The University still holds on to third place in the Comcast Sports South Tony Chachere’s Tailgate Cook-off in the final weeks of voting, behind Auburn University in second and Mississippi State University in first.
Television show Comcast SportsNite showcases a different recipe from each of the 12 schools every Friday at 5 p.m. until the actual cook-off at the University on Nov. 20, the day of the LSU-Ole Miss football game, according to the cook-off website.
Many hopefuls from all 12 SEC schools sent in recipes to represent their school in Tony Chachere’s first Tailgating Cook-off. Only one recipe from each school was chosen as a representative of the university.
Many other SEC schools have the advantage of being in Comcast markets and have the ability to watch SportsNite, according to a news release from the Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“The three final Universities have tens of thousands of votes,” said Jay Ducote, the finalist chosen to represent the University in the cook-off. “All the other schools had less than 1,000.”
Ducote is a Baton Rouge area food and drink blogger who writes for Biteandbooze.com. His recipe for blackberry-bourbon Boston butt features a bone-in pork shoulder that is injected with mixture of blackberries, bourbon and local honey. It is then rubbed with a combination of Tony Chachere’s and brown sugar before being smoked for several hours over Louisiana pecan wood, Ducote said.
“I think a big reason my recipe was chosen was due to the social media of LSU,” Ducote said. “LSU’s Twitter and Facebook put information up once a month about the competition.”
Ducote said many people heard about the competition through his blog and the links posted on various sites that brought voters straight to the voting video.
“TigerDroppings.com definitely helped,” Ducote said. “They put up a huge post that got a lot of people really fired up about it.”
Paul Arrigo, president and CEO of BRACVB, said socia media will play a big role in Ducote’s success.
“We are relying heavily on social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, along with other word of mouth to get the community involved,” Arrigo said.
The three finalists will be invited to Baton Rouge for the opportunity to cook their winning recipes, according to the website.
Voting will continue until Nov. 3, and every voter has an unlimited amount of votes.