This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2021
Of the many disparate dichotomies unique to the bowling industry, perhaps the question of when it’s okay to tell anyone what happened is the most compelling. Specifically, we’re talking about televised stepladder finals that bring ire from all directions. These are live sporting events, airing as they happen on national television, with someone having the gall to announce the winner after the winner wins.
We want bowling to be treated with the same reverence and respect as football and yet we demand bowling results be kept secret until an undetermined time because we may not have seen them yet. If we’re to claim bowling should get as much time on the highlight shows as basketball, how can we also mandate not to be given any information on the bowling?
Sports anchor: “And the Hornets beat the Kings, 127-126. In bowling, the Tournament of Champions happened. Check back with us in a month or so after you’ve had time to watch the DVR.”
The spoiling of sporting events is a classic sitcom plot. Someone, usually the dolt father, has to miss the big game, often because his overbearing wife makes him go to the ballet. The father tapes the game. His kids or the babysitter (often the wacky neighbor or tool-show sidekick) watch the game live. When the father gets home, his only goal in life is not to hear any information about the game. No radio reports, no TV highlights, no accounts from the babysitter. Then, after apologizing to his wife for behaving like an oaf and resolving their conflict, just as the father sits down to watch the game, someone comes out and spoils the result. The father is disappointed but he deserves it due to his loutish behavior.
Most people can relate to such a thing, and it’s similar to what bowling fans feel in a sense. In a more real sense, it’s not the same thing at all. Someone trying to avoid the results of a sporting event knows to avoid the radio, TV, internet and human interaction because those results are going to be out there somewhere. In bowling, we expect bowling itself to hide the results from the world until we’re ready for them. But then we also complain if bowling tapes a show in advance for later airing, because we believe sporting events should air live.
Essentially: “I’ll only watch if it’s live, but if it’s live, I’m going to record it to watch later.”
In fact, FOX is spoiling the event as they’re airing it. Not only are they showing Dick Allen strike in the 10th yet again, but they’re telling us the score. FOX needs to figure out a way to air the event without telling us what happened until the precise moment we want to know what happened and before we’re upset about not yet knowing what happened.
“That’s disappointing, I was going to watch game seven of the World Series of Baseball but I accidentally saw the score on my Twitter feed,” one might say. One might then follow it with, “The PBA is awful because they announced the results of the World Series of Bowling on their own website that I voluntarily accessed.”
Apparently, there is no right time to share bowling results with the world. Share them as they happen and you are a spoiling scumbag. Share them a week later and it’s old news. Share them in the middle of the week and you look lazy.
This is ludicrous. It’s a professional sport.
If we want bowling to be treated like other sports, we need to put the onus on ourselves. If we have to miss a telecast or the first six hours of a qualifying round, it’s up to us to avoid the results until we can watch our DVR or stare at the archives online. Chastising the media for covering our sport will lead to less media coverage, which will lead to less money, which will lead to more taped shows, which will lead to more demand for live shows so we can tape them. And our ball hasn’t stored enough energy for all that.