Glutton for Punishment

On the Fourth of July, while channel surfing ESPN, you might have stumbled across the controversy at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest in Coney Island. In the competition, Joey Chestnut (San Jose, CA) won his 4th straight Nathan’s title, consuming 54 hot dogs with buns in 10 minutes. Chestnut has won that title every year since he dethroned the famed Japanese eater Takeru Kobayashi in 2007.

The controversy centered around the absence from the competition of Kobayashi, who had won the Nathan’s from 2001 through 2006, but was unable to compete in this year’s event because of a contract dispute with Major League Eating. Kobayashi was arrested for trespassing after storming the award’s ceremony and wrestling with some NYPD.

The event led me to ponder whether competitive eating is a sport. Usually, these sorts of discussions about whether some activity is a real sport focus on the physical attributes and skills of the athletes and the nature of the physical competition.  I don’t really care for those discussions, so I  will focus on the aspects of sport that are off-the-field and assess how competitive eating stacks up in those areas.

Lingo. Check. All real sports have their own unique terminology and colorful nicknames. On this front, competitive eating passes with flying colors. The lingo in this “sport” just freaking rules:

• Competitors are termed gurgitators – kind of makes sense when you consider the root word of regurgitation, I guess, but I would have thought gluttonator would fit equally well. Plus, you could maybe spin gluttonator off into other avenues for revenue (like a line of Transformer-like children’s toys).
• When a gurgitator is disqualified from a competition for throwing up, he is said to have had a reversal. Geez, that sounds much more pleasant doesn’t it? Joe had a reversal after drinking too much at Laurey and Brian’s wedding. Have to remember that – makes me sound much cooler,  like a wrestler or an in-booth instant replay official.
• Real sports have TLAs. Hot dogs with buns are termed HDBs. In the spirit of baseball nerds (paging George Will) who opine that RBIs should really be termed RsBI, I guess I can play along and observe that shouldn’t HDBs really be termed HDsWBs (say that one three times fast)?
• Young competitor Patrick Bertoletti, from Chicago, has eaten 47 slices of 16” pizza in 10 minutes. He goes by the nickname of, you guessed it, Deep Dish.

Labor Disputes and Competition Between Leagues. Check. There is a dominant entity, International Federation of Competitive Eating (think NFL), and an upstart Association of Independent Competitive Eaters (think early AFL).

AICE touts its “picnic style rules” which prohibit dipping of foods in water or other liquids (a practice the world-class eaters use to increase their volume and speed). AICE claims the moral high-ground, citing that its rules pay "respect to the food and maintains the integrity and dignity and public reputation of that food item." I have to chuckle a little bit at that one. It is not like any of these athletes are actually savoring the foods – it is speed eating after all – and I can’t quite get my head around the notion that a food item could have dignity.

Obsession with Statistics and Records. Check. You’re not a real sport unless the culture of the sport lends itself to geeks and nerds obsessing over numbers. This sport is all about the numbers and there are some amazing (and in many cases disturbing) ones in competitive eating. Check out this collection from the IFOCE website.

Assuming the sport continues to take off, how long until we begin to see fantasy competitive eating leagues sprouting? “I got beat in the first round of the playoffs in my league when Kobayashi went down with a perforated ulcer after only 25 Johnsonville Brats in 10 minutes.”

Corporate Support. Check. Real sports sell out to corporations in every aspect of their enterprise. It is the American way. But none of the classic sports could even begin to approach the synergy that competitive eating has with Corporate America. This is win-win all the way around. The corporation gets incredible publicity and the sport gets free food for its competitions.

Every event has a corporate sponsor and don’t think that sponsorship is limited to food producing companies. Alka Seltzer sponsors the US Open of Competitive Eating and Pepto Bismol sponsors the Nathan’s contest.

(That is disturbing on so many fronts. I understand the invisible hand of the free market, shareholder value, fiduciary duty and all that other stuff that allows companies to justify the seemingly unjustifiable. Really, I do. But who the hell thought this made sense from a PR perspective? What’s next? The Nicoderm CQ Smoke Off?)

So I think it is safe to say that competitive eating has many of the characteristics of a big time sport covered. The IFOCE website boast about its marketing reach at the national level. Again from the IFOCE website, "The Nathan's Famous contest alone has generated more than 300 million consumer impressions on domestic television in the period of several weeks.” I guess impression is a term from the land of marketing and lots of impressions, whether positive or negative, are good.

But I think that there is money to be made at the grass roots level as well. After all, legends like Kobayashi and Chestnut had to start out somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised (if they haven’t already done so) to see IFOCE or AICE sanction local and regional events. Sort of like a minor leagues of speed eating leading to the national events on ESPN.

Almost every decent sized community will have a handful of local eateries or cuisine that carry big-time reputations that extend outside of that region. I’d be willing to bet that these local establishments would jump at the chance to get their product exposed via the reach and marketing muscle that IFOCE could bring to the table.

In Blair County alone, we could have the following IFOCE-sanctioned events:

• The Texas Hot Dogs Memorial Day Classic. Think about the publicity on ESPN if the winner of this event made it to the big show on Coney Island. “Monte Smith, from Roaring Spring, started his journey to Nathan’s by winning the Central PA Regional. Smith downed 35 hot dogs with buns, chili, mustard, and onions (HDBCMOs) in 10 minutes at the The Texas Hot Dogs Memorial Day Classic in Altoona.” BTW, doesn’t HDBCMO sound like a new health care option?
• The Boyer Candies Mallo Cup Challenge. Rather than prize money, awards are presented in Mallo Cup points, which competitors can redeem for free Boyer products.
• Custard’s Last Stand Presented by The Meadow’s Frozen Custard. This event has to be held at the original Duncansville location (keeping with the theme of maintaining and honoring the dignity of the of the food item). Additional marketing synergy possible through tie-in with Goodies Headache Powder for relief from that ice-cream (I mean frozen custard) headache.

What do you think? Am I on to something here?