As newcomers to the Barbecue Championship, most of the members on my team the Ques Brothers were elated when we heard that the judges had given us perfect tens in all the barbecue judging categories but one. He gave us a single nine for the look of our pork shoulder’s “bark.” He wanted a mahogany color. Ours was black.

Still, I thought that with 258 teams in the contest, a near perfect score must be big news.

Meanwhile, when our festival veteran Steve learned our scores, he said darkly: “That last judge just cut our throats.”

Team leader Chuck once said that getting into the top ten — out of around 60 pork shoulder teams — would fulfill his goal. He’d even be happy with top 20.

After the awards were given out Saturday night, we went back to our booth and waited for the list to be posted. Word spread quickly when it was, and a few of us went out to look for ourselves.

Outside the judging tent, a crowd had gathered.

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…doesn’t mean you can’t participate in the fun. If you have any photos from the weekend (from those camera’s you weren’t supposed to take inside the park. Tsk, tsk…), send them to us via email to flickr@commercialappeal.com and we’ll put them on the site post haste.

In the meantime, check out all the cool photos we managed to get together from the bloggers at http://www.flickr.com/photos/commercialappeal/.