I'd be inclined to make changes that the bowler can't see and preferably does not know about and ones that do not cost bowling proprietors or bowling supply manufacturers extra money.
1. Enforce the current rules about gutter depths. Most gutters are now not as deep as they should be. This would help prevent many but not all pins from coming up and out of the gutter to knock pins over.
2. Enforce the current rules about that minimum 3 units of oil at the edges of the lanes. I'd bet that most of you don't know that many house don't apply any oil out there in the 1-3 or 1 - 5 board area. Lots of houses STILL have older oil machines that can't oil out to the 1-3 board!
3. Remove the 2nd void from pins, but do it over time. Do not force bowling proprietors to buy new pins immediately. When they need to replace them, they get the new ones. And the current guidelines for the proper reaction of pins cannot be done by tetsing scores. Those new all plastic pins are an abomination. If a ball can too high a coefficient of restituition, so can the pins and these do.
Notes:
a) Changing oil patterns for some leagues are done now; so that's not a hardship for bowling centers. Have the "power" leagues use special more difficult patterns, not necessarily sport patterns. BUT these special patterns must be reflected in the local average book and in the USBC records, the way "Sport" patterns are now recognized.
b) The USBC must publish a strategy. If the objective of their current proposals is to "restore the integrity" of serious bowling, they must show us, their membership and constituents (this is politics, after all!) what their plans are. All we've seen are the "proposals". We don't really know their true purposes. With a published strategy, we can understand if their tactics are following their strategies. Without a long range plan (not the forte of Americans), any intermittent steps are purposeless.
c) Changes to balls should be silent. These must be meshed with manufacturers to insure they are doable. The average bowler, even the average good bowler has no need to know some of the technical aspects of the design of bowling balls. As an example, one of the most vital of specifications, the coefficient of restituiton, is never measured for each type of ball (coverstock PLUS core) manufactured; it does not appear in the ball's specifications and it should. But then we might not recognize what it really means to us, even if we saw those numbers. The only numbers, the only specifications we see for any ball are the core's and they CANNOT predict a ball's behavior at all, NOT EVER, when taken alone. (It's hysterical how many, many people here at ballreviews post threads saying, "the core's specs are xxxx; therefore the ball must act like yyyy." Balderdash!)
Yes, of course, some of these technical aspects are of interest. I mean, how many people really know what the degree of mass bias (or PSA) differential really means to them. Do they understand how it relates to the bowler's release and the ball's surface's coefficient of friction, with respect to the lane's oil amount, pattern AND the lane surface?? Of course, not! They just look at the number, their eyes fog over, like a deer in the headlights, their brain goes numb and they drool at the mouth, saying, "Gee, does that mean it goes longer and hooks more?" (OK, 2 out of 1000 knows what the numbers mean.)
OK, that's for starters.
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Just like hand grenades and horse shoes, in bowling you only have to get close ...
