out their ribs to put rub on them. I asked one fellow and he would always tell me that the ribs were marinating but never showed them to me. So, we need better judging and also to penalize the cheaters to let those who worked their asses off leave with some hardware. Thanks for writing your article because it brings out a lot for me to tell.
