The nearest teams in the power rankings, with a different reason on each card — six teams on one rating are rarely on it for the same reason. Rating decides who makes the list; where teams tie on it, the ones this team has actually cooked against come first, then teams at a similar point in their own career. KCBS doesn’t publish where a team is from, so nothing here is inferred from geography.
Smoke & Mirrors BBQ has 1 rated contest — short of the five it takes to earn a power ranking — so this rating has barely moved off the 1500 every team starts on and 128 rated teams sit within a point of it. Read the list as the nearest company at a number nobody here has moved far from, not as a verdict on who this team belongs with.
1–0 in 1 shared contest (100% to Smoke & Mirrors BBQ)
One contest in common so far: too few to settle anything, but a team Smoke & Mirrors BBQ has actually stood beside rather than a stranger on the same rating.
“Calls” = top-10 category finishes (getting called to the stage). Scores here are the final weighted totals KCBS publishes; per-criterion appearance/taste/tenderness marks aren’t in the public results feed.
The story so far (11 numbers that describe this team)