Integrity vs. Viability

   Over the course of the last three decades, all bowling center proprietors that offer ABC/USBC sanctioned competitive league bowling have had a question put to them that as a provider of any product or service regulated by a governing body should never have to be addressed.  The question is a choice-- integrity of the sport offered or the viability of the venue providing it.  As a proprietor, do I provide a competitive condition with results based solely on the skill of the participants and risk losing a significant percentage of them, migrating to competitors’ houses with artificially high scores?  Or do I join a perverse exercise in keeping up with my competitors’ scoring excess,  marketing my house on the allure of falsified performance, in the attempt to retain league bowling revenues and remain an ongoing concern?
   Make no mistake-- the majority of center proprietors that offer competitive league bowling market their houses primarily on high scores.  We see continual evidence of this in the advertising produced by elements of the bowling industry, hailing this product or that as offering a quick and easy way to higher scores.  Promotional material and newspaper columns add fuel to the fire.  How many weekly bowling columnists in local papers report the plethora of scores and precious little else?
   We also see evidence in the ongoing production and sanctioning of forgiving equipment that allows for a virtually mistake free league session.  We literally do not know when we miss. The ability to “buy” oneself a game, to purchase superior performance, to short cut the time needed to develop shot making skills erodes the credibility of the sport.  Combined with the proprietor’s ability to produce the  exact same lane conditions week after week, the advancement in equipment has directly lead to a staggering industry wide decline in practice session revenues.  Who needs to practice when I can stand in the same place and throw the ball over the same area and achieve the expected high results unfailingly, week after week?
   More evidence manifests itself with the capital expended on obtaining the latest in lane machine technology.  We spend tens of thousands of dollars in pursuit of the most advanced lane machines offered.  These machines have now taken the guesswork out of lane conditioning and have given the proprietor the ability to reproduce the same soft conditions, night after night, uniformly over the length of the house.  We spend dollars on training and employment of the talent necessary to operate and maintain this vital equipment.  A good lane person can make a center, a poor one may certainly break one.
   The most profound effect of this runaway pursuit of artificially high scores on the bowling industry itself lies in the punishing redistribution of league bowlers away from houses that offer a more normal or traditional scoring environment to houses with ultra high scoring conditions.  This phenomenon of flight is more likely to be fatal to smaller or rural centers that rely on league bowling revenue as a major percentage of total gross center revenue.
   The culpability of the ABC/USBC lies in the steadfast refusal to regulate a cap on the proprietor’s ability through the ever increasing advancements in lane and equipment technology, to artificially inflate the scoring environment with regards to the typical house shot, to limits that are now bound only by the scoring system itself.  This runaway race to achieve the highest scoring house within their individual local markets creates an unfair competitive advantage for some proprietors over their counterparts in the following ways:
   The center proprietor who chooses the integrity of the sport first, leaves open the distinct possibility of an exodus of bowlers towards centers with artificially high scores.  The very fact that this conundrum presents itself cannot be excused and is indefensible in so far as the ABC/USBC’s failure of regulatory oversight is concerned.
   All bowling centers are not created equally with regards to the ability to create and maintain an ultra high scoring environment for the duration of an entire league season.  There are just too many variables involved such as the makeup and type of playing surface itself, temperature and humidity variation and climate concerns, availability of talent needed to operate and maintain equipment and other intangibles involved with maintaining such conditions over an entire league season.  It is important to note that a proprietor may risk significant amounts of capital in an effort to raise the level of scoring necessary to compete with neighboring centers and still fall significantly short  to the proprietor who need not risk nearly as much and can mass produce ultra high scores with comparative little effort at the touch of a button.
   The purchase of a center with an existing reputation for a relatively lower scoring environment may place impossible odds for success with league development even though as mentioned above large amounts of capital are infused in an attempt to elevate scores.  Rumors and innuendo that have existed for years are extremely difficult to combat.  It has been shown that it is much more difficult to draw a bowler back into a house once he or she has left.  Magnifying the problem is the fact that no written record is currently available to the bowler that directly compares individual centers with each other in the scoring environment.  All comparison and recommendations of where to bowl come from the posting of high scores in various publications and word of mouth between bowlers themselves.
   Because of these inequities, the proprietor that falls behind in the scoring race faces the prospect of not only a poorer league retention rate then otherwise would exist, but also faces an enormous task of drawing former league and tournament bowlers back into the house.  The retention loss can be calculated but the number of experienced bowlers that will not return to a center with relatively lower scores is impossible to quantify and over time may very well be  the larger number in the equation.
   The choice between integrity and viability no provider of a product or service should ever have to face. The fact that this choice has been presented to bowling center proprietors for the past three decades is a stunning indictment of the ABC/USBC’s failure to oversee the sport of their sanctioned competitive league bowling.
   The defenders of the ABC/USBC rely on the argument that it can never fully enforce the rules and regulations or police the populations of bowling centers and proprietors that offer league bowling.  We must be absolutely clear on this matter of enforcement. Enforcement problems do not under any circumstances absolve the governing body of its primary duty to regulate and thereby maintain the integrity of the sport. It is long past time to hold the ABC/USBC accountable for its gross failure to oversee, regulate and maintain the integrity of its sanctioned competitive league tenpin bowling.

