Bowling Philosophy-July/August 2010

Most Valuable Blog Post
By Thomas Scherrer

A study into the PBA's Chris Schenkel Player of the Year Award


There are 10 things I love about the PBA:

1) How each touring professional has their name embroidered on the back of their shirts. Each person's signature pretty much gives you a reflection into the actual person as we see them in competition. Whether it be Walter Ray (professional, full name, square signature) or Chris Barnes (all-american, classy, but sadly not edgy enough) or Wes Malott (regal) or Danny Wiseman (exotic, eccentric, versatile) or Brian Voss (cool, calm, and collected) or Parker Bohn III (slanted down to up from left to right, almost an exact replica of his finish position) or Pete Weber (anything given his various moods) or Tom Smallwood (darting to the right, doubled with the camo shirts he wears-he's a hunter, not a gatherer).

2) Along with the custom made Gemini shirts, it further shows the player's uniqueness.

3) The brand name of the Animal patterns. It has been a great boom to the genesis of the PBA
Experience leagues across the country, as well as giving each pattern a suitable animal name to go along with it. After all, seeing the turtle pattern resembling slow ball speed instead of the shark attacking the deep waters sounds much more cunning and powerful. No comment by the PBA as to the rabbit/cheetah pattern debate.

4) Along with giving pattern names to the two greatest bowlers ever: Dick Weber and Earl Anthony.

5) Seeing Carmen Salvino each week. A true ambassador to the sport of bowling as well as a symbol of a generation that is slowly fading away from us with recent losses to Dick Evans, Bill Bunetta, and Ms. Marion Ladewig. Watch him, listen to him, see how he dresses each week...we could all learn something from Mr. Salvino, just by observing.

6) The Extreme Swing events. We'll get into why they are vitally important as this blog goes on but you know you love them. Trust me, after this blog, you'll love them more.

7) Xtra Frame's coverage of events. Mike J and Jeff Mark do a wonderful job of answering questions by the fans online, getting players to come up and do interviews, discussing bowling balls and layouts, and even having some fun on the air. Xtra Frame is a must have for fans of bowling. I understand that money is tight and people are a little skeptical of shelling out extra cash for bowling purposes. I dig that. I understand-trust me, I wish I could splurge on the money to buy it but it's just not in the cards. However, if you have some extra money, love bowling, and like seeing the best in the world without having to drive around from city to city, Xtra Frame should be on your must haves.

8) Speaking of travel, there is The Truck. All PBA fans know about The Truck. The Truck where all the magic happens. Thousands of thousands of thousands of bowling balls drilled by the men in The Truck. As much as we like to credit the players for their skill and natural physical talents, they need the men in The Truck to layout that magic ball for them to make them even better. In the constant race between man and (oil) machine, The Truck give the pros some balance against the invisible demons known as oil patterns.

9) The Tournament of Champions trophy. I freakin' love it! Simple, timeless, classic, and most importantly, unchanging. The same trophy Mike Durbin won three times is the same trophy Jason Couch won three times is the same trophy Marshall Holman won twice is the same trophy Kelly Kulick won this past year to make sports history.

10) Finally, I love the Chris Schenkel PBA Player of the Year award. An award given so consistently, so organically, so simplistically to the best player each season of the Professional Bowlers Association.

(wait for it...wait a little bit longer....wait, almost there....)

Oh, I'm sorry, my computer froze. The PBA Player of the Year is one thing I do not love. OK, I really don't love it. OK, OK, I hate it. OK, OK, OK, I hate it so much that I cannot stand the sight of it. It is a flawed system...there, I said it. I don't believe in it. I don't trust it. I don't/can't/won't accept it. It is has more holes in than Gianmarc Manzione's mental game if you have read his Sport Bowling articles in Bowling This Month. It has more holes than an Obama health care bill. It has more holes than a Mike D'Antoni defensive scheme. It has more holes than Portland Street did during Worcester's repaving over the winter months.

Why does it have holes? Because there seems to be this long standing tradition amongst the PBA that the Player of the Year award should be an absolute mess. They cannot get it correct, even if they tried to take it away from the PBA membership and cast it towards who makes television the most/wins the most on television. It doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? First of all, any sport that cannot settle the argument on the field is in trouble. It is further complicated by the fact that people assume that since the POY has been decided in each of the last two seasons in the last match of the season, the system works. It's a fair argument if you wanna argue it but consider the odds that it would take for that to happen again and again season after season given the current format. I wish I had a mathematician for this article, but I would guess the odds are off the charts. So let's take some logic into consideration for a moment and say that if it were to happen again and each season, are the two bowlers actually both bowling for the POY award?

