Is PBA Xtra Frame's Jason Thomas Psychic?

In case you don't have enough reasons already to subscribe to the PBA's webcasting service, Xtra Frame, here's another one. This week the PBA is in Indianapolis for the fabled Tournament of Champions, and Xtra Frame has been covering it from the opening frames of qualifying yesterday. This morning at 10 AM Eastern, Osku Palermaa, who was in either second or first place going in to today's final 8-game block of qualifying, stepped up in the first frame of his first game and left a pocket 7-10 split. Not an auspicious start, to say the least. But not to worry.

"I'm gonna to go out on a limb and say he's going to make this, Jeff," said "The Bowling Guy," Jason Thomas, to his co-announcer, About.com's Bowling Guide Jeff Goodger. "He's gonna give us something to scream about right out of the gate this morning." "Good," replied Goodger. "I trust the bowling guy's instincts."

Well, I was surprised at such a bold prediction. It didn't sound like a joke. It sounded serious. And it's no small thing to seriously predict the conversion of a split that most of us have never converted ourselves and rarely if ever seen anyone else convert. I've been bowling pretty regularly for almost 50 years, most of it at the scratch level, and have left hundreds of 7-10 splits over that time. I've never converted the 7-10 even once. And I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen it converted in front of me. I've seen it converted a few more times on TV and the Internet, but not THAT many more. 7-10 conversions are pretty rare no matter who's shooting at them. They don't call the 7-10 split "impossible" for nothing.

So, my first thought was, "I know it's Osku, but no way's he's going to make it." Then, immediately after that, I thought, "But Jason made that prediction so confidently that I'll bet Osku does make it. So, this coverage must not be live, and Jason has already seen Osku pick it up and then managed to make it sound like he made his prediction before Osku converted the split." But then I thought, "That's impossible. Jason may be smart, but he couldn't pull THAT off! Osku's going to miss that split, and Jason and Jeff are going to be proven wrong, and that's too bad."

Well, now that I've set the stage for you, check out the video below to see what happened, and then subscribe to PBA Xtra Frame and catch the next PBA miracle live, not to mention all the other great action you can get live, if at all, ONLY on Xtra Frame.