"ESPN is awful... can't believe you wouldn't stick around long enough to see his reaction after he threw his last ball... For his first title you cut to commercial, that's brutal. No wonder bowling can't seem to gain a big fan-base let alone bigger sponsorship, even ESPN didn't see that as a broadcast worthy moment." --Patti, commenting on PBA website
I wasn't able to watch yesterday's PBA title match live the way I usually do. But I recorded it with my DVR and watched it soon afterward. The final game finished later than it was supposed to, I set my DVR to record for only the 90 minutes for which the show was scheduled, and so I missed the very end of the tournament.
But I've since read that, because the program ran over its allotted time, ESPN didn't show the final frame or allow fans to see Brian Kretzer react to his victory. A lot of people on the PBA website and presumably elsewhere are angry about that. Here's what one disgruntled person named Michael wrote:
"Both ESPN and the PBA need to decide once and for all what they want to do. They run over so much so often - it is ridiculous. However so does Monday Night RAW for WWE. What does USA do? They show it til the end. 11:05, 11:06, 11:10pm, doesn't matter. We see the main event in full and that is for wrestling. Bowling seems to get disrespected because even the network doesn't respect it. If the PBA doesn't have an 'over-run' clause in their contract with ESPN, I'd say ditch ESPN and put the PBA on Spike or USA or something.
ESPN is a disgrace and the PBA should sue them if possible for damaging the PBA product week-in and week-out."
I agree with Patti and Michael that ESPN sure doesn't seem to give bowling the respect it gives other sports it carries and that this can't be good for the PBA. However, I'm not sure the PBA could find any other network to carry it and do a better job with it than ESPN does.
Would USA take it on, or Spike? And if either of them would, would they attract more viewers than THE sports network, ESPN? What do you think?
I was happy to see Brian Kretzer finally win a national title yesterday, but I was bored almost to death watching him do it. I attribute much of my boredom to the numerous errant shots and low scores brought on in large part by the ridiculously challenging dual pattern condition they put out for the entire tournament and the televised finals.
I admit that the idea appealed to me initially. Test the best bowlers on the planet by forcing them to adapt to two diametrically opposed oil patterns on the same pair and let the best of the best rise to the top of the heap. But not only did the single elimination match play format prevent this from happening, but, after watching the bowlers struggle inordinately all week and Kretzer and Allen almost fall on their faces yesterday, I think putting one oil pattern on one lane and a very different one on the other is madness.
You almost might as well force the bowlers to bowl facing backwards or standing on their heads on one lane and in their regular way on the other. The disparity between the release, angle, and ball speed the players must use from one lane to the other is just too great to bring the best out in them, and I think tournaments should be about bringing out the best in the best.
You bring out the best by putting out the same challenging but playable pattern on both lanes of a pair and forcing the players to make reasonable adjustments from one lane to the other, since no two lanes play exactly alike, and execute well to win. You don't do what we Xtra Frame subscribers saw all last week and what hapless ESPN viewers saw yesterday until a good many of them probably tuned to another channel right in the middle of the show.
Not unless you want to make a sport struggling to become popular and attract fans less popular and attractive than ever, and that way lies madness for a PBA Tour on the brink of collapse.
I'm having second thoughts about something I posted at the end of my entry yesterday. I wrote: "In my next post, I have a proposal to make about how the majority of televised finals might best be conducted in the future." After giving it more thought, I'm not sure my idea is such a good one. But I want to throw it out here anyway. Maybe you can tweak it or come up with a better idea for making the PBA telecasts draw a larger viewing audience without compromising the integrity of bowling or the PBA.
First of all, let me explain that I personally like the old five person stepladder format the best. That is, the top five finishers after round-robin match play advance to the TV finals, #5 bowls #4 in the first match, the winner bowls #3, and so forth. However, it seems that we're now limited to seeing three matches rather than four and that ESPN and/or the PBA doesn't want to use the stepladder format all the time.
So what exciting alternatives might there be? I have to admit that I enjoyed yesterday's eliminator format in which the first match featured all four contestants bowling a game, with the low man going out after the first match, the low man of the remaining three bowlers being eliminated after the second match, and the last two bowlers vying for the title in the third and final match.
I liked the fact that all the bowlers were competing on the same set of conditions at the same time instead of some having to sit out of the competition while others competed and broke down the lanes in unpredictable ways. I think this was a truer test of ALL the bowlers' ability to deal with the lane conditions throughout the telecast. And it seemed to me that having all four compete at the outset and the remaining three compete in the second match made things a little faster-paced and more exciting for the typical viewer than a series of traditional one-on-one matches would be.
However, I'm still partial to round-robin match play for determining who makes it into the telecasts. This allows more bowlers to remain in the competition for a longer time and to either fade toward the end or figure things out and come on strong after a weak start to move way up in the standings or even make the telecast. It also rewards bowlers for being consistently good throughout match play. In other words, it encourages bowlers to keep bowling their best at all times instead of compiling big leads in "eliminator" matches and then coasting the rest of the way, or getting down in a match and giving up because they know they're going to be eliminated after one three-game match instead of being able to rebound from it in later matches.
But round-robin match play should produce rankings or seedings going into a telecast. That is, there's a bowler with the highest pinfall after match play, second highest pinfall, and so on down to fourth place. So how do you combine an eliminator format with one that ranks and rewards bowlers according to how many pins they knocked down in match play? Obviously, if you just throw everybody into the televised matches and don't give the higher ranked or seeded bowlers some kind of advantage for having knocked down more pins in match play than the lower seeded bowlers, the highest seeded bowler could be eliminated after the first match, and that wouldn't be fair. So, how do you make things fair?
