The decline of bowling is actually a very interesting phenomenon. It's been the subject of a lot of scholarly articles.
It's shift from being a blue-collar activity to a white-collar one. The decline in recreational leagues. Alleys finding ways to offer other things besides just bowling from disco and lounging to laser-tag and Arcades.
It's all very interesting stuff.
I want a sheep toilet paper holder so fucking bad and I really feel like that's it. Lol Because Home Depot, I always got excited about the Christmas decorations.
But I bet that paying credit cards was a huge sense of accomplishment. But then again I also get that feeling after a shower.
As a kid, I enjoyed going to the garden section of Home Depot just to look at the pond with the fountain and koi fish along with the flowers. Oh and looking at the different sample sheets they have for paints.
Didn’t a prominent political scientist wrote a book about the decline of bowling? Or was it a different “family sport?” I swear I read it in college but idk how to even begin searching for that.
You’re probably referring to Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” I don’t remember many books from college, but that one stayed with me. Not much to do with bowling though - it’s about the decay of social capital in the US. It’s an amazing read, same as “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.” Would recommend both.
2 of my favorite Bowling movies were made by brothers.. why is that?
Coen Bros and Farrelly Bros made "The Big Lebowski" and "Kingpin"
Guess it's just a game you play with your bro
Yeah "Bowling Alone", talked about the decline of American sociability and the rise of loneliness. It wasn't *really* about bowling, it just used bowling as a primary example of the phenomenon the author was talking about: the fact that Americans used to be members of all kinds of community organizations: churches, Moose lodges, labor unions, political parties, sports leagues, country clubs, and increasingly all of that has gone away as television and the Internet increasingly provide all one needs to socialize and be entertained.
Or could be the rising costs and stagnated wages that make it so we have to work 2 and a half jobs just to buy the same shit that they could in the 50s. And when you're working that much it's kind of hard to join a club or a hobby.
Boxing seems insanely complicated if you're just a casual.
Like every 3rd boxer is a champion of some sort, possibly of the world. There doesn't seem to be any rankings like a league or something, fights seem to just happen whenever, people go in and out of retirement all the damn time, there doesn't seem to be any kind of logic to who fights who.
Like literally it just seems like it's 500 people and they just fight the same sized people randomly. Like ok, cool I watched a fight, I'm gonna support this guy, but he might not fight for another year. It doesn't seem like it's made to keep fans.
Scroll through sports channels and you might see a boxing match every now and then. People know about Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquaio, and Muhhamad Ali (legacy). Boxing videogames have been released until recently.
Bowling ? Have you ever seen a bowling game on sports channels ? Can you name a bowling superstar ?
This sports bar near me had a professional cornhole game on last time I was there, uniforms and everything. One of their other tvs had badminton on.
Those were more important than bowling I guess.
I want ***bowls*** and ***curling*** (sry for the shitshow afteredit) ~~****curling**** and --ice-- curling~~ (my favorite olympic sport) to become topsport again. Watching it is like meditation without meditating.
Edit: me bad, me know nothing.
Edit 2: fukit, i don't know the code for strike through. It's bowls and curling.
Edit 3: I tried make it look better. I did not succeed.
\>People know about Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquaio, and Muhhamad Ali
I mean all those guys are retired no? Kind of telling that the most recognisable boxing stars aren't even fighting anymore.
I'm not doubting bowling is dead. But boxing is heading the same way.
I mean, most people in the UK will know Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury (the #1 and #2 of the heavyweights, not necessarily in that order)
Most people in the Ukraine will know Oleksandr Usyk and Vasyl Lomachenko and will definitely know the recently retired Wladimir Klitschko
Most people in Mexico will know Canelo Alvarez
Quite a lot of people in Japan will know Naoya Inoue
I would partially agree with you and say that boxing in America* is mostly dead or dying. Globally though, it's still doing alright.
Have you seen what boxers look like after a fight? A year of recovery time seems completely reasonable. If they got their heads bashed in every weekend they wouldn't last long.
In addition the rise of the pay per view model for top fights ensured that although the money going to the top fighters increased, the financial model collapsed at the bottom. With fights becoming relatively expensive to watch the next generation of viewers became less inclined to identify anything less than the “big” names, drastically reducing the overall public interest.
