I can't think of any other competition whether they be food related or otherwise where the criteria for judgement is quite different from the competitors' best achievable abilities.
The problem is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's like having a race with no defined finish line. One judge wants to judge a 40 yard dash, and another wants to judge a marathon... How do you know how far to run? You dont. Same with cooking sanctioning bodies.
Directly to your point: I can. Sanctioned chili cookoffs, for example. The biggest CASI, and others like ICS, etc. define chili as Texas Red, and they go on in their definitions about what is and isn't legal and how to judge the meat's tenderness, etc. They set their game so that competitors know what to hit. It's rare that my "open" chili finishes less than 2nd in the competitions, however it would finish close to if not DAL in the sanctioned portion, either by definition of content or tenderness, etc.
If they didnt, think through what it takes to make a great spaghetti sauce, then think through what it takes to make chili. Unless you're doing something bizarre, they're VERY CLOSE. They have to define it so we know we're judging chili.
Anyway, they define the game so we as competitors know the target to hit. Otherwise there's no reason to compete.