Here's the reality of it- BBQ teams are scored, giving them the ability to tweak their recipes and methods until they're turning out a somewhat consistent product that will score the most points. Teams that compete a lot are going to have an even greater advantage because they can start throwing out higher and lower scores, because those could be flukes, focus on the exact method on the top third of their entries, and further tweak their product for the highest placement. I suspect that the top-scoring teams keep pretty exact notes when they're entering contests. If I had that kind of money and time dedicated to competition BBQ, I'd want to know exactly what we did differently to score higher or lower, and I'd want to be able to throw my hands in the air and say I don't know why we got X this time instead of Y.
If sweet BBQ brings the highest scores, it's not the recipe or the cook, it's the judges. That's what wins. Trying to change hearts and minds with competition entries seems foolish when money is on the line.