In the past, I’ve proposed some ideas on how triathlon could be much more exciting and engaging to more people. Nobody has listened yet, but that’s ok…I’ve moved on to making another sport activity better.
Bowling.
For various reasons, I don’t consider bowling to be a sport. I’ve always had two big issues with it that have disqualified it. First of all, you can win a world bowling championship with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth the entire time. Secondly, I don’t see how your opponent’s skills or performance impact yours. I mean, I’m sure they do somehow…I just don’t see it. It seems like to me the object is just to get the highest score you can every time out you sling the ball.
But what if that changed? What if bowling was a heads up game of 20 frames, with rollers alternating who gets first shot at a fresh frame?
Example: for the first frame, Player A tries to roll a strike. If he gets the strike, Player B will get to roll the fresh second frame. Ah…but he already knows that Player A gets his next two balls added to his score. So Player B goes for the strike on the second frame, but if he rolls and only gets 9 pins, there’s only 1 pin on that second frame, but the full third frame for his second bonus ball. But Player A also gets the spare opportunity there. And…they get to go first on the third frame.
But wouldn’t it be great if, late in the round, guys tried to purposely leave splits they know are difficult for their opponents individual weaknesses? Lower scores for sure, but at least there’d be some strategery involved.
In other words, bowling commentators would have something interesting to talk about.
I may go out and collect some test data on this. I think it would be a pretty cool way to encourage people to stay sober at the bowling alley. Wait…bowling alleys may reject this scoring system entirely.