A Toast: Long Live the Sport of Bowling

  Beer and bowling go way back.  It is most enjoyable to toss a few back with friends after a friendly session on the maple and pine. Many a round has been bought upon failing to produce a strike when all your mates have hung you in the beer frame. The revenues produced in a typical bowling center bar during league night can be impressive. In Milwaukee, "Beer, brats and bowling" has been the mantra. One only has to look back at the golden age of bowling to find such classic teams as the Strohs, Hamm's and Monarchs who have all won team titles at the Open Championships. Who can forget the exploits of the famous Budweisers? As a young man, I confess that I demurred to the allure of the Rhinegold girl.

  But if you were able to ask the Webers, the Welus or the Norris' what part beer played in their outstanding performances, the answer to a high degree of certainty would be none. The drinking of alcohol before and after competition was not unusual. The consumption of such during, unthinkable.  To do so would degrade the competition, venue and the sport.

  But now the big news out of Reno, suggestively and quietly buried in the fine print of a spinned release, is that the consumption of alcoholic beverages at Nationals will be allowed during the competition.

  What have they done?

  In one dumbfounding, unbelievable edict, the "leaders" of the USBC, the very institution we entrusted the sport to, hath proclaimed in no uncertain terms that amateur bowling to its highest level is no longer a sport, being reduced to a recreational activity. The National Governing Body, their very mission statement reads "Grow the sport", has fired the final salvo reporting the demise of the sport of tenpin bowling. They have placed the Open Championships on a par with the Tuesday night mixed.

  What right do the people who made this unilateral decision have to single handedly destroy the reputation, rich history and unmatched tradition of the most prestigious amateur national tournament bowling has to offer? What a selfish act!

  Forget Olympic status. It is hard enough to do drug testing before and after the event. To test during - impossible. One can see the post game interview, "It was the ball change in the fourth, the inside move in the seventh and the lager in the ninth that saved the day for me!"

  And with that comes the end of the USBC as a National Governing Body. The evaporation of team USA and the end of Title IX funding follows.

  To all of the bowling journalists throughout the land who have covered the sport of bowling so wonderfully I suggest that you go to the mirror and take a good look. Throw all your copy in the toilet for you will be reporting a big lie. The BWAA would be doing a disservice to this industry if it does not vigorously condemn this action in the most forceful language possible.

  The Professional Bowlers Association must also come down hard on this subject. The reason is that its fine code of conduct faces an erosion from a governing body which has a weaker stance with regards to ethics. Drugs and alcohol have tarnished the careers of more than a few professionals. Placing an excuse for a return engagement with alcohol fosters nothing but tragedy. The commissioner needs to remind the membership that this should and will not be tolerated.

  What a sorry position this puts our fine coaches in? How do you explain to young people that the USBC allows consumption of alcohol during the highest levels of competition? That its OK to drink during competition? What do you say to the parents? All coaches must condemn this, now!

  All of the time, money and effort spent by the USBC in their disingenuous attempts to portray bowling as a sport has now in one swoop been wasted. This includes the money spent on training of coaches, research into equipment and lane specifications, the training facility itself - all wasted now that bowling as a sport has been declared by idiots as a purely recreational activity.

  And finally to the delegates and the local association volunteers who form the backbone of the congress I say you have been betrayed on a level that is stupefying. No longer can you afford to consider the convention a vacation. Take back your congress! Take back your sport! Vote to suspend the rules and vote "no confidence" in your current leadership and show them the door! Throw the bums out!