WSJ: Bullish on Bowling -- Yes, Bowling

This isn't my musings, but I didn't have another place to put it. I began bowling regularly a few years ago because I needed something to do to get out of the house on my day off. I have since joined a league and have been steadily improving my game. Here's an article from the Wall Street Journal on the current state of bowling. ed.

By SKIP ROZIN

The economic crisis that pushed the National Football League and National Basketball Association to announce staff cuts, forced Honda out of Formula One racing and cost Tiger Woods his Buick sponsorship has reached a sport rarely in the news -- bowling.
[Bowling Illustration] M.E. Cohen

In the midst of what has been a renaissance, bowling recently experienced a rare off-month. There was no press coverage because there was no official accounting, just conversation "that numbers were down in October," reported by John Berglund, executive director of the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America, upon returning early last month from a national meeting of bowling-center owners in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

No gasp here; bowling has essentially slipped from public consciousness. Most associations are conjured from the past and include stout men in gaudy shirts, smoked-filled alleys, and, for me, girls. After passing my driving test at 16, my destination of choice that memorable first weekend was the local bowling alley -- to flirt and to salve my teenage angst in the crashing of ball against pins, all to the sound of Fats Domino singing "Blueberry Hill."

That was in the late 1950s, when Richard Nixon was still only a vice president and gasoline sold for under 30 cents a gallon. Bowling was popular enough to warrant a prime-time television show, "Jackpot Bowling"; as late as 1978, "Celebrity Bowling" drew such stars of the day as the cast of "The Waltons."

Sometime after that, bowling lost its cachet. Leagues, then the heart of the sport, began to decline in the late 1980s. Registered membership in the official bowling organizations representing male, female and young bowlers -- a gauge, if not an absolute measure, of league activity -- fell to 2.4 million bowlers in 2008 from 8.4 million in 1983, near the height of league membership. Celebrities on prime-time TV have been replaced by pros on Sunday afternoon cable, the names known only to serious fans. As for teenagers, well, along the way they decided that bowling was no longer cool.

But away from the spotlight, the sport reinvented itself. While leagues are down, bowling overall is up. The number of people age 6 and older who bowled at least once last season was 67 million, according to the U.S. Bowling Congress (USBC), the national governing body. The National Sporting Goods Association says that 43.5 million people age 7 and older bowled more than once. Both numbers are close to all-time highs.

The decline was the result of the American public's changing habits; the resurgence, to innovations in bowling. "At one point, this was a sport of shift workers from factories and ladies who didn't work outside the home," says Kevin Dornberger, the USBC chief operating officer. "Now we have fewer factory shift workers and few ladies who don't work outside the home. Folks have found time to bowl, but not 35 times a year on a schedule."

In an effort to attract casual bowlers, centers now offer entertainment alternatives such as billiards and air hockey; bumpers keep balls from gutters for children's birthday parties. Keeping score, taxing for many, is now computerized. "Cosmic Bowling," a nighttime event in a darkened center, features laser lights and ear-splitting music.

But the biggest change is an eased route to higher scores. Bowling balls with sophisticated surfaces and lanes oiled in specific patterns have joined to produce better results than could reasonably be expected even from lots of practice.

During the 1979-80 season, before the current influx of technology, 5,373 "300 games" -- the mark of perfection, achieved by rolling 12 strikes in a row -- were recorded. This past season, 2007-08, there were 52,229 perfect games, according to the USBC. This huge increase came despite the fact that there were only 2.4 million registered bowlers in 2007-08, half the 1979-80 total. Nothing influences the escalation in strikes more than oil, originally used to protect lanes but now important for the manner in which it is spread by calibrated machines.

"Proprietors program the machines to spread more oil in the center of the lane than the sides," according to USBC Vice President Neil Stremmel. "If you miss a little right from your perfect strike shot, there is less oil out there and more friction, so the ball hooks a little more and gets more on target." New balls have a more porous surface, which increases how well they respond to the oil, he explained.

Oil patterns are more tightly controlled for pros; the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) says it requires that patterns do not inflate scores. Concern that technology was endangering the integrity of the game for serious but not professional bowlers led, in the 2001-02 season, to the introduction of "sport bowling," where rules for spreading oil are strict. Sport bowling's 31,852 members bowled 132 perfect games this past season.

Bowling is also making a comeback among teenagers. The USBC reports that bowling is the fastest-growing high-school sport, the 51,744 young bowlers in the 2007-08 season representing an annual increase of 17%. This year, 200 colleges offer bowling as a varsity or club sport; in 2007, women bowlers at Vanderbilt University won the school's first national championship in any sport.

So while the drop in October is far from positive, it doesn't worry the industry. "Even in these economic conditions," says Mr. Berglund, "bowling is a good enough value to keep us strong."

That strength has proved to be resistant to past hard times. From the depths of the Depression in 1933 to the beginning of World War II in 1941, activity rose from 148,000 bowlers to 874,000, the biggest eight-year increase ever. During the recession years of the late 1980s, bowling began to reshape itself to fit the needs of a changing population, and its numbers rose.

Bowling's formula is simple: It is an activity that is social and physical, and secures participants a few hours of relief from whatever bleak reality lurks outside, all at a price that remains low compared with other escapist recreations.

How low depends on locale. It costs $5.20 per game at Cape Cod's Ryan Family Amusement Center in South Yarmouth, Mass., $3.99 at the Strikes and Spares Center in Mishawaka, Ind., and at the Gal-Bowl in Gallup, N.M., the tab is just $2.75. Shoes rent for $3 at Ryan's; $1.50 in Gallup.

