BBQ World Cup Qualifier: Cody Howard

Cody Howard did not set out to cook against the best barbecue teams in the world. He set out to feed his family, learn what his dad had taught him around the smoker, and win a backyard contest or two on the weekends. That is the whole reason his story is worth telling. This past January, at Lakeland Pigfest in Lakeland, Florida, Howard and Rollin Smoke BBQ finished third overall in a stacked professional field and grabbed the last of the event's three tickets to the BBQ World Cup. In April of 2027 he will cook in Las Vegas, where 100 teams from around the world will compete for $1,000,000. He is the only backyard team in the field.

A power lineman who googled his first contest

Howard lives in Altoona, Alabama, works as a respiratory therapist at Children's of Alabama, and came to competition barbecue the way a lot of good cooks do, sideways. His dad always had something going on the smoker at the house, so the food was in him early. The spark came at work. He was with the City of Tarrant electric department outside Birmingham when the city put on a cookoff among its own employees, and his crew took third in ribs.

That was enough to light it. He went home, searched for barbecue contests near him, and found Smoke on the Falls in Gadsden, one of the bigger events in the state. The first time he ever entered a real contest, he finished in the top twenty. That was 2015, and he was hooked for good.

The team with almost as many names as trophies

The Rollin Smoke name did not arrive all at once. It started as Smokin' Lineman, back when Howard was climbing poles for the power company. Then it became Shocker Q, still a nod to the wires. When he started thinking about opening a food truck, he could not settle on what to call it, so he put three or four options on Facebook and let people vote. Rollin' Smoke won in a landslide.

The food truck never happened. The name did. Today the logo is a cartoon pig riding a smoking tire, and the truck remains a someday plan he is in no hurry to keep. The barbecue was always the point.

From two contests a year to forty

For a long stretch it was two or three contests a season, as much as a young family and shift work would allow. Then the bug bit harder. Two or three became a dozen, then more than twenty last year, then close to forty this year once a spot in Las Vegas was on the line. Howard is honest that this pace is a season, not a life. After the BBQ World Cup, with a newborn at home, he plans to pull it back and make barbecue family time again.

He does not do it alone. Rollin Smoke runs with help from Tucker Milling, the Guntersville feed mill where Macy works, along with Butcher BBQ, Mississippi Spice Company, and the Say My Name rub line, plus his cooking partner Jason Pendry of Baptized by Smoke. For a team that came up in the backyard ranks, that kind of backing is the difference between a hobby and a real run at the sport.

The win Howard goes back to is the first one he ever took, at Scottsboro two years ago. Alabama is backyard country, he will tell you, and beating the state's best in the backyard ranks meant something. The next weekend he drove to Virginia and won again, Grand Champion twice in seven days. Three wins in a row, he says, is something he will never forget.

Not every swing landed. At one televised barbecue event, with a camera crew walking the stalls and Michael Symon on site, Howard decided to cook a whole alligator to get himself noticed. It worked. Symon came by. It also pulled his focus clean off the contest, and Rollin' Smoke finished last in everything that weekend. Trying to get that fifteen seconds of glory, he says, turned around and bit him. He tells the story on himself, grinning, because he would probably do it again.

Third overall, last ticket, only backyard team

The BBQ World Cup spot came at Lakeland Pigfest, a Kansas City Barbeque Society contest in central Florida with three seats to Las Vegas on the line. It was a serious field. Chris Salsberry and Fred Vegas Smokers took Grand Champion. Darren Warth and Iowa's Smokey D's, one of the most decorated teams in the sport, took Reserve. Howard finished third overall and claimed the final ticket, the only backyard team in the whole qualifier to punch through.

That last detail is the heart of it. The BBQ World Cup gathers 100 teams who earn their way in at regional qualifiers across the country and the world, and most of that field are full-time professional outfits with sponsor trailers and years of Master Series scores. Rollin Smoke is not that. A backyard team from a small Alabama town finished ahead of nearly everyone at Lakeland, and that is exactly what makes the third-place ticket worth the drive to Florida.

What Howard remembers most is who was cooking next to him. Warth, a barbecue hall of famer, was working out of a ten by ten tent while Howard ran a small trailer, and both of them were fighting a category that weekend, Warth in ribs and Howard in brisket. Warth helped him anyway, and has kept helping all year. That is what barbecue is all about, Howard says, helping the next person out.

A family team, on and off the trailer

Rollin Smoke BBQ is a family team before it is a competition team. Howard learned the craft from his dad around the smoker and cooks to honor that, and the team pours as much energy into community fundraisers and youth programs as into trophies. Its tagline, Built on Faith, Fired by Family, is stitched into everything they do.

His wife Macy is in it with him, with one honest exception. Cooking every single weekend has worn barbecue out for her at home. His food is good, she says, but she does not want it at home anymore. They have two boys, Carson, thirteen, and Case, four, and a third child due in February, which means a two-month-old will be along for the ride when they roll into Las Vegas. His parents watch the kids on contest weekends. When Howard qualified, the family that owns the company he leans on told him plainly, whatever it takes to get you there, we will get you there.

Do we belong

Howard knows exactly what he is walking into. He can rattle off the names he will cook against, Heath Riles, Luke Darnell, Darren Warth, Slap's, the legends of the sport, alongside teenagers and teams from countries he has never visited. Somewhere in that lineup is one backyard team from Altoona, Alabama, asking the only question that matters to him. Do we belong. His answer is yes, and he does not hesitate.

If Rollin Smoke wins the $1,000,000, the plan is not flashy. Pay off what they owe, get the kids set for school, invest the rest, and be debt-free. Then dial the calendar back and cook for the reasons he started, family and the love that he says makes barbecue good in the first place. First, though, there is Las Vegas, a small trailer parked among the best in the world, and a backyard cook who is sure he belongs.

Sources

Lakeland Pigfest official site; Cody and Macy Howard, Road to a Million interview (BBQ United); BWC Qualified Pitmasters tracker (Lakeland Pigfest, 3rd overall); Darren Warth, American Royal BBQ Hall of Fame (WHO13). Photo courtesy Rollin Smoke BBQ.