This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, August, 2017
One topic that is discussed heartily in all sports is the pace of play. Why does it take more than three hours to play a baseball game? Why do the last two minutes of a basketball game take longer than the other 46? How is it possible football takes so long when so much of the time involves the players getting into position while the clock runs?
The same conversation is crucial to bowling, where it’s time we NEED MORE GAMES discuss NEED MORE GAMES how long a sporting event NEED MORE GAMES should NEED MORE GAMES last.
To speed the game, Major League Baseball now allows pitchers to intentionally walk batters without having to throw the pitches.
The National Hockey League imposes a delay-of-game penalty on a defensive player who shoots the puck over the glass, which ironically delays the game as the referee puts the player in the penalty box.
The National Basketball Association is considering options to speed up its games, particularly looking at the final two minutes, which currently either take what seems like three hours for a close game or—in defiance of space and time—less than two minutes in a blowout.
In bowling, we NEED MORE GAMES.
Pink Floyd said (while competing on a Wall, mind you) you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat. Roger Waters hasn’t returned my call, but it’s a virtual certainty the true meaning of that line is you can’t have any more games until you’ve proven you can bowl your current games in less time than it takes to fly a gigantic metal airplane from New York to Los Angeles.
At every level, especially professional bowling and excluding youth bowling, the pace of play continues to get slower. There is no reason professional bowlers should need five hours to play eight games, even if there are four on a pair with a lot of newbies who don’t know the cross or a tough lane condition that requires a lot of two-shot frames.
“Which part do I come watch?” asks a fan with multiple life-related responsibilities and interests.
“All 12 hours, of course,” I reply. “And there are another 12 tomorrow and the next day.”
In those 12 hours, we see two squads bowl eight games each. If they could bowl a game in 20 minutes, as the best in the world should be able to do, we could cram 36 total games into those 12 hours. We shouldn’t, because that would send all the bowlers to the orthopaedist, who would then become overworked to the point of needing an orthopaedist herself, but we could.
I’m not arguing against qualifying, which is essential to the fairness and integrity of the sporting event. I’m not arguing against a particular number of games, either. I’m not even necessarily arguing against the total day of bowling lasting 12 hours, as the logistics of field and venue sizes almost always prohibit everyone from being able to bowl simultaneously. I am arguing for the casual fans who might walk into a bowling center and be interested enough to ask questions and find out what’s going on until they realize they have to sit there for 10 more hours and nothing definitive happens until the weekend.
How many baseball games last six hours? Of those, how many are immediately followed by a quick break to mow the field and then another six-hour game? And how many fans sit through all 13 hours, including the hour to mow the field, and then come back to do it again for the next three days?
It’s time we bring the pace-of-play discussion to bowling. For almost every other major sport, three hours is the approximate acceptable length of a single block of competition. It’s better to leave the fans wanting more than to leave them wondering how much more there is.