American Royal

Kansas City, Mo

Oct 6th-7th, 2012

A national KCBS sanctioned event

A double header - the Invitational (you must be a grand champion of a qualifying event) and the open - open to anyone with the money, time and balls to compete against about 550 teams from all over the world (but mostly the US).

First up is the Invitational on Saturday the 6th. Word of advise to next years first timers - make sure your alarm clock is on the correct time zone! Yes, we got a late start on the short meats, and efforts to mitigate this disaster fell short.

Oh well, we had a great time and got lots of media coverage. Kyle of slabs.com pimped on up with a camera crew and gave us the full interview treatment - he even knew who we were and reminded me that we're a The Jack team for 2012!

Come Sunday and the open, and there were about 550 teams all competing. We would be thrilled just to hear our team name called over the loud speaker and to take a walk on the Kemper Arena floor. Chicken and Rib calls went by, not our strong meats anyway. Then came pork.

The announcer called out 15th place pork - Too Ashamed To Name, and I squealed like a little girl - boy you never seen a big fat guy run down arena stars so fast arms flailing all the way. Man what a thrill, I only whish I'd taken a picture of the stands from the arena floor, and our two empty seats.

We were just outside the rankings for brisket too with a 29th place. Not bad at all considering you're competing against the biggest names in professional competition BBQ.

The American Royal was only chapter one of this two chapter mid western swing. Next up! The Jack baby! Wholly cow!