The Tennessean has a report on how Vanderbilt lineman Adam Butler credits his grievances at a rib eating contest held at the 2012 Music City Bowl for his switch from offense to defense. His coaches thought his complaints about his opposition from North Carolina State cheating showed a combative nature.

“For some reason, the judge voted that we lost the rib-eating contest, and I stood up and argued with the judge,” Butler said. “(The judges) were counting the bones. But (North Carolina State players) had ribs on their plate that didn’t have a bone in it, which means they just took the bones out of the ribs and threw them in the tub.”

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update May 5 Michelle Lesco confirms she got 5th place w//3
Miki Sudo has a contest report
Crazy Legs Conti says Sudo & Shoudt got the original 2nd place money despite the tie and Erik Denmark got the 3rd place money despite finishing 4h

update April 30 In Crazy Legs Conti’s Huffington Post contest report claims Bob had a “Mt. Everest” of uneaten kernels which did not result in a deduction and compares himself to a sports dynasty after winning the contest for the 4th time in the past 7 years.

Merly at Mr. Food has a blog entry, a video of the end of the pro contest end and a video of the amateur contest

update 8:50 The Palm Beach Post has an article which does not mention the controversy or near-fight
update April 30 Cra

update 6:55 Bob Shoudt has posted the post-contest ears of two unnamed competitors: Eater 1 | Eater 2

update 4:20 George Shea has the top 3

1) Crazy Legs Conti 43 ears 46 pre-deduction
2T) Miki Sudo 42 47 pre-deduction
2T) Bob Shoudt 42 44 pre-deduction reportedly almost came to blows w/Conti
4) Erik Denmark 40 (via twitter) 43 pre-deduction
5?) Michelle Lesco 32? (results 5-7 from Josh Miller)
6?) Josh Miller 31?
7T?) Adrian Morgan 30?
7T?) Badlands Booker 30?

update 3:50 Crazy Legs Conti has been announced as the winner with 43 ears in 12 minutes.

update 3:30 The contest has started

The festival facebook has the full field for the contest. The Sun-Sentinel has a preview

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update Nov 1 NotoriousBob.net has a quote that did not appear in the article

update Oct 31 Some observations and links about the article follow:

• Ronson asserts that the 1916 origin story for Nathan’s hot dog eating contest is “(almost certainly) untrue”, which Mortimer Matz, Nathan’s promoter of the 1970s and 80s confirmed in a 2010 NY Times interview. The claim that the first contest took place on July 4, 1972 is incorrect; a contest was held on Memorial Day weekend of that year and a competition took place in 1967 to honor the centennial of the hot dog.
• 2009 is listed as the year of Takeru Kobayashi’s final IFOCE sanctioned contest. He competed against Joey Chestnut in a contest in Singapore in May 2010.
• Emcee Dave Keating says that the cupcakes used in the shortened cupcake contest were lighter than those used in 2011, which explains why 7th place finishers Maria “Edible” and Michelle “Cardboard Shell” Lesco ate more in 6 minutes (48) than the previous year’s winner Tim Janus ate in 8 minutes (42). (Video of the contest).

If you need something to read due to Hurricane Sandy related disruptions, Jon Ronson’s article about competitive eating for the November 2012 issue of GQ is now available online. The article includes mini profiles of Joey Chestnut, Pat Bertoletti, Matt Stonie, Bob Shoudt and Maria “Edible” and contains reports from the Nathan’s finals, TooJay’s corned beef sandwich eating contest, and a behind the scenes look at the shortened cupcake contest held at the Isle of Capri casino in Waterloo, Iowa where Bob Shoudt offered these thoughts on cheating:

“I’ve seen everything,” he says. “People throwing hot dogs under the table. People making the biggest messes you can imagine.”

My eyes widen. “So there’s such a mess under the table it’s impossible to determine what counts as an eaten thing?” I ask.

“Oh, there’s techniques,” says Bob. “People suddenly get happy feet.” He mimes an eater dropping an item of food and then covertly stamping it into the ground. I’m appalled. Cheating makes everything pointless. And then Bob confesses that—if need be—he will be one of those cheaters. When his wife is in the crowd, they use pre-arranged signals. “If the eaters are dropping stuff like crazy, she’ll give a meaningless cheer. I’ll understand. Suddenly the food gets very slippery for me.”

He gives me a look that says: Don’t judge me until you’ve walked in my shoes. Leave the Gandhi-like behavior to the fools who don’t mind losing to the cheaters.

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• Appearance of Joey Chestnut and Sonya Thomas on NBC’s Today yesterday
• CNN’s Eatocracy explains competitive eating terminology
• Guardian (UK) contest report
• Yahoo! Chompions blog entry
• Daily Mail carries the AP article with a lot of pictures
• Buzzfeed has a gallery titled “The 15 Disgusting Faces Of The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest”
• Awful Announcing has commentary on the ESPN telecast
• The Kooky Canuck owner attended the finals and has a facebook gallery
• The Baltimore Sun has a gallery
• Driven by Boredom has galleries of the contest and afterparty
• Deadspin has a blog entry about post contest elimation. (A comment states that most elimination is done via vomiting and that a top 3 MLE eater required hospitalization after a training session went wrong (the commenter claims to be a friend of the hospitalized competitor’s girlfriend))
• The NY Times NBA blog has an entry about Brooklyn Net Marshon Brooks serving as a contest judge
• Ken Hoffman has an article about serving as Matt Stonie’s judge. The Houston Chronicle columnist claims that a piece of Joey Chestnut’s hot dog flew into his mouth. )
• Mercy for Animals has a blog entry about their contest protest
• Flickr gallery by EKavet
• Matt Stonie facebook gallery
• SeaCoast Online article about Matt Stonie
• Barrie Examiner article about Meredith Boxberger.

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The Hooters circuit is supposedly being judged according to weight of wing meat consumed, but results have generally been announced using count of wings eaten. In addition to the divergence in units of measurement, there have been interesting results from most of the qualifiers which are described after the jump. (Weights listed below are unofficial except for the Augusta qualifier.)

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