Let world champion pitmaster Chris Lilly tell you why barbecue is a sport

Barbecue is a sport. Not your backyard barbecuing — although you can go ahead and consider that the Double-A of the barbecue world — but the elite barbecuers. The people who commit their lives to barbecue and know the craft inside and out.

Chris Lilly, six-time barbecue world champion — including four wins at the Memphis in May Grand Championships, and wins at the American Royal International Invitational Cook-Off and the International Jamaican Jerk Barbeque Cook-off — knows all about that side of the barbecue world. He’s been barbecuing full-time since 1991 and loves every facet of it.

He’s the vice president, executive chef, partner, at Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q and head chef of the Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q Competition Cooking Team. And he takes his pitmaster duties very seriously. I sat down with Lilly and picked his brain about the competitive side of meat smokin’ and left the conversation more convinced than ever that barbecue is a sport. Here are all the reasons why.

Lilly seemed to be destined to be a part of the Big Bob Gibson family (a family restaurant founded in 1925 in Decatur, Alabama) — literally. As with many surprise callings, it started with a girl. He met Gibson’s great granddaughter in college and eventually married her, and was absorbed into the family business where he learned the pits, the business, and the life.

Getting pulled into barbecue didn’t necessarily mean Lilly would be a competition hound, but that seemed like fate too. As Lilly tells it, the restaurant only started competing after they got a trailer that made catering easier, and it spiraled from there. They won a single contest that they entered mostly on a whim and “got hooked.” After winning another with their pulled pork, they were entered into the Memphis in May International Festival (home of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest) and then it turned into a fun, lifelong passion.

Just like an athlete, he stumbled into something he was good at and conquered the field.

Lilly and the Gibson team have won 15 world barbecue championships with their pulled pork (which I can confirm is some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever had, and I’m no slouch). Since 1997, they’ve gone from competing for fun on the weekends to still having fun, but ramping up their competition rate.

There are strategies as to which charcoal (Lilly is partnered with Kingsford and has used it for most of his career), where the meat is placed over the fire depending on what cut it is (Indirect with a steady temperature? Low and slow? Direct, then transitioned to indirect?), and practicing the cook. Saying “it has to keep a steady temperature” for hours on end in high-pressure situations is far easier to say than do, and there are years of practice in each piece of meat.

A competitive event without rivalries? What do you think this is? For Lilly, he named fellow top pit master Myron Mixon (four-time world champion and member of the Kansas City Barbecue Hall of Fame) as his personal rival and says they’ve had a “love/hate relationship over the years because the only time we see each other is in competitions.”

They’re closer friends after years of competing (Lilly compared it to David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez goofing off during postseason MLB broadcasts) but it wasn’t always that way. This was once a contentious rivalry in which one man was always trying to gain the upper hand on the other. Lilly didn’t share any smack talk that may or may not have happened while they were working the pits, but I got the sense that there have been some intense moments between these two competitors.

You can have all the passion in the world about something, and still not be at the top of that field. While Lilly loves that it’s something an “average person can enjoy in their backyard” (just like they can play wiffle ball and it’s not a professional baseball game), being a true pro requires commitment.

Lilly’s philosophy is “the greatness of a pitmaster is directly proportional to the size of their ash pile.” If you’re a quarterback, you practice the accuracy and distance of your spiral; if you’re a baseball player, you spend hours in the batting cage; and if you’re a pitmaster, you fire up the smoker as often as possible until it’s perfect.

Beyond marrying into the Gibson family, Lilly has ensured that the Gibson tradition will be passed down to the next generation as well. His two sons are both part of the family business, which makes it a five-generation barbecue family. Let’s see the Manning clan try and top that.

Even before the Gibson family, Lilly’s first memories “were of barbecue in the backyard with [his] father, on a cast aluminum grill. Cooking directly over charcoal on the grill.” Some people play catch with their fathers (or mothers!), but Lilly grew up and around frequent barbecuing and never lost that passion.

Lilly won’t barbecue or compete without the right meat, as you might expect. Lilly starts with his version of the best meat he can find. He let SB Nation in on a tip, too. He shared, “you want pork with a reddish pink color as opposed to a pinkish red color. There’s more moisture retention. Also you want to look for marbling as well.”

Lilly also controls his barbecuing environment to the greatest extent he can: “the same charcoal, the same wood, the same meat, the same time, temperature, humidity levels, everything.” Ichiro has his identical daily routine, and Lilly prepares for competitions with the same philosophy.

In sports and in barbecuing, no one can last forever. Lilly limits himself to the top tier competitions now, about three per year, to maintain his status as a world champion and stay sharp. But he would have no regrets if he stopped completely at this point. As he says:

“I’m very happy with the accomplishments in the barbecue competition world. If I stopped competing today I would feel good about my career in competitions. I guess what I’m most proud of is carrying on the tradition Big Bob started in 1925 and passing that down to my children, to the next generation.”

Like parents to children, when it comes to teaching the next generation how to catch or how to execute the perfect layup, Lilly isn’t content with being the top of his field. His family loving the industry — even if they don’t specifically love the competitions — is his priority above all.

Lilly compares barbecuing to baseball. Objectively, there’s a season for it, and it’s a long one. You can be smoking in April or October, and as long as there are family and friends around to enjoy it, then that’s barbecue. Just like baseball, barbecue gives you an excuse to sit around and enjoy the company of the people you care about for hours on end. With barbecuing, you get to eat some delicious meat after a long afternoon of hanging out. Baseball might have to step up its game.