My thoughts are this.....

If I know its a sport shot tournament, I know i wont average 250+ unless, I happen to have the tournament of my life ....  Although, I did average 220+ on the last sport pattern tournament I did..  But that tournament really helped me with my release and taking hand out of the ball... 

And in return the last two weeks of leagues have been unreal... 

Usually my thoughts are if I average around 200 on a sport shot, I am bowling really well...   

And I laugh when people mention a sport shot, and then say " well why would I want to pay to bowl bad "   really??   did anyone complain when it use to be the high average guy was 200 maybe 210?? ... and this was still in the Resin days.. 

 here is a good story from a couple yrs ago lol...  So in Traverse City Mi or Cadillac, they had a Jr bowler who was in his first yr of Adult bowling.  And the only league he was in was a sport shot league..  Well his avg was right about 175?   And all of the local tournaments he was tearing up, cuz he'd come in with the 175 avg...  Or if they did do the sport adjustment, it was like 190..  But even then in all of the tournaments he bowled in, he would avg 230+, and he was still getting his handicap based off of 230..   

Well all a lot of the adult bowlers bitched up a storm because of his average, lol... 

when i first heard about this, first thing I said was -  Well good for the kid wanting a challenge..  2nd was - And why are the adults complaining?? 

the answer I got was, well he has the advantage of having a lower average and he's bowling on a tougher condition... 

My response was... well those guys have the same opportunity as this kid, so its their own fault for not bowling in the league... 

Now the guy telling the story totally agreed with me on every point i said lol.. He was just telling me what the other adults complained about lol.. 

Too many wanna believe they are bowlers when in actuality many do NOT know how to bowl nor choose to learn how to bowl. This is why the upper echelon learn with much being placed on the psychological side of the game...not just buying a new bowling ball.
This website is a perfect example...too many wanting to know what the next great ball will be in reality there is a minute difference with the bowling balls...it is the mentally strong that know how to use the tools they choose...not just buy a new 'driver'.

When you bowl well on tough shots/sport patterns, you feel like your game and the hard work you put into practicing was worth it.

When you struggle on the tough stuff, you feel total failure and it sucks.

I've done both over the years, and honestly the failure part hurts way more than the glory part.

THIS. 

Too many wanna believe they are bowlers when in actuality many do NOT know how to bowl nor choose to learn how to bowl. This is why the upper echelon learn with much being placed on the psychological side of the game...not just buying a new bowling ball.
This website is a perfect example...too many wanting to know what the next great ball will be in reality there is a minute difference with the bowling balls...it is the mentally strong that know how to use the tools they choose...not just buy a new 'driver'.

I too find myself in agreement with JustRico.......

Exactly.  You have to learn to be objective and honest about what's really going on or you'll never get anywhere.  The comment about hey I struck, must have thrown it good is what kills me watching youth coaches on saturday mornings with kids.  Yeah you don't want to discourage kids, but if you tell them good shot every time they strike, you're TEACHING them to equate striking with good shots, and creating a terrible foundation for them. 

Thanks for the kind words...I try to look at things logically, somewhat unbiased and I know at times it can come across as harsh...
As I posted, in regards to your last comments, bowlers don't tend to understand what equates to a good shot other than - hey I struck I must've thrown it good, no?
When I was a league/tournament coordinator in So Cal in the early 90's, I found scratch bowlers could/would find the best excuses for not supporting scratch events...you have the egos that will show up and bowl anything and the others that will come up with every excuse under the sun. It does get extremely frustrating.
This was our attempt when releasing Head Games, was in hopes that competitors could learn more about themselves, making themselves stronger for knowing themselves...yet most of the ones that should buy it won't as they tend to know it all...and never show up to bowl (:

Gizmo,

That reminds me of what I used to tell my son during his youth bowling days. When he was younger he equated a strike as a good ball. I would tell him that if he threw 3 shots and hit 3 different arrows and all of them were strikes (THS) i would tell him at least 2 of those strikes were off bad shots. Of course he never listened and I just left him alone and let him do his thing.

Biggest myth  on house shots is that they reward guys who spray the ball.  It happens because it is possible to over swing a ball and get it back, or sometimes pull a shot and get it to hold.  However anyone doing this very often is not averaging 235.  A lot of guys averaging high are hooking the lane way more than they could on flatter patterns, but they are repeating shots better than they get credit for doing.  The problem is that you cannot succesfully hook the entire lane on most tournament patterns, no matter how consistent your release, or how accurate your trajectory. 

Also if you are watching the tour guys, look how straight they are all playing on the longer patterns. The longer patterns are becoming predominant and represent another distinct difference from house shots which typically buff not much longer than 40 feet.  They were running the scorpion at 47 feet, and even the viper at over 40 feet in Vegas.  Most really good bowlers don't pay nearly as much attention to the right to left dispersion of oil as they do the buff length when they look at a graph.   

Minimizing axis rotation is now the key to winning out there.  Almost reminds me of the game in the late 60's to early 70's, but with more speed and revs on the end over end release.   Even Pete who had the most axis rotation on tour has cut his down a lot.