The finest possible example of this was 2009. If Chris Barnes does not leave that solid 8 against Mike Scroggins in the next to last match of the US Open and strikes, he would have faced Norm Duke in the championship match to determine the Open winner as well as the POY winner. It would have been a glorious ending to a tremendous season for both players. Yes, they both deserved POY as much as Wes Malott did, and as I've argued deserved it more than Malott. However, the 8 pin stood, Barnes failed to strike on his fill to force a tie, Scroggins wins the match, then beats Duke to win the US Open and Wes Malott sat in his house, drinking a beer, grilling a steak, and winning POY. Does this seem like the greatest let down in the history of organized bowling? You betcha...even if Duke had won, I'd argued that Duke took advantage of a flawed system in that he did not get the chance to bowl against Barnes or Malott to see if he was in fact, THE MAN. We never found out who was the best player in the game for the 2008-09 season.

Let's delve into this for a just a moment and then look ahead to my outstanding vision that I have edited 810 times in my head. The PBA Player of the Year for years had been decided by a player membership. In the last few years, the PBA took the vote away from the players and based it solely off of who had the most television success. Time for a Pro/Con argument...

Player Membership Pro: Who better to determine who the best players in the game are other than a jury of your peers? Sounds great, sounds honest, sounds pure, sounds so....1950's apple pie-ish. ICK!!! Grab me a leather jacket and a poodle skirt. This isn't 1958 anymore.

Con: Our societal changes are noticeable. We keep our guard up. We are suspicious of the person next to us in our cubicle as to what his/her intentions are. We don't trust them. When we do, we still keep our eyes open because we are in a society where being inherently selfish is commonplace. Voting for our own peers for an award has always got some backlash to it. I can pretty much know for a fact that the 2006-07 Player of the Year was a crime scene. There isn't a red-blooded American that bowls living that season that can tell me without sweating that Norm Duke was the alpha dog of the PBA that season. He won 3 times, dominated on television, ran through fields left and right, and almost captured the prestigious Tournament of Champions, which the PBA holds as being its marquee event. That has to count for something, right? Nope. In fact, Doug Kent won the award by winning two majors, and doing virtually nothing else that season. Yes, Kent's season for winning two majors was historic but it was unremarkable other than that. Any time your POY goes into a season saying that it is going to be his last season on tour doesn't make me feel like he cares about professional bowling much. Don't get me wrong; I love watching Doug Kent bowl. Great pro, great sense of bowling business, excellent form, a lock-it-up Hall of Fame bowler...but he was not the best player of the 2006-07 season.

Ready for some contradiction?

The 2007-08 POY race was another crime scene...Voltaire-style. Once again, Norm Duke was the victim. The '07-'08 season POY race was no longer a vote. In fact, they based it as a points race to determine who would win the award, but instead of the obvious criteria (who was the best player start to finish), they settled on awarding points to players who made television and television only. I can only speak for those who know bowling, but that idea was formulated ONLY to make sure Chris Barnes was a factor. Makes total sense, no? Get your sport's best all-around player, who makes a boatload of telecasts no matter the format of the event, and hopefully he wins once or twice and makes enough shows that he earns more points than anyone else to win the award. Thankfully, for the PBA, it did work. However, history was lost in the process. Duke, who had by his standards, a horrible first 2/3 rds of the season, got healthy down the stretch to win the PBA World Championship and the US Open. Not only did Duke win back-to-back majors, he joined rarefied air by winning the PBA's prestigious Triple Crown and Grand Slam with the US Open win. Had it not been a season determined by points by TV, Duke probably wins that season too.

Hold on a second, Scherrer, you cannot have it both ways!!!

