This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, September, 2022
For decades, people have posited ideas on how to bring new fans to professional bowling. One theory that continues to be uttered by those already entrenched in the sport: we need to explain how difficult it is. Only then will new fans flock to pro bowling tournaments in droves.
This theory says if we could only make it clear to complete novices how difficult pro bowling is (a feat that has yet to be accomplished), everyone would want to pay to watch and we’d all be rich.
The most difficult thing in bowling is, apparently, explaining how difficult it is. But should we?
Consider: to whom are we addressing this fabled explanation? It’s useless to tell existing pro bowling fans how difficult it is. We already know. Telling casual fans—those who might go bowling a couple times a year with friends, maybe even participate in a casual league and occasionally watch when bowling is on TV—comes off as vastly insulting.
Essentially, we’re saying, “You’re a person with a passing interest in bowling, but if you weren’t so dense, you’d understand how difficult it is at the elite level—where you’ll never be, you donk—and thus you would throw money at the pro tours to watch the best compete.”
It gets worse when potential new fans take a liking to something they “shouldn’t.”
“Hey, who’s that cool guy with the funny pants and big hair?” asks an excited eight-year-old child at his first PBA Tour event.
“Never mind him,” we reply. “What you should really be interested in is how that guy in the normal pants on lane 24 just changed his slide sole from a six to an eight. That was a gutsy move to make during game five of round two B squad qualifying.”
As the kid walks out, never to return, an adult walks in. The first thing he sees is a bowler rolling a strike.
“Wow!” he exclaims. “Did you see how that one pin rolled around on the floor for a while and finally knocked down that last one to get the strike? That was really cool.”
“What you just saw is called rolling the 2-pin,” we reply, “and that bowler should be ashamed of himself and disowned by his family.”
Yes, as anyone reading this magazine knows, bowling is incredibly difficult and part of the reason it’s fascinating for people like us to watch. But why delude ourselves into thinking casual fans would start watching if only they understood the difficulty?
If H&R Block can figure out a way to explain how difficult it is to do taxes for all their many different types of clients, will they secure a TV rights deal? Finally, we can all watch accountants calculate numbers live on FOX. Imagine how riveting it will be, given how difficult it is.
Writing of difficult, how about water polo? These people have to try to get a slippery wet ball into a goal on the far end of a pool while fighting both above and below water with opponents, all the while staving off a horrific drowning death. They are putting their lives at stake just to play a game and yet they apparently can’t figure out how to explain how difficult it is either, because they’re certainly not on TV nearly as often as bowling is.
Bowlers don’t risk drowning—except in high humidity with the wrong slide sole—and yet bowling has more notoriety than almost any pro sport. In fact, the PBA is debatably the eighth most popular professional sports league in the United States. It’s probably 14th or so on the world scale. That’s even more impressive when considering, according to the World Sports Encyclopaedia (2003), there are more than 8,000 sports in the world, and we challenge you to name 7,991 of them.
Sure, those of us in bowling know that in a sports world of alley-oops, one-timers and monstrous home runs, nothing can compare to the excitement of a crucial ball change in the sixth frame. Historically, though, that appears to be a tough starting point for new fans.
Instead of demanding everyone instantly understand and respect how difficult bowling is, why don’t we try being more welcoming to the kid enthralled by the goofy pants or the guy laughing with glee at the rolled 2-pin? Those are valid things to enjoy and if we can keep people like that around long enough, eventually they’ll understand how difficult it is and, naturally, demand others do too.