Cattle.com

Why this time is different

I wrote a pretty harsh blog post five years ago after that fiasco in Fort Worth.  It’s still the most linked to thing I’ve written here.  Do you know what I didn’t do in that long post?  Say he shouldn’t be back to judge the next year.  

The problems that year were easily fixable and he fixed them.  By all accounts Dr. Johnson did an excellent job in the second year of his stint as the judge at Fort Worth.

He did that because he was able to address the problems from his first year, he knows cattle, and he’s one of the premiere judges in the country.

This is different.

The problems with what happened at Fort Worth last week go deeper than just not giving kids attention.  Nobody is complaining they didn’t get a good look.  There’s no traffic flow issues that can be fixed with better organization.  The show, from a logistical point of view, was run well.

The problem is the judge last week just doesn’t sort cattle the way haired show steers should be judged today.

The people who would typically stand up to defend a judge’s choices have been put in the difficult spot of knowing that they must also ignore the progress that has been made in the quality of show steers over the past decade in order to defend those choices.

That’s not saying he’s a bad person or a bad cattleman.  I don't know him but people who do say he's a great guy.  

He just doesn’t belong in the ring judging the steer show at Fort Worth.

The management of Fort Worth can stick to their guns, ignore the nearly universal opinion of the judging last week, and bring him back next year if they want.  It won’t impact the show numbers, nobody actually follows through with those threats to not show the next year.  
 
He can’t come back though.

Not if they respect their exhibitors.

4
Bob commented 2/10/2017 10:39:09 AM
Do you have a link to your 2013 post?
Jeff commented 2/10/2017 10:47:11 AM
www.cattle.com/read.aspx?id=2132

There are 23 comments on it piling on but I cut them off because it got out of control a bit.

Nowadays people have Facebook for that.