Why can't I? Logically speaking, Duke deserved to win both seasons but the system he was bowling in both seasons cost him. In 2006-07, Duke was injured with a broken toe (a freak accident while working out) but tried to bowl through tournaments during the middle of the season. There should be some more dicussion however, to elaborate on by he "tried to bowl". Duke, an exempt player was automatically cashing for each event he bowled in. Therefore, just by withstanding some pain for a few games, Duke could "earn" his check, withdraw, and move onto the next tournament. While it is not the most ethical of decisions to make, there was no rule against it, so Duke, being a provider to his family and sensing that there was no violation, went about his business until he was fully healthy. Do you think fellow players took notice? OF COURSE THEY DID! They saw Duke for two things: a) stealing a check and b) not giving a bowler more deserving or at least more competent enough to qualify through the PTQ and possibly win a tournament. Let's remember, all PBA members had a vote and I'm guessing that anyone who had a chance at making a PBA main draw decided to screw Duke over in their POY vote. I'm pretty sure it happened-after all, none of those guys in Duke's position, would never have done the same thing, right? A little semblance of reality people, please. Everyone would have done the same thing Duke did, it's just that he was Norm Duke.

Flash forward to 2007-08...Duke is injured again, but this time, he can't bowl. He's floundering in the points list, 51st going into the World Championship, in danger of losing his exemption. Then he gets healthy right before the World Championship only to come down with the flu. Yet he puts it all together to win the tournament! An absolute gut check performance by the Mini Magician. His encore: finally winning the US Open. The one major that had eluded Duke through his whole career, he finally wins. Runs the ladder in fact in doing so. Does it the same week his grandfather passes away. Another magical Duke moment...yet, this is the new and improved PBA POY award list. Going into the televised finals, we knew that Chris Barnes was already crowned the '08-'09 winner. Seeing Duke win, and seeing Barnes smile broadly about finally winning professional bowling's highest single season honor, I said only one thing.

I wonder if Duke had another week, would he beat Walter Ray and Barnes? I feel cheapened...

If anything, that moment made me detest the Player of the Year system. I just wish that we saw something after the US Open that could give us an honest representation of the PLayer of the Year. After two long years of trying to figure out the PBA Tour schedule and what would work, I have come up with what I feel could provide insight, intrigue, and certain end of the year drama. By the way, if you are wondering if there has ever been a PBA Player of the Year given to a player for winning just one significant event, look back to 1995. Mike Aubly's clutch TOC victory not only gave Aulby the Triple Crown, but the Grand Slam and the now defunct Super Slam (Grand Slam plus Touring Players Championship) and his fellow peers deemed that historic enough to give him his second POY award. Like a Lifetime Achievement Award of some sorts in a season where no one player stood out.

Yes, the PBA needs a playoff. It really needs one to keep the fever going all the way to the last match of the last tournament of the season. And of course, it will need to be gimmicked up a bit. What, the PBA is allowed to make gimmicks and I'm not? Just because I have no social life and have been thinking about at my real job? Also, I want credit for what is about to happen. A PBA Playoff based off the most simplest of ideas: we are FINALLY going to use the Harry Smith Points Leader list and make it matter. How do you make it matter and then how do you formulate a playoff.

Step 1) The PBA Regular Season will be 14 weeks. Just 14 weeks? Sounds like too little tournaments to firmly establish who the best players are. I look at it the exact opposite way: it makes the regular season MATTER. OK, say we have it at 14 events, with the World Series of bowling (all the animal patterns and the World Championship-6 events), break for winter, and hit the West Coast swing for a few events. Let's make sure we get in the Dick Weber (7) and Earl Anthony events (8), definitely get some home cooking with the Pacific Northwest (Seattle or Meford, Oregon-9), then Vegas for the T of C (10), a doubles/team event after the T of C (11), the Masters (12), a midwest event in either Detriot, Ohama, or Wichita (13), then the US Open (14). Simple and sound. We stay in one big city for 6 events, honor the legends, stay warm on the West, travel back to a big bowling hotbed right before the US Open and we have our 14 event season.

Step 2) The Playoffs will be the Extreme Swing events with a cut after each event to thin out the field to our elite bowlers.

Step 3) The Harry Smith Point list will be our list for determining the playoff field. The top ranked player will win the Harry Smith Points Award, kinda like winning the President's Trophy in the NHL. Something nice, but ultimately, does not guarantee you a title.

Step 4) The season ending event (the newly named PBA Championship) will be a true test of who the best player in bowling was for that season.

