1) Saddles are like shoes. Brand A may be great for one fellow and terrible for another. Same for brands B through Z. No reason to take it personally if one brand works better for someone and worse for someone else.
2) Brooks quality has decreased over the years. They used to use only the best part of the hide. Now they use all of it. So it's more of a lottery than it used to be. You might get a good one that lasts forever. You might get a complete POS. The "select" models may be the equivalent of the old (pre 1985 or so) models. Or maybe not. And the idea that "mad cow" has anything to do with it is really, really funny.
3) None of them tend to work very well for the "modern" (seat well back and bars well below the seat) position. Brooks saddles were designed at a time when the typical position included high handlebars and a well-forward seat. Many folks (myself included) find that raising the bars makes a wondrous difference. You probably also will find that once the bars are raised, the seat can be angled upwards so that the rear portion of the seat is level, making the nose of the saddle point upwards at a surprising angle. This means that you are no longer thrown onto the bars by a downward-sloping saddle, and also that the upward-pointing nose no longer digs into your naughty bits. If you insist on a handlebar lower than the saddle, you may well find that there is no acceptable compromise: if the seat points upward, the nose digs into you, and if you lower the nose, the rear of the saddle will tilt down and slide you into the nose anyway. And regardless, because you didn't buy the select grade the saddle will be worn out before you finish experimenting anyway.
4) None of the above is accurate for anybody but me. Some people insist that Brooks is the only saddle worth making and that if it doesn't work for you then you are doing something wrong. Other people insist that Brooks cannot possibly work for anyone (after all, it didn't work for them) and that anyone claiming otherwise probably enjoys BDSM in their spare time.
5) HTH!