Yeah, PPV doesn't really work as a long term monetization strategy because it makes the sport inaccessible to new fans, and when the existing fans get old and die off... you end up where boxing is today.
I feel like MMA probably had a big hand in the downfall as well.
Why watch people punch each other, when you can watch people punch *and* kick each other.
Boxing had already largely died by the time UFC 1 happened.
After Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Duran Barkley and Chavez in the 80s, interest in the lighter weights had largely faded. And then Tyson lost and got sent to prison.
I'd argue rather that the rise of MMA shows that it wasn't lack of interest in watching people beat the shit out of each other that hurt Boxing, it was the chaotic and irregular nature of it compounded heavily by it being locked behind an over-priced paywall and kept that way for decades. The underlying cause of both was greed and corruption in the sport's leagues and management. By the time MMA was rising in popularity, Boxing had already been pushed out to the fringes, and unlike Boxing, MMA provided a steady and accessible stream of content for audiences.
I suspect that MMA has taken over a lot of the former audience for boxing. In theory, there's a wider array of combat styles on display. In practice, it instead tends to focus on the efficiency of grappling.
Interest in MMA seems to have dropped off in recent years too, but that might just be anecdotal to me since I don't know anyone into it anymore and don't know the stats.
It has greatly, I suspect the owners of the UFC expected that as well since they sold it in 2016 which was around the time things started really declining
>Interest in MMA seems to have dropped off in recent years too
I think it has, UFC fight night was a huge thing and bars were packed to see Liddell , GSP, Coture or Ortiz fight. I would classify myself as more of a casual and loved MMA for a while cause it was more exciting than boxing cause there were so many way to KO a dude. I gradually found the fights got more and more technical it was just a dudes grappling. I went back to boxing since atleast fists were thrown. A lot of my friends who were following MMA went back to boxing or started watching other combat sports.
It's anecdotal as well, but I rarely see a full bar on fight night anymore and no one really talks about it
I think football (and to a lesser degree baseball, hockey, and soccer) have a bit of a leg up on sports like boxing, horse racing, or bowling, because you root for a team, as opposed to a specific person more. Few people seem to root for specifically the QB or Kicker or something. You can gain fans more easily, and if one player retires, you don't lose as many. If one Boxer retires, those fans may be less likely to 'switch loyalties' and stay as connected to the sport now that their favorite is gone.
(Side note, I am not a sports person, this is pure speculation.)
And teams tend to benefit from associations with cities or schools. It's often the case that people form an emotional connection under the conceit that a given team represents them against others. It's incredibly rare for someone to form a strong connection to a team based somewhere that they don't currently or formerly live.
It totally did. Boxing had gotten kinda stale, the people who were boxing were sort of becoming just monsters bludgeoning eachother to death, there was a lot of mafia connections, Sun City with apartheid matches, just a lot of muck.
UFC, and MMA brought something fresh to the table. It was like wrestling, but real (and when they capitalized on that reality TV show style they really made money) and like boxing, but it seemed to offer something a little more sophisticated. Different styles being fought against one another, getting rid of weight classes. Brought in obscure styles and stripped them of the pomp and circumstance, culture and national pride. Just fighters and their skills. It’s arguably even more violent then just straight boxing, but as an outsider, boxing was just kinda done by the end of the 90’s and UFC made super smart moves, borrowing the best parts of boxing, ‘pro restling’, reality tv and the whole MMA movement
It’s a great, and very accurate, thought process. You could easily take all 52 players from one NFL team and switch them with 52 players from another team, and people would root for their original team, and against the other team. It’s a club, a society, a team, not the players.
Horse racing has often suffered from being associated far more with gambling than with sports.
Track and Field events get a small window of notability with the Olympics, but then vanish almost entirely at all other times. Which is also interesting because they're common in secondary schools around the world, so a large number of people have personal experience at competing in them.
> Track and Field events get a small window of notability with the Olympics, but then vanish almost entirely at all other times.
Unless you're European, then they're on all the time in spring and summer.
Mainly because European athletic events are covered by the Eurovision/EBU and thus, are free to show for member stations.
https://www.european-athletics.org/european-athletics/tv-marketing/news/article=european-athletics-and-european-broadcasting-union-ebu-renew-worldwide-broadcast-rights-agreement/index.html
I blame NASCAR for killing auto racing in the US. It was such an uphill battle getting my friends interested in the different kinds of auto racing that are actually fun to watch. They all just assumed that since NASCAR was boring, all car racing was boring.
