He's right you know.

 It isn't the popular opinion, and it never will be, but he is right.

BV definitely makes some good points. I don't really think there were any that I hadn't heard articulated by others at one time or another, but it's still nice to hear them from one of the game's greats.

The only thing I would add is the role that we, the individual bowlers, play in this. Nobody is forcing all of these powerful resin balls into our bowling bags. If we truly wanted bowling to be more challenging, we would all bag plastic or urethane and take our best shot, but we (myself included) don't do that. We use the hook-in-a-box pieces and throw pins around like we're truly something special when most of us, again, myself definitely included, are actually middle-of-the-road at best. There is a lot of hypocrisy and passing the buck in bowling. Many bowlers love to talk smack about USBC and the bowling ball manufacturers. THEY let things get out of hand; THEY haven't held up their end of the bargain in regard to governing the sport. On one hand, there is a point to be made since it is the responsibility of the leaders to be the bad guys and take control when/as needed; however, they haven't done it because that's not what most bowlers actually want. Sadly, a large percentage of the bowling community enjoys stand-left, throw right, don't think, don't adjust, average 220, card 5-6 honor scores per year, and come back next season ready to do it all again. If you think that's inaccurate, convince your center to put out a truly challenging pattern for a few weeks in a row and listen to bowlers gripe and threaten to quit because they're suddenly only averaging 180 instead of their normal 220.  A lot of bowlers talk tough about wanting tougher conditions and more integrity for the sport, but many of them would be the first ones to call it quits if you took their powerful bowling balls away and dropped their averages by 30+ pins.

Here is the problem.  I would love to go back to polyester, as soon as the lane men start putting down 10 ml of oil instead of 30 on the lane.  And, they cant do that because the rest of the people still throwing resin and particle equipment would destroy their investment in lane surface even faster than is happening.

ABC was always behind the curve technologically.  They banned the super soft polyester shell in the 70's, but didn't understand that urethane could create the same friction without being super soft, but just by roughing it up.  They then mandated short oil because they didn't understand that unlimited swing area was just as conducive to high scoring as hold area.

Even the PBA was not blameless in this.  When they discovered that people loved watching Roth tear the cover off the ball on tour, they put out conditions that rewarded is type of game.  Roth was one of the best of all time, but in attempting to promote his type of game they opened the door for a bunch of Roth wannabes whose only talent was the ability to cup their wrists even more than Roth.  By 1981 the tour had driven off guys like Jim Stefanich, Tommy Hudson and Steve Neff in favor of some champions who I wont name, but couldn't have bowled on my Monday night scratch team.  Yes, we got Holman, Pete Weber and few others, but some of the guys who were able to compete with them were embarrasing 

We got where we are today because way back in the 70's urethane lane finish created such a radically different scoring environment that the best bowlers demanded lane conditions that would reward the fundamentals they had learned over the prior 15 years.  The solutions we got, such as short oil created a generation of one dimensional crankers. 

Also by the nature of the game, its scoring integrity could not withstand technological advancements that were inevitable.  I have often said that were it not for putting, golf would be in the same predicament as bowling when it comes to scoring integrity.