OK. Here is my perspective as someone who has spent the better part of the last two decades fooling with BBQ (or just a cranky old man if you prefer).
Comp BBQ used to be "low and slow"... and that phrase represented a culture as much as a cooking method. People gathered to cook outside, and while the meat was cooking they would wander between camps, socializing and swapping stories. You'd have to put a log in the firebox every 45 minutes or so and there was no shortcutting the process. Folks had no choice but to stay up and slow down; have a cold beverage, chat with the neighbors and enjoy the ride.
Being Americans, we have naturally done everything possible to speed up and automate the process while maximizing comfort and adding lots of expensive toys. Today's BBQ event has more in common with a truck stop parking lot than the festivals of the past - we wedge our giant aluminum boxes in and microwave some popcorn while we catch up on Game of Thrones. Around dawn we emerge from our cocoon long enough to crank our computer-controlled cooker up to 400 so we can cook our premium meat in a couple hours. Next we slather on a "secret recipe" that consists of mixing a few commercial products together. Finally we leave the air conditioned trailer to attend awards, where we will see some of the other cooks for the first time all weekend.
The next logical step in this progression is to condense the events themselves - why not pack two contests into one weekend? Heck, why stop there? How about three? Four? Maybe compress an entire season into one BingeBBQ Event week?
More efficient? Probably. Less effort? Definitely.
But I can't help but wonder about what we have lost in the pursuit of making competition barbecue "better", and I'm not talking about the quality of the food.
<end of philosophizing/rant (you choose)>