Format: After the US Open, we cut the field down to the top 50 bowlers-this will also double as the exempt players for the following season (no carryover exemptions for winning majors, I want everyone to earn their way onto each tour season-makes for guys having to bowl each week and giving a crap about the sport and themselves). They have earned the right. We will also restructure the Points to where each player starts out 1,000 points behind each player (the gimmick) ahead of them in the standings with one exception: the player first in points will have no differential in points. For example, if Bill O'Neill leads the Harry Smith Points list with 120,000 points, second place Jason Belmonte has 105,000 points. Belmo won't automatically be set to 119,000 points, but he will stay at 105,000. The rest of the top 50 would go in that descending order. The top ranked player has to get some advantage, this would be it. After each event, the points list will be cut from 50 to 32, 32 to 16, then 16 for the PBA Championship and then Elite 8 during the PBA Championship. Winner of the event is the Player of the Year.

OK, congrats Top 50 players, you are in the first ever PBA Playoffs. Let's start with Extreme Swing event number 1.

First Round-Don Johnson Eliminator (somewhere in Ohio): Keep things the same for qualifying, which is 7 games on one pattern, 7 on another on day one. Day two, same deal. We now have 28 games in and we get to our top 32 bowlers in the eliminator pods. Nothing much changes really in this event. After the event, the top 32 players in points (not the top 32 in qualifying, the hardest decision I have made about this but the fairest in the end) after the event advance to the Plastic Ball Championship. Don't worry, the points system will be altered to where every player that bowls will have a chance to be in the top 32 in points after the event.

Second Round-Plastic Ball Championship (either in New York or New Jersey): We take away the bowler's precious technology and make them find a way to make polyester strike. We will keep things the same here too. 18 games of qualifying, cut to the top 24 for some round robin match play. 8 games, cut to the top 16 (pivotal because someone might swing into the final 16 of the next event if they bowl well enough in the first block of match play). 8 more games, top 5 stepladder, winner...blah, blah. After the event, we take the top 16 in points and move them onto the new Extreme Swing event wrinkle.

Third Round-PBA One Ball Only Championship (Connecticut or Mid-Atlantic area). Drill one ball, use it on two different patterns. Use the the entire tournament! Hey, I want my Player of the Year to earn this. We'll literally take the same format for the Plastic Ball Championship, with one small wrinkle: 18 games, no cut. Next 16 games, round robin match play-everyone gets to bowl against each other. Cut to the top 5 stepladder, winner gets the check and so on...cut remains the same. 16 bowlers, but remember the points will change. Note: I do worry about a certain few players having magical ball reactions and making a big charge up the points list, but these again, are the best in the world at what they do. Show me your talents!

Finals-PBA Championship (a mix of the Marathon Open and Match Play Championship, located somewhere in the United States where there is an arena finals). I LOVE this event. We are going to decide this on the field and we are going to give credence to the "cream rising to the top" and the winner will be the winner and the Player of the Year. Period. Done. We will mix up the Marathon Open and the Match Play Championship in the same tournament to get there. The points list still matters.

Marathon Element-all 16 bowlers bowl 9 games on Viper, Shark, Chameleon, Scorpion, Cheetah, and the Dick Weber pattern. 54 games all told. After all the games, we tabulate points again as if it was a separate tournament. The top 8 in points after the Marathon Element are your Elite 8.

Match Play Element-after much hemming and hawing between deciding to keep all 16 bowlers or shortening to 8 for match play, I elected to go with the top 8. Something a little too sketchy about having the player 16th in points after all the playoff bowling making a miracle run to win the Player of the Year, so let's go with 8. Match play will be seeded in double-elimination style, best 4 out of 7 games with the higher seed having a home field advantage of choosing with lane condition. Great strategy say if Mike Scroggins was bowling against Wes Malott but Scroggins is the higher seed, Scroggins would not dare choose the Scorpion pattern, but something shorter, like Viper or Chameleon (Cheetah would actually be to Malott's advantage) or flatter (Dick Weber pattern). The TV finals would have just two bowlers, best 4 out of 7, winner the PBA Champion recieving the brand new Chris Schenkel Award for being the Player of the Year. Reasonably speaking, the man who wins this prestigious event and championship could possibly bowl a maximum of 98 games that week to win it all! Now THAT is what I want out of my PBA Player of the Year.

I love it! I know it is not totally perfect but it solves all the issues surrounding not having the Player of the Year race decided on the last day...ever. You have PBA professionals having to show up, care, get in great condition, give a crap each and every week, and truly establish rivalries in bowling. Some healthy, some competitive, some downright hostile. We would finally get to see the Player of the Year settled free of television gimmicks or political or personal agendas. We can now update my list to all 10 things I love about the PBA.



For those with a love and a search for knowledge in bowling, This Is Bowling Philosophy. Namaste.