But whatever...
I mean its in no way relevant or reason to not support the USBC.
The Chad stuff is tired and petty in the grand scope.
To choose to not support a USBC sanctioned house, a USBC sanctioned league is choosing to not support this sport or any hope of its future growth.
And what, Bowlero's plans are free? Stremmel and his plans will not come at any cost? oh okay pfft...
We have in place already a research center and certification equipment for everything.
Bowlero needs to get out of the way of the USBC and clean up their own house.
Todays bowlers omg... its such a no brainer this fall to bowl only in sanctioned USBC houses and leagues.
The phrase "The buck stops here" applies to anyone at the top of an organization.
The USBC (and earlier the ABC) has been shedding bowlers every year since either 1980 or 1981. In response, the USBC has not made a concerted effort, or even made it part of its core mission, to use USBC resources to expand league membership, which is its right I guess since by its very structure it is a representative organization there to advocate for its members.
Yet, I'm going to borrow from the economic world and say that bowling eventually will reach a "moment of critical negative inertia," which is to say that at some point the membership of the USBC will drop below a point that it can either sustain operations in Arlington, or act as an effective bully pulpit for the league bowlers. What Bowlero is doing is a signal toward that future, as at its current pace, the USBC will be largely irrelevant in about a decade unless membership turns around.
The USBC and ABC before it liked to put membership recruiting off on the centers and the BPAA. Let the centers spend the money, then the USBC/(ABC/WIBC) would swoop in and claim their membership dues once they joined a league. The centers carried all the risk, while the USBC/(ABC/WIBC) reaped the reward after the fact.
That business model is no longer sustainable.
Not only has Chad not come to this realization, or better stated, he has not come up with a plan to reverse it (which will involve spending money, perhaps to recruiting efforts instead of to other USBC pet projects), what was the most high-profile thing the USBC has done in recent years? Banned a bunch of bowling balls because they couldn't (or wouldn't) learn how a durometer needle is negatively affected by polishing compound. In doing so, the damage fell squarely on the shoulders of its constituents and one of its partners, while the organization turned a deaf ear to concerns about the process.
Furthermore, the structure of the USBC is not what it needs to be. The relationship between how the BoD is seated and how the director is held accountable is way too cozy, almost to the point of being incestuous.
I've said this before: I've been the executive director of an organization that was made up primarily of 13 governmental entities, all of which were directly accountable to voters and had taxing authority, in a public/private partnership with about 10 private corporations and nonprofits. In my opinion, the USBC lacks accountability to its membership through a fairly convoluted convention structure and organizational layering. None of it is by accident, and again in my opinion, it's done simply to preserve the existence of the organization above all else.
At some point, someone has to be accountable. Even if the bleed-off in bowlers is not directly the fault of the organization, the lack of accountability to the membership is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on a certain iceberg-slapping boat. There has been no plan, and the USBC is famously noncommunicative with local associations (I was also a president of one for a time) to the point that it has let the narrative get away from it to a degree that even a $1/year dues increase is met with furor from some of the membership because they can't appreciate what those dollars are doing for them.
Bowlero at least has a vision. I don't like parts of it (string pinsetters chief among them) but as a for-profit entity with a BoD required *by law* to represent the financial best interests of its shareholders, Bowlero will at least not stand still. The current CLB program is rough around the edges and suffers from potentially some unrealistic expectations, but at this point the system needs a little more ready-fire-aim to shake it up.
If Bowlero succeeds in dividing the league bowler base between USBC and CLB, it will have done in a matter of 2-3 years what the USBC has had 40-plus years to do and failed to deliver upon. Decide who you want to blame that on, but the guy currently sitting in the big chair has to take his share first.
