When golf standardizes balls and clubs, I might agree to that. Same for bats in baseball or rackets in tennis.
The standard ball idea for the tour usually comes out of a discussion of "how bowling is broke" or "how to make it more attractive" I disagree with the first notion and the second has nothing to do with equipment.
No other sport that requires someone to use a piece of equipment on another piece of equipment (thereby exempting football and basketball, which has only a primary piece of equipment -- the ball -- and no secondary piece of equipment...bowling uses a ball to attack pins and therefore has a primary/secondary relationship) has opted for standardization.
Standardization also offers no guarantee of separating the best from the rest. What it does is separate the best from the rest on that specific condition and within those specific parameters. It's a bit like watching one of NASCAR's two road races and declaring Juan Pablo Montoya or Robby Gordon the best driver in NASCAR when in actuality neither is very good on the 1.5-mile ovals that dominate the circuit.
Standardization of equipment would very likely make the PBA LESS entertaining to me, not more, because it would take a large piece of the mental game out of the equation. This sport got a lot more interesting to me when I had to see people start thinking about a lot of different variables.
The plastic ball tournament is nice, but it or any other one-variable exercise reduces the game to almost (not quite, but almost) a pure test of physical repetition skills. It basically becomes close akin to darts. Add the rest of the variables to the mix and now the mental game and knowledge become almost as important as the physical ability. And that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Jess
Edited on 2/19/2009 5:09 PM