Well, I'm not sure you could make them completely fair, but one possibility would be to handicap bowlers by rank. The first seeded bowler could have, say, 20 pins added to his score, second seed 10 pins, third seed five pins, and fourth seed zero pins. This way the bowlers get rewarded or punished for how they did in match play and are encouraged to do their very best throughout match play. Furthermore, I would add one other element to the mix.
I believe that PBA Tour championships should be decided by more than just one game. I think if you really want to know who the best bowler is on a particular Sunday or, at least, who bowled best that day, you should use more than one game to determine it. For instance, Chris Barnes lost a couple of major tournaments recently to opponents--Kelly Kulick and Walter Ray Williams--who bowled blockbuster single games against him in the title match. But suppose Barnes had more of a chance to utilize his superior skills to make adjustments and overcome those single big games shot against him the way he did against Wes Malott in the Masters where he bowled 300 in the final game to overcome a 40+ point deficit after two games? That was tremendously exciting, and it showcased Barnes' ability to make adjustments.
Why not take the remaining two bowlers in a televised eliminator format and use their three game total pinfall to determine who wins the title? So, for example, in yesterday's case, the bowler with the highest three game series between Mark Scroggings and Brian Kretzer would have won the championship. This would have encouraged both players to bowl their best all three games, and it would have been a truer test of who bowled best that day than any one game can provide.
I know this sounds a little complicated. But it has the virtues of round-robin match play, rewarding TV finalists according to their overall performance during match play, making the TV finals more exciting to the typical viewer, allowing or forcing all the players to deal with the same conditions, and being the truest test of who bowled best that day.
What do you think of my proposal? If you don't like it, do you have any better ideas for making the telecasts more popular with fans while still fair to the players?
Congratulations to Mike Scroggins for outlasting the other finalists to win title #8 and move solidly into third place in the Player of the Year race.
Yes, I know he missed two 7-pin spares today, but he still scored well enough to stay in the hunt through the first two "eliminator" matches and then beat Brian Kretzer in the final match.
A lot of people don't seem to like or, at least, respect Mike Scroggins much as a bowler, and I confess that I used to be one of them. Aside from my longstanding aversion to lefties in general, I didn't like Scroggins' simple, low rev, down-and-in style. That, coupled with his low key personality, made him someone I wanted to see everybody else beat, especially if "everybody else" happened to be right-handed.
Of course, the contradiction inherent in this is that Walter Ray Williams is my all-time favorite bowler despite the fact that he too has a simple, low rev, predominately down-and-in style and a low key personality. And so, for that matter, do I. Go figure.
But lately I've come to appreciate just how good Scroggins is and how effective his simple keep-the-ball-in-play game can be on a variety of conditions. Besides that, everyone says he's an extremely nice guy, and that goes a long way in my book of what's important. Mike Scroggins has quietly climbed his way onto my hallowed list of favorite bowlers. I'm sure he'd be overwhelmed with pride and joy to hear that.
It sure was entertaining in the beginning watching Osku Palermaa demolish the pins. I'm smitten with the two-handed style of Belmonte and Palermaa especially. It generates obscene power, and those two guys can harness all that power in miraculous ways. I was hoping Palermaa would win so that he'd receive an exemption and bowl on tour all next season as he told Randy Pedersen he would. I'm not sure how much his mistake of bowling what he thought was a practice shot during a commercial break in the second match and having it count may have upset his concentration, but, in any case, he struggled after that except for finishing strong after it was too late to matter.
I also want to take my figurative hat off to Brian Kretzer for getting as far as he did today. Kretzer is a what you might call a journeyman player on tour. Although he was a very successful amateur bowler whose noteworthy accomplishments included winning the International Eliminator tournament in Las Vegas for $100,000 in both 1997 and 1999, the United Arab Emirates Open (the world's highest paying amateur bowling tournament) in 1999, and being Bowlers Journal's Amateur Bowler of the Year in 1999, he's never won a tour title. His big, slow hooking ball just didn't seem well suited to PBA tournament conditions. So, approximately four years ago, he began learning how to throw a much straighter shot and used it to cash in 18 out of 19 events last season and make his way onto today's televised finals and finish a very respectable second.
I respect anyone dedicated enough to his craft to make such a big change at such a relatively late stage in his career. More power to him, and may he continue to make telecasts.
In my next post, I have a proposal to make about how the majority of televised finals might best be conducted in the future.
Jason Belmonte is nursing a hamstring injury he sustained in last week's U.S. Open tournament and didn't bowl this week. But that didn't stop the other best two-hander in the world from making tomorrow's telecast. That's right, the extremely talented Osku Palermaa sliced and diced rack after rack this week to earn his way into tomorrow's final along with Mike Scroggins, Wes Malott, and Brian Kretzer. As you may recall, Osku was the first two-hander to make a PBA telecast, doing it as a 20-year-old in no less than the U.S. Open in 2004, and he performed very respectably on it even though he didn't win the title. He's an amazing bowler, and I'd like to see him do well.
Tomorrow's "eliminator" format is unusual in that it will begin with all four players bowling the first game together. The lowest scorer will exit, leaving the other three to bowl the second game. The lowest scorer that game will be finished, and the remaining two players will bowl for the championship.
It should be fun to watch, even if it looks like sole lefty Mike Scroggins may have the advantage of being able to "groom" the pair for himself in practice and, if he advances, in competition.
