Is it sand bagging when everybody is doing it? They say if you can't beat em join em. I think more and more people are joining them. Before I really started to pay attention, I didn't notice the various ways people used to keep there averages down. But the last two years or so I have had the pleasure of having one (a bagger) on my team both Monday and Friday. My Monday league is full of teams that bag that I can do nothing about, but after this season I won't have one on my team. I guess I should have been listening to some of the older bowlers when they said "Your average is getting to high". Oh well, just venting a little. What are your opinions?

I guess you have to pick your poison. It don't bother me so much on Friday, but Monday is different. We bowled a team thats high average bowler was a 187, and they all commenced to bowl 640 or better against us. I can't deal with that and have a team member bagging and helping them beat us.

I dont have a issue when its a fun league.. Its meant to be fun and enjoy with friends and family. But when you are in a serious league with some pretty good money involved plus good bowlers, I wont tolerate this b.s. at all.  Come next quarter vengence is mine!!!
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A lot of the baggers in my area are known. They keep to themselves and keep a low profile. When you join a league and you have several teams doing it is new to me. I will do my homework next time and ask people who will be honest and tell me what I'm getting into before I get into it.

Right now there is no way to know whose averages are legitimate and who is a sand bagger. IF all goes to plan over the next couple years that may change a little. Big IF, but the goal according to those I have spoken to in Arlington is to require tournaments to report all games to them and there will be a 12 month cummulative average. That doesn't help those who do it to win a league and can be skewed by marathon entries or someone that can afford to throw away money in a couple tournaments to keep the cummulative down. It can't hurt and the sooner the better.

When USBC tried to implement rules to have a cummulative league average they were shot down,so won't be surprised if it happened again. The cummulative average is on bowl.com anyway,but is always lower than the highest book unless an association just happens to post all scores. I have seen a few post every league, but that is uncommon and in some cases only done because the association secretary knows a certain bowler or bowlers are sand baggers and wants tournament directors to see what these bowlers are doing.

As far as what is or isn't. I have seen bowlers add up the scores before they bowl to know if they need to mark or can dump the shot. I even had one team on a "fun" league that would slow bowl the tenth so that the other team was complete before the first bowler finished. Then they would go as far as to throw balls in the gutter. Now that is major league bagging. I have only seen it that bad once. I did catch, along with other tournaments in our area, a group out of Austin/Houston that became well known and were banned from several of the areas tournaments. I actually rerated these guys from 160's and 170's to 190's and 200's, they just averaged 210's and 220's to cash anyway. Next year I said scratch or no entry. They have never came back. Kind of obvious.

Here's the thing about bagging.  Let's say you are bowling a regional or a tournament this weekend that you know will be contested on cheetah.  However, your typical league house shot requires you to play fourth arrow.  You know you won't get any other practice in that week, so you take your spare ball out that night and play up 3 to "practice" for cheetah that weekend.  For that night, you are a sandbagger.  You are not using your best equipment to score to the best of your ability on every shot.  And that is technically the definition and why it is nearly impossible to enforce.