Even at New York's Leisure Time Bowl in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where it's $9.50 per game and $5 for shoes, business is brisk. At 11 on a recent Saturday night, all 26 lanes were occupied and a room full of twentysomethings and thirtysomethings waited up to 40 minutes for a lane, snacking on spring rolls, flavored Martinis, and beer.

Standing and watching, I felt a connection with my early bowling days, to that elation after a strike and the praise of friends. Of course, back then no undulating lights played over the darkened center and the music wasn't so loud, or so unfamiliar.

"What's that song?" I asked a young woman waiting for a lane. "Hip-hop," she said, shrugging. Then she looked more closely at me and added, "sir."

Maybe not so much of a connection.

Mr. Rozin writes about sports for the Journal.

Schools and Dollars

$29,000 a year. That's the approximate cost for each of the Obama girls to attend the Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C. That's a steep price especially considering the free tuition that the girls would receive at an area public school. Yet, as we say about other things, the D.C. schools may be cheap, but they're no bargain. Despite one of the highest per student expenditures in the country the D.C. schools are also some of the worst in the country. The high teacher salaries have not translated into better schools and so one can't really blame the Obamas for seeking a better educational environment for their daughters.

As we see locally, throwing more dollars at educators doesn't insure that our children will get a better education. Here in Vestal we find that failed school administrators aren't fired. Instead they're given a higher paying position in the education high command of Vestal. Vestal has even created new positions for these failed administrators. A high per student expenditure figure doesn't necessarily mean that our children are receiving the best education possible. It may mean that our tax dollars are supporting a bloated administration.

I hope that the Obama girls get the best education possible at Sidwell Friends. It was the choice for the children of Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and the Clintons, so I expect it will serve the Obamas well also.

No Screeds for Dennis Miller

Traveling yesterday I was listening as Dennis Miller as he welcomed a listener to his program. What came next sounded like something off the Jim Rome Show. Miller picked up on this immediately. A regular feature of Rome's sports talk program is listener's reading their rants on air. It is a pretty stupid feature, and thankfully Miller cut off the Rome Show style screed. Give Miller his due, there is nothing authentic or particularly entertaining when these guys (and it's always guys) try to be clever. It is part of the Rome Show culture, fortunately it's not going bo become part of the Miller Show.

Two 20th Century Americans

William F. Buckley died last night. His death spurred my thinking not only about his legacy, but the legacy of another influential American of the twentieth century. Buckley was 29 when he began National Review in 1955; Hugh Hefner was 27 when Playboy first hit the newstands in 1959. National Review became the authoritative voice of the American conservative movement; Playboy became the authoritative voice of male hedonism ("Entertainment for Men," as the cover proclaims each month).

Bill Buckley championed free market captitalism, anti-communism, and divinely-given morality that could be demonstrated through natural law philosophy; Hef championed "the Playboy philosophy." Buckley disseminated his views through National Review just as Hefner did through Playboy. Buckley also wrote 55 books (and edited five others), and a newspaper column, "On the Right," two to three times a week that was carried by nearly 150 papers. His output through years of On the Right tops 4.5 million words in 5,600 columns. Hefner's literary output includes 250,000 words on the Playboy philosophy. Buckley was a serious thinker; Hefner is a rich playboy whose wealth was amassed by pushing pornography into the mainstream. First, it was soft porn, now Playboy Enterprises sells hard core porn through cable outlets.

Buckley wrote on about every serious topic imaginable, Hefner on issues of freedom, particularly for all things sexual in his monthly column in Playboy that began in 1962 and ran for many years. Buckley's prodigious literary output is legendary, Hefner's includes "some 1,500 leather-bound scrapbooks about his life and history to date" (Reuters). Buckley spent his adult life consumed by a passion to grow the conservative movement that was fueled by his conviction that conservative principles best guide civilization. In addition to his writings, there are the forty years of public speeches and his Firing Line television program that began in 1966 and ended its run in 1999.

Buckley, stuck between Russell Kirk and Ronald Reagan chronologically had the longest run of the three. Hefner, stuck between Al Goldstein (Screw magazine) and Bob Guccione (Penthouse magazine), has a long, but more dubious legacy. Hefner says that his life's work was "not just for the guys. The major beneficiaries were women." But, as Matthew Scully observes in The Wall Street Journal,

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"As to those "major beneficiaries" of porn, you won't find too many women these days who think that the world is better because of Playboy or the smug, selfish ethic it has always purveyed. For good reason has the Playboy Foundation long been a benefactor to NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood: The Playboy Philosophy has always been for the ladies, too, all right--just so long as they remember what they're good for, don't get too sentimental and feel grateful when the playboy in their own life offers to pay for the abortion." ("The Playboy Legacy" 3/31/06)

William F. Buckley is widely regarded as the progenitor of the modern American conservative movement; Hugh Hefner founded an empire built on pornography. “All great biblical stories begin with Genesis,” George Will wrote in the National Review in 1980. “And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration.” (New York Times obituary, Douglas Martin, 2/27/08)

Buckley and Hefner came of age in the fifties and have been public figures into the 21st century. Both made their mark in magazine publishing. Both have been enormous presences on the American landscape. Buckley was know for his brilliant erudition, Hefner for a life that focused on the bedroom. Buckley died at age 82; Hefner lives on at age 81 (82 in April). The good die too young.