I could not cook one more contest. Hats off to the guys who can. It is a marathon.
KCBS Team of Year bonus points drops again to 25 teams
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I could not cook one more contest. Hats off to the guys who can. It is a marathon.
jrbBBQ
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I like the idea of the teams cooking 20 contest to determine TOY. Most of the teams going for it cook 25-35 contests anyway. It'd just show who the most consistent teams are. I also would like to bonus go up instead of down. I think a top 5 finish in a field of 100 teams should be worth more than a GC with 30 teams.
Rich Parker
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Handicap the teams based on how they finish and the handicap of the other teams at an event. Can't believe I said that out loud.
Never did understand the reason for only counting 10 contests when chasers cook 25-40 per year. Why shouldn't all count and why shouldn't all contests count the same? It won't ever effect me personally but trying to understand the system and issue.
djqualls
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I understand that there may be a vote to rescind. If you want to help stop it, email
bod@kcbs and just put "Leave The Toy As Is" in the subject line to help the members who believe the knee jerk was un-warranted and not team friendly.
I understand this came from complaining organizers who had low team entries.
Destroying TOY won't help a failing contest.
bod@kcbs and just put "Leave The Toy As Is" in the subject line to help the members who believe the knee jerk was un-warranted and not team friendly.
I understand this came from complaining organizers who had low team entries.
Destroying TOY won't help a failing contest.
I've always thought they should handicap the judges. They already collect the data. That way they could even out the tables mathematically. Wouldn't solve all of the problems but I bet it would help get rid of high and low tables.
TOTY: Why artificially inflate TOTY points with random numbers 250/1st, 225/2nd, 200/3rd, and then add in the number of teams? How would it be if you just used the number of teams? You win a 85 team contest, you get 85 points. RGC gets 84, 3rd gets 83 and so on until the 85th place team gets 1 point. Might need to cap it at 100 points for any one contest. The American Royal Open could really skew the points otherwise.
You also need to define what the TOTY represents. Is it the team that cooks the most? The best? Is it a marathon or a sprint? Should the TOTY be the team that cooks great almost every weekend? Or in theory can they cook great just 10 times and win it? Should KCBS manipulate it to benefit small contests? I think once it's defined it will be easier to set the criteria to win it.
Gowan
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That is definitely the core of the issue.
Any program that only benefits a small percentage of an organization's total membership is always going to be a subject of debate. Who should have a say in how that program is structured - the membership at large, or only those participating?
In it's current configuration, KCBS ToTY is completely irrelevant to me personally. As part of the 98%, I do occasionally look at the top ten out of curiosity. It is very similar to looking at other professional sports standings during their seasons - it is nice to see the teams you like doing well, but it is purely a spectator experience. And as long as there is a dedicated sponsor for KCBS ToTY, I'm okay with that.
Would I feel differently if a substantial portion of my membership fee went to pay for ToTY? Probably, but to my knowledge the program has never been funded that way.
One final thought, and that is that even though this particular vote may be moot for most, and possibly even ill-advised, I do applaud the current Board for considering the bedrock that KCBS is built on: the small contest. While the high dollar mega events make a big splash when they appear, it's the steady flow from hundreds of modest events year after year that fills the pool.
Fire Flinger
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Well said!
I haven't listened to the meeting, but have scanned the meeting notes.
Is the argument that the difference in a contest having 25 and 35 teams is ToY? I'm not seeing it. I can see a smaller contest picking up a team or two, because the perennial contenders won't have to travel as far on some weekends.
I've got no problem with KCBS doing things to help contests, unless it's at the expense of other contests. If an organizer has worked hard to put on a great event, that draws teams, I don't think it's fair or right to use ToY as a tool to steer teams to other events.
Any changes to ToY should be for the sake of improving ToY, or benefiting competitors/membership. If somebody wins a 60 team contest, with half of the ToY top ten competing, that should be worth more than winning the 25 team Uncle Cletus Tractor Pull and BBQ. No offense intended towards any uncles named Cletus, or tractor pull fanatics!
The board might want to revisit the idea of a year long program for teams that don't cook 20+ contests a year. I don't know what the current numbers are, but I'd guess that somewhere between 90 to 98% of teams cook less than 20 contests annually. If ToY counts 10 contests, you could count 6-8 and hopefully encourage some teams to cook a few more. This idea was proposed while I was on the board. My concern at that time was finding the right balance so that we didn't unintentionally encourage anyone to shut it down early to preserve eligibility. With the right number of contests cooked and counted I think it could probably give some less active teams motivation to cook more, help some contests with their team count, and allow the current ToY program to be structured to benefit the big dogs that earn their place at the top.
Anybody that thinks there is any merit to any of that, credit Scottie. Anybody that thinks it's the stupidest thing they ever heard can blame me.
