Students scarf down burgers

Tim Patton patted his stomach contentedly as he finished chewing his burger, the last of five… Tim Patton patted his stomach contentedly as he finished chewing his burger, the last of five he had just eaten. Though his meal was over and he looked full, Patton’s first words after finishing eating were, “I’m still hungry. I want another one.”

He wasn’t just being a shameless glutton, though. He also had just scored a big comeback win for his team, “Team Anti-Hunger Strike,” in Five Guys’ burger-eating contest.

The Five Guys burger franchise in Oakland hosted a large, team burger-eating contest Saturday. It was held in the small, mini-park area at the corner of Bouquet Street and Forbes Avenue, across the street from the store’s location on Bouquet.

It was pretty hard not to notice the Five Guys scarf-a-thon that afternoon, as the event also featured a number of raffles and even a DJ setup with blasting music.

The event drew a fairly large crowd of about 70 to 80 spectators, many of whom were students who came to cheer on friends participating in the contest.

Then there were the participants themselves, many of whom came with boisterous victory chants and inventive names for their teams, such as “We Love The Meat” and “Regurgitation Station.”

“I’m doing this [contest] for the U.S.A. – Numero Uno!” shouted Adam Nelson, a Pitt student who was in a team called “South Oakland Represent.”

Nate Johns, another Pitt student and Nelson’s teammate, continued the bravado with, “Our team’s going all the way! We hate burgers, we want to destroy them all and put them in our stomachs!”

All of the 12 teams in the contest were comprised of students, all of whom were from Pitt except for one team from Carnegie Mellon University and another from the Community College of Allegheny County. Each team had four members and participated in one round each.

“We’ll bring out the piles of food to the teams in each round, and we’ll weigh each team’s pile of food before they eat it and again when they’re done,” Five Guys franchise owner Raji Sankar explained just prior to the tournament.

“We’ll only let each participant eat for three minutes each, so people shouldn’t get sick. It will be like a team relay setup,” he added.

Within the Pitt teams, there was a fair variety of different students, ranging from a blue-scrub-clad team from the Dental School, to the shirtless, hollering “South Oakland Represent” members, to Theta Phi Alpha, who fielded the only girls team in the competition.

The tournament was divided into four sub-rounds with three teams each, and in the end the cumulative results were judged for prizes.

Many of the contestants employed a few speed-eating techniques in their efforts to devour as much food as possible within their three-minute slots, including eating the buns separately and dunking them in water so they’d go down easier.

As long as there was no barfing, this was fine – vomiting meant instant team disqualification.

No one puked during the tournament, although many participants ended up stuffing their cheeks so full they had problems actually chewing the food.

“As long as you get the food in your mouth at some point, it counts as eaten,” said Brian Cox, a member of “Team Anti-Hunger Strike,” as he munched on a half-masticated chunk of burger in his hand that he couldn’t help but spit back out as soon as his turn was up.

“As long as you still eat it all,” he added.

In the end, the Pitt Dental team emerged victorious, beating out the other teams with a total of three-and-seven-eighths pounds of burgers consumed. They came away with the grand prize of $200 and special cards entitling them to a free Five Guys burger per day for an entire year.

A “Spirit Prize” of four meal vouchers was also awarded to the team that was most popular with the audience, which happened to go to the second place team, “The Funky Deeners.”