Another Episode of "What's your opinion on..."

Take the TOY winner from each state & throw them all together to see who the best is!

I think it would be nice if it was broken down into number of contest somehow. Under 10, 11 to 20' over 20. Or something similar with higher money for the more contest categories. Would give the lesser number of contest teams a chance to compete against similar participantion levels. Keith

I honestly don't think most team want to but maybe I'm wrong. I can tell you from my 27 contest race for the TOY last year that after doing it, I'm not interested in trying again for a long while. I got burnt out on cooking and found it very difficult to get motivated to start cooking this past spring. You can make a run at it with ten contests. That's all it takes. Just do really well in all of them. Or do twelve and you can drop two. We were only able to make a run last year because we were fortunate enough to win the Great American BBQ in May of 2010 and came away with a good size chunk of cash and followed that up with two Grands and two Reserve Grands in June. Cash problem solved! I understand that most teams don't have the time or finances to try for TOY but in my opinion, TOY shows long term success over the entire year, not just in a handful of contests. Maybe an answer would be an award given to the most consistent teams in say five to ten contests. Consistency is nothing to take lightly. You can't win without being consistent. The problem with a TOY for smaller numbers of contests is that by only cooking five or so contests, you're going to have a TON of ties, something KCBS got away from a few years ago when they changed how teams accumulate points. Then you'd have to "declare" which category of TOY race you were going to be in at the first of every year. Lots of man hours here to accomplish this. I hope to see more suggestions here if there's a plan I hadn't thought of.

The TOY is for teams with the means to chase it and isn't even a pipe dream for 95% of KCBS teams. The sheer quantity of contests that teams compete in to chase TOY is 20+ and that just isn't possible for many although we may dream of it. If you want to get more teams involved there needs to be classes like 10-20 contests and 20+ contests with more money going towards the 20+.

Yeah I would love to cook 20+ comps and make a run but money and time don't allow me. I cooked 10 this year easy and gonna try to squeeze in 12 next year I think it could be bracketed 10-20 and 20 plus.

Maybe a separate award given to the team with the highest average score with a minimum of lets say 10 contests.

Q-Dat said:

Maybe a separate award given to the team with the highest average score with a minimum of lets say 10 contests.

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That's exactly what I'm getting at above.

AZScott said:

The TOY is for teams with the means to chase it and isn't even a pipe dream for 95% of KCBS teams. The sheer quantity of contests that teams compete in to chase TOY is 20+ and that just isn't possible for many although we may dream of it. If you want to get more teams involved there needs to be classes like 10-20 contests and 20+ contests with more money going towards the 20+.

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The teams that have made a run for TOY will tell you that it isn't about having the means, but FINDING the means. I've always said that TOY is as much about sacrifice as it is about talent. You have to sacrifice family, job, cash, and often sleep to figure out how to do 30-45 contests in almost every corner of the country... even if you are from the middle of the country where we have more contests.

So instead of so much KCBS funding going to a prize only .5% of the teams will ever have a chance at, how about spreading some of those funds to regional events and have qualifiers cook for a national championship?

I guess that would be similiar to what Sams did. :doh:

Rich Parker said:

If less than .5% of teams competing are ever in contention, what does Sam's (I had to go look to see who was the sponsor) get out of it? I never read any threads on here or other forums discussing it like other TOY programs. I am not a marketing major but what is the "bang for the buck"?

Disclaimer: I am not saying that teams that put forth the extra effort don't deserve to be there.

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Because everyone still watches the race and their name is all over it. it is called "impressions".

Bbq Bubba said:

So instead of so much KCBS funding going to a prize only .5% of the teams will ever have a chance at, how about spreading some of those funds to regional events and have qualifiers cook for a national championship?

I guess that would be similiar to what Sams did. :doh:

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There's a difference between "KCBS Funding" and direct sponsorship monies, which is how a TOY purse would be sold. KCBS isn't likely to allocate money... a sponsor would. And most likely as part of a total KCBS packaged deal: so much for TOY teams, so much for MMA, and so much for KCBS. Its how the world works.

Rich Parker said:

The "everyone" is what I am having a hard time understanding. I go out and check my stats at the end of the year to see how i stack up against the rest but other than that I usually don't see any discussions on it.

My original intent of the thread was trying to see if the candidates had any ideas on the TOY program but this is also a good discussion.

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If KCBS opened up their DB to show teams beyond top 25 or dig deeper into individual team results, it would create a LOT more impressions. It still amazes me that KCBS hasn't picked up on what The Pickled Pig has been doing for years.