Is the argument that the difference in a contest having 25 and 35 teams is ToY? I'm not seeing it. I can see a smaller contest picking up a team or two, because the perennial contenders won't have to travel as far on some weekends.
I've got no problem with KCBS doing things to help contests, unless it's at the expense of other contests. If an organizer has worked hard to put on a great event, that draws teams, I don't think it's fair or right to use ToY as a tool to steer teams to other events.
Any changes to ToY should be for the sake of improving ToY, or benefiting competitors/membership. If somebody wins a 60 team contest, with half of the ToY top ten competing, that should be worth more than winning the 25 team Uncle Cletus Tractor Pull and BBQ. No offense intended towards any uncles named Cletus, or tractor pull fanatics!
The board might want to revisit the idea of a year long program for teams that don't cook 20+ contests a year. I don't know what the current numbers are, but I'd guess that somewhere between 90 to 98% of teams cook less than 20 contests annually. If ToY counts 10 contests, you could count 6-8 and hopefully encourage some teams to cook a few more. This idea was proposed while I was on the board. My concern at that time was finding the right balance so that we didn't unintentionally encourage anyone to shut it down early to preserve eligibility. With the right number of contests cooked and counted I think it could probably give some less active teams motivation to cook more, help some contests with their team count, and allow the current ToY program to be structured to benefit the big dogs that earn their place at the top.
Anybody that thinks there is any merit to any of that, credit Scottie. Anybody that thinks it's the stupidest thing they ever heard can blame me.
This is my unofficial points for the top 5 teams under Rub's system. I think they are correct but there may be contests missed or team name/contest name spelling errors in the data that I used (bbqscores.com for contests entered and finishing place,KCBS events page for no. of teams) that caused errors.
CLARK CREW BBQ 695
Iowa's Smokey D's BBQ 650
Big Poppa Smokers 614
The American Dream BBQ 533
Smoke Me Silly 499
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IMO this tells me more than the current KCBS system. Bigger contests should be worth more points. Making 25 or even 35 the cutoff is skewing the big picture.
Rich Parker
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I have been singing exactly this for years. Mike Ricter has brought it up in a few KCBS BoD meetings and never gets discussion from the others on the BoD thus dies. Bottom line there isn't a silver bullet to fix all judging issues and there never will be with the human aspect of it.
My comment on handicapping teams and strength of event is I believe a private party sooner or later is going to come out with this e.g. fantasy bbq which can go across sanctioning bodies.
Why something like this has not been implemented is something I will never understand. It is the one thing that I have never seen anyone argue against on this, or any other, forum. Having a statistician look at the data and come up with an algorithm that works should not be very difficult and building this functionality into the KCBS software is easy. The reps could run the program after all of the judges arrived and the number of teams is set and give out table assignments.
This is something that would be very beneficial to 100% of the teams and seems like it deserves more attention than the finishing order of the top 2%.
Gowan
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Back to defining what "Team of the Year" means...
IF the idea is to reward the "winningest" team, what if you focus on the GC/RGC and award 2 points for a Grand and 1 point for each reserve for all contests cooked?
That makes the above list look like this:
Clark Crew -12gc 4rgc = 28 points
American Dream 10gc 4rgc = 24 points
Iowa Smokey D's 8gc 6rgc = 22 points
Smoke Me Silly 8gc 4rgc = 20 points
Big Poppa Smokers 6gc 5rgc = 17 points
In theory then, Team X could win ToTY by cooking a relatively small number of events by today's standards, assuming they win them all of course.
Discussion?
So, with your proposal, there is more value to getting RGC with 80 teams than there is to winning with 75?
The current structure rewards GC for the win. Points for team count has been scaled back and I honestly can't recall what limit if any there was before it was set at 50. I think some version of that is a pretty good solution. It recognizes the win, and difficulty by adding points for team count. I don't know what the right number for the cap is, but I don't think it should be 25.
Kave Dweller
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I'll never be in the points hunt, but wouldn't this essentially be rewarding people for running chitty comps? We have plenty of teams around here and we have comps (libertyville for example) that over the last 3 years has lost 20 teams, not because we are out chasing points, but the venue and the payouts blow. My avg comp this year had 49.25 teams, because the organizers do a great job. The american dream drove how ever many hours this year to Kenosha, because the field was big enough, the reason the field was big enough is because its a well run comp that the organizer is constantly tweaking (not always for the best but his effort is there) things to be better. I personally don't think you should be rewarded for winning a 4-5 table comp the same as a 6-7 table of judges comps and I don't think people that put on chitty events should be rewarded the same points value as comps that put on great events that naturally attract more teams. Whole thing makes no sense to me.
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