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.
Cooper Mercer 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 83 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.
One contest in common so far: too few to settle anything, but a team Cooper Mercer has actually stood beside rather than a stranger on the same rating.
⚔ Head-to-headA longer road to the same neighbourhood — 5 contests to 2.
⚔ Head-to-headTheir last contest in the data was back in 2018, 7 years before Cooper Mercer's most recent — their rating stopped moving when they stopped cooking.
⚔ Head-to-headThey were already cooking in 2013, 12 years before Cooper Mercer's first contest.
⚔ Head-to-headLevel with Cooper Mercer on power rating, which is the whole reason they're on the list.
⚔ Head-to-headTheir last contest in the data was back in 2014, 11 years before Cooper Mercer's most recent — their rating stopped moving when they stopped cooking.
⚔ Head-to-head| Category | Entries | Calls | Wins | Podiums | Best | Worst | Average | Avg finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — |
| Pork Ribs | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — |
| Pork | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — |
| Brisket | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | — | — | — |
“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.
| Season | Contests | GCs | Top-10s | Category wins | Walk rate | Avg finish | Best overall (% of perfect) | Avg overall (% of perfect) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0% | top 8% | — | — |
| 2023 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0% | — | — | — |
| Date | Event | Overall | Chicken | Ribs | Pork | Brisket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-04-11 | Smoke in the Spring 🏅 Osage City, KS | 7 / 92 (174.8572) | — | — | — | — |
| 2023-09-27 | American Royal World Series of Barbecue - Kids Que Kansas City, KS | — | — | — | — | — |