Some may call it out of style, but for Cullman County resident Bradley Suddath, the long-maligned mullet is a source of pride after he placed third in the USA Mullet Championship. 

In the polling that ended earlier this week, Suddath finished with 13,620 votes from those who thought his Camaro Crash Helmet was the best in the USA. That number was good for third place behind Wisconsin’s Travis Seifert, who finished second with 15,465 votes and Tennessee’s Clint Duncan, who won with 17,534 votes. 

Suddath, who works for UPS, said the company relaxed its hair standards last year to allow drivers to have longer hair, and he and some of his co-workers decided to grow their hair out. 

“Mine started as a joke between some of my buddies, that I was going to cut mine into a mullet, and after I did it, everybody loved it,” he said. “So I just kept it.”

Suddath said not everyone has been a fan of his Tennessee Top Hat since he started growing it out, but placing so high in a national competition may be a way to silence one of his most vocal critics. 

“I get a lot of crap from my dad about it, and there’s been some funny back and forth between us,” he said. “I told him he can’t really say much now.”

Suddath said he isn’t sure how he first found out about the competition, but he may have found it while he was looking online for mullet t-shirts to wear as a joke. 

“I don’t know if that’s how I found it or someone else sent it to me on Facebook,” he said. 

However he found about the mullet championship, Suddath said he didn’t think he had a real shot at winning or placing highly in the competition. 

“I actually thought I didn’t have a shot at all,” he said. 

Fans of Suddath’s Kentucky Waterfall don’t have to worry about it going away any time soon, as he said he will be maintaining the “business in the front, party in the back” hairstyle for at least another year to make another run at the USA Mullet Championship. 

He said he made a late run in this year’s competition after spreading the word online, and while the surge of support on the final day of voting was enough to propel him into third place, it came too late to push his Mississippi Mudflap into the lead. 

“I’m definitely hoping to be able to close that gap being this close this year,” he said. 

The hair may be the star of the show for most who follow the competition, but Suddath said he was also happy to contribute to the good cause that the organizers of the USA Mullet Championship support through the competition. 

He said half of the entry fees collected from participants are donated to a different charity each year. This year’s proceeds went to Stop Soldier Suicide, a nonprofit dedicated to providing mental health support to America’s veterans.

“They do a lot of donations to charities, and I think that’s awesome,” Suddath said.