How could the PBA manipulate their oil patterns to make them less urethane friendly? Make them longer? Reduce the lengthwise taper? It is even possible to completely take urethane out of play? What are your thoughts?

Put down a house shot. Or possibly like star said run something long where the outside sparks so it burns up and flood the middle so it just floats. You CAN make them pretty hard this way

Let's just call a spade a spade here..

You'd like to see the return of Amleto dominating the tour again. 

Seriously, the thought of wanting to eliminate a certain ball technology on the tour says more about the lack of a bowler's ability to get out of their comfort zones and use what the lanes and conditions call for than the actual use of urethane on the lanes.

Honestly if that were the case, time needs to be spent figuring out how to use urethane and use it to one's advantage than trying to eliminate it because they don't know how to use it.

BL.

I don't know if this comment is directed at me at all but I am actually a beneficiary of having urethane on heavier and flatter patterns. I was just wondering how they could satisfy the urethane haters who complain about urethane being used all of the time on tour.

If blasting a Grenade up 2nd arrow works, it works. Doesn't sell Rubicon UC2s, but makes Simo money 

Boy I am sure getting old.  25 years ago it was urethane guys screaming about "cheater" resin balls because strokers like me could up our carry enough to compete with the cup wristers.

Now everyone has over 450 rev rate and needs to control certain conditions better.

I totally understand why.  What really happened goes back a bit further.  Urethane didn't really match up with long oil in the 80s.  ABC however thought short oil would keep bowlers from using oil to steer the ball to the pocket.  However the high rev cup wristed guys had learned how to exploit the unlimited swing  area provided by walled up short oil.  When short oil was abandoned at the end of the 80s the stage was set for a ball that would more effectively handle the carry down associated with urethane.  Enter Steve Cooper with his resin enhanced urethane that effectively combated carry down.  This was the characteristic of resin that most effectively helped carry.

The modern sport patterns make controlling the pocket more important than carry although the modern release has allowed power players to still carry pretty well with urethane.

Want to minimize urethane?  Put out heavily crowned house shots where the pocket is easy and the carry advantage of resin again predominates

I bowled a tournament last weekend on a relatively flat, low scoring (cut was -9, strong field) 42' pattern that was pretty oily.  The gutter was in play if you threw it well so there were some players using urethane off the gutter.  I didn't notice the lanes transitioning much in qualifying but after a re-oil for match play, I followed someone who used urethane the previous match for 2 games and that pair was so much tighter down lane than anything I had seen all day that it made a huge difference in my ball reaction.

With that said, if someone wants to throw urethane, more power to them, you just need to adapt to what is in front of you, it just changes what the challenge is.

I do find it boring to watch telecasts where they all throw urethane though so from a popularity perspective, I think urethane is bad for the tour.

I do find it boring to watch telecasts where they all throw urethane though so from a popularity perspective, I think urethane is bad for the tour.

Exactly. For the eye candy, Urethane isn't good, because everyone wants to see hook in a box and have that ball free wheel from 6th arrow out to 3 and come back. But everyone that is looking for that seems to forget the premise: Are the competitors in the tournament there to show off eye candy, or are they there to win?

If the former, it's no wonder why they would be bored with the likes of Jurek, McCune, or Traber winning a show. They're there to win, now show off how much a ball can hook... and if urethane helps them to win, more power to them.

BL.