On the label issue.

First is today every ball that is legal its box has an emblem indicating that the ball is approved for ABC sanctioned play.

Second the manufactures are overstating the price of doing this; it wouldn’t add a $1 to the price. They already have a setup to engrave all the logo information on the ball and a serial number engraver that has to change for every ball put through. With some simple negotiations they could probably get down to putting “USBC Approved” above the serial number.

The manufactures already put year of manufacture on the ball in the serial number, it may be a code or it may be numerals but it is there. It couldn’t be that troublesome to simply engrave the month/day/year on the front of the serial number.

Since some of today’s balls would not pass the new regulations this would give a bowler an easy visual check to see if the ball was compliant. If the “USBC” stamp of approval wasn’t on the ball then you would have to do research to see if the ball would be legal after 2007.

Scott

some intriguing questions here.  Maybe a better questions is what do we really want our sanctioning/governing body to do?  Some of the posts on this board have been quite negative toward the proposed changes and often with good reason.  At the  same time, many have questioned the integrity of the sport and the proliferation of high scores attributed to modern equipment and lane conditions.  Where indeed do we start?  Do we wipeout everything and set new standards across the board, or do we change one thing at a time after discussing the most meaningful changes?

As to your questions my thoughts are:

1)  The USBC is attempting to regulate and identify the equipment that can be used in competition.  It is not telling the manufacturers they cannot make a particular product, it will however restrict approved equipment with proper identification to competition that it sanctions.

2) There are actually several sanctioning and/or membership organizations that provide competitive events, however most of them find it much more efficient to utilize the rules and regulations established by ABC/USBC rather than starting over.

3)  I believe that the governing/sanctioning body should have authority over rules, certification of equipment, lanes, conditioning, average documentation, inspections, and a scoring rating system.  I would like to see the proprietors have responsibility for awards, bonding, insurance.

Overall, the industry needs to learn to work together and share information.  That, in and of itself, may be a monumental task.