LT, offer to help a comp team. Then you can taste some of the food they are producing. You are laboring under a lot of misconceptions about competition BBQ in general, and about the judging, process and food in specific.
Focusing on the food, when you say your friends (where this all started) make great Texas BBQ, it is vital to note, that Texas BBQ is not balanced, it is meat centered, and heavier on the black pepper profile end of the spectrum. Competition BBQ is balanced, it has to have salty, sweet and heat, in proper proportion. I know you have take culinary classes, so I assume you understand that in fine dining, you rarely present a dish spice so heavily to an extreme that the other tastes are undetectable. This is the same with competition BBQ, and adjusted for the limit of one or two bites.
There is no way, well, almost no way, that a typical KCBS or other sanctioning body can have judging run with any graft, there are too many things put in place, including identical boxes, two number changes, no team names on turn-ins, isolated turn-ins from judging, to allow for any funny games.
As for the rigs, every team does what it wants, and invests what it wants. But, do some of the big boys, with fabulous smokers win do better? Yes. But, you are following the logic wrong. They do better because they put more effort, time and money into having success follow them. Rhythm and Que have kicked butt from the time they were rookies, and they cook on WSM's, as do several other great teams. But, surely, there is an advantage to cooking one very nice cookers, all the time.
Your friends and you would be well advised, instead of insulting the players, getting a better understanding of the game. He finished 27th, because a bunch of people, 24 in fact, felt he deserved that.
