[disclaimer: it's late and I just skimmed through this topic, if there's a detail i missed, i'm sorry, i'll amend it later with an edit...]
now that that's out of the way...speaker as a midwesterner (Chicago), I think there would be a definite desire for people to bowl in this type of a tournament, especially if it's held in this type of way...
Hold 3 or 4 qualifiers in the midwest, Michigan can have one, Illinois/Wisconsin/Indiana can have one, Ohio, and Missouri/Kansas rounding out (with whomever wants to go to whichever qualifier going wherever, there doesn't need to be a boundary limit). Hold them on the same day, same start time (within 30-45 minutes), same condition (i.e. PBA Pattern B). Hold 4 games of qualifying over 8 lanes (or even 6 over 12 lanes) and then make a cut. After the cut is made (presumably top half?) you bowl 3 more games and the top 5-10 (you could choose to include the previous 6 games or not, but it has to be the same at all 4 locations) make it through. Then a week or a month or whatever time later, all 20-40 qualifiers meet at a predetermined location (preferably not a house where a qualifier was held) and bowl a similar format, except after 6 games, they cut to 5 (maybe 10 or 12 if you keep 40 bowlers from the previous qualifiers) and do stepladder or match play.
The tournament would obviously have to be sport sanctioned, though not every bowler needs to come in with a Sport average, it should probably be scratch. This would show the true Sport bowling champion. I believe that the Wisconsin/Illinois/Indiana qualifer could be held at the Champaign, IL house that has the sport league, and perhaps maybe the championships could be held at Hawthorn Lanes in Vernon Hills, IL, site of the Grand Boot Hill.
Obviously this tournament would need some major planning and sponsorship, but get the right people involved and in 2 or 3 years it could be up and running, and i KNOW i'd be in!
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Andrew Loose
"King of Them All"
"Evolutionary. Revolutionary."