My take on why Nathan's 2008 contest overtime was NOT necessary (photos too)!

Although it's been only a few days since the annual Nathan's 4th of July hotdog contest, I thought I would write something about it. Once I got back home to San Jose the night of contest, I began to wonder... should there have been a tiebreaker (with the 5 dog eat off) with Takeru Kobayashi and Joey Chestnut? Within the first 2 hours of my shift at work Sunday morning, I was approached by my coworkers and managers who knew I would closely follow the contest (and competitive eating itself), they asked for my opinon; was it really that close of a tie? So, I started doing research and video recaps from ESPN, youtube, and etc. Now, in my opinion, there should have been no 5 dog eat off whatsoever, because based on the stills I have captured from various videos available online, it shows that Kobayashi still had about 1/4 to 1/2 a hot dog and bun left in his hand (outside of his mouth) after the buzzer. If you compare the two screen captures I will provide in just a second, Joey morely had his hand flat against his mouth, while Kobayashi looked like he was still bunching it both in and out of his mouth. However, since it was apparently ruled a "tie" after both Kobayashi and Joey had consumed 59 hot dog and buns each, the 5 dog eat off was done. In the end, Joey won and is now a 2x Nathan's champ. He, at least I think, proved naysayers from the 2007 contest that he backed up with another win this year. Of course there will still be diehard Kobayashi fans that still think he won the 2008 contest... SO, my illustrations below prove my point. I was already disappointed that Kobayashi was allowed to compete at the Nathan's finals without going into a qualifier event (like all other competitors other than Joey, the reigning Nathan's champ), but having him go against Joey to try to win back his 6x title before being beaten did bring excitement to Nathan's and another Koby vs. Joey vs. everyone else matchup. OOO! One more thing, since we don't see Kobayashi competing in that many competitive eating contests since said jaw injury... shouldn't his IFOCE rankings be moved down? Yea, he did bring competitive eating into another spotlight, but should he still be at #3? I think he should move down (not sure to which spot) while some of the other eaters should be shifted up: Juliet Lee and Tim Janus. Big thumbs up for all the competitors in the finals! It was truely an exciting event to watch, both pre show and the main event! I haven't figured out how to post multiple photos within one article, so you will see in succession of 2 comments for this article. The 1st photo: **The red circles both over Kobayashi's and Joey's mouth. Now if you look at it closely, Joey's hand is more flat on his mouth (and doesn't look like there is any debris leftover after the buzzer), while Kobayashi's hand is more bunched over his mouth (you can kind of see that there is still hot dog debris left)