Since 1989, Texas Tech has won 14 titles in the national meat judging competition, including one late last year. That dominance prompted a Sports Illustrated article last May that dubbed Texas Tech “the Alabama football of the meat judging world."
Mark Miller, the team’s coach, says what the team’s members gain in their involvement with meat judging isn’t just intelligence.
“I’ve never been more thankful for just the opportunity to be able to- not just about Texas Tech, but to show how there’s a lot of academic programs that can really grow people in a way that’s bigger than a classroom education. We can grow the mind but then we turn people out and we didn’t grow the rest of them? And that’s really what we get with meat judging. It’s the greatest vehicle to be able to help kids gain a lot of experiential learning and soft skills that you just can’t get in the classroom.”
The meat judging program won three titles in a row between 2011 and 2013. Beginning in 2008, the team has garnered 11 titles at the American Meat Science Association International Meat Judging Contest.
The competition in November was in Nebraska, where 89 contestants from 12 universities participated.
Miller says this year’s team fell short in a couple of early competitions, causing some members to question their talent. And some alumni noticed.
“There’s alumni that go ‘ah don’t worry about it. You guys were great.’ And then there’s alumni going ‘ah you guys need to pick it up a notch.’ I mean, they put a lot of pressure on themselves. Well then when that happens you have an opportunity to start saying ‘well what’s the reason why?’ and so they had a lot of adversity to overcome and to be able to stick together, to be able to stick with each other, to be able to believe in each other, and to be able to believe that they were more than just whether they won or didn’t win a meat judging contest.”
A winning mentality goes beyond titles, Miller says. It’s about encouraging each team member. In the end that helps the whole team.
“It’s the time getting them to be able to value their teammates more than themselves. The time we invest in them looking at being a part of something bigger than they are, that when they surrender their own pride and they humble themselves to be able to be whatever it is that will make the team better, then we had a victory. It doesn’t matter if we won the national championship or not. I mean that’s the ultimate goal, is for them to really focus on unselfishly giving of themselves to make everybody else better. That’s going to pay off no matter what you’re doing.”
The scoring at competitions doesn’t count every one of the team’s 28 members.
“The way that we pick the team is only four of those kids can count for Texas Tech. They all participate, but only four get to be the scores that count. We had 28 and say another school had six, we’d have that many more opportunities for somebody to be better, and so we have to designate four. We have kids that come here that are so good.”
Miller likes to keep up with former meat judging team members. He notes that not all go into animal science professions.
“We have a lot of people that are in the medical field, legal field, all kinds of professional fields… Teaching, I have a lot of students that actually teach that don’t teach in agriculture. I have one football coach that’s a history teacher. We have people that are from the engineering and business college that have been on our meats team. At the end of the day, we’re really teaching things like pursuit of excellence, which means you do your best, dress your best, be your best, even when nobody’s watching. Striving for honor is a big deal at Texas Tech and today that’s a big thing in all society.”
Miller says he heard about the Tech men’s basketball team taking steps last season to cut down distraction. That was a discussion he had with the meat judging team in the weeks leading up to the national title competition.
“I just said ‘hey, I just wanted you to know I characterize things and don’t take it personally, but we have a real problem with focusing, and I really believe it’s because of your phone. I don’t think your mind ever shuts down.’ So we hadn’t won and I guess out of desperation I said ‘I’m not taking your phones up,’ I said ‘it’s your choice.’ They checked down their phones 48 hours before their last two competitions and they won both of them.”