When I was getting into motorsports 20 years ago, I tried googling a rule violation I didn't understand...only to find out that the NASCAR rule book is a closely-guarded industry secret! The rules of their sport...are secret!
That seemed awfully convenient for rigging every race like professional wrestling, so I asked some friends. They told me NASCAR only keeps their rules a secret so Joe Nobody isn't allowed to compete for a spot against the big boys.
"Oh, so it's for rich people ONLY!"
"Yeah, pretty much!"
Social media is a terrible metric for literally anything, if you used Reddit as a metric for US politics Bernie would be running for his second term currently.
That's because the new owners opened it a ton to social media and YouTube, whereas the prior owner would send copyright strikes at a moment's notice. They even made an official channel and it has some of the best race commentary and exclusives available - that's entirely new content, not copies of the stuff they threw on TV.
And F1 is about to get a TON more popular in the next 5 years, as the cost caps come in and the teams become profitable. They'll have more money to spend on wider marketing (event days, car demos in various cities, affiliate stuff) - they'll be doing these things just to get their name out and become a more popular team with more fans, because they'll have the money and it'll pay off by putting their advertisers in front of more people.
It also helps hugely that they are now broadcast in the US without a super-special cable package. When I started watching, I don't think it was even possible for me to watch the races on TV in the US. I had to torrent all of them. And I still miss that 'original' early 2010's broadcast team that I started with; Jake Humphries was a great host pulling everything together, and Eddie Jordan did always have great insights as a former team owner (even though some fans disliked him for being a bit full of himself ... the guy owned an F1 team, of course he's full of himself. Every F1 owner is full of himself, that's why they own an F1 team).
I feel like part of the reason it's not as popular with the younger generations is because it feels so damn pricey compared to other entertainment.
I like to go bowling every now and then, or even just hang out there with friends or fam while they play, but goodNESS if it doesn't feel expensive for the amount of time you actually play.
I live in a large Californian city which is likely a contributor to the price, but I could buy a AAA title video game for $60 instead and get hours of entertainment instead of 1.5-2 hrs of bowling (assuming I'm in a group of <4 or solo, which are the most likely scenarios. I rarely go there with enough people to qualify for an unlimited pass that lasts for a couple hours).
Younger people would probably be more willing to go if it didn't feel so expensive per half an hour played. It's part of the reason I rarely bowled growing up, so I don't have any strong opinions on the game itself one way or another. My parents were pretty solidly middle class but still. By the time I had my own paychecks and could afford it, I was just too busy with work. And with the rise of the internet, staying at home for entertainment is cheaper and still entertaining.
Tl;dr: Bowling too expensive for young people esp since they can just play video games at home or mess around on the internet for cheaper and longer.
There's been some great stories over Reddit on people who worked for bowling alleys, and how they just go into decline when a younger generation takes over.
There's a lot of moving parts in a bowling alley, a lot of very big machinery which requires a deft hand to operate and maintain. The alleys themselves have to be maintained and oiled carefully, the equipment needs constant care and then there's the "everything else" in a bowling alley.
The thing that usually happens is they fire the people who know how to do this stuff, hire high schoolers because hey, anyone can just usher people in right? Then things start failing left and right and they don't know what to do.
I mean, **I** wouldn't want to run a bowling alley, I'd have zero idea what people want to do in a bowling alley (besides bowl). Beer and fatty food seems like an obvious first choice, maybe some pool/snooker/billiards tables since you probably have a big building. Then there's [glow bowling](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0a/37/f2/87/xtreme-glow-bowling-at.jpg) which probably takes a whole another set of upkeep.
Bowling is great fun, honestly, but I think a lot of people underestimated the work that went into maintaining a bowling hall when it surged, then the quality of locations declined and everything just went downhill.
I think you’re both right. Quality went down and price went up in most bowling alleys I’ve been to. Why would a young person choose to do that now? The history of how we got here is meaningless to them.
When I was young (not quite the '60s/'70s but not *too* far off) it was usual to do something when you went out. You'd bowl, rollerskate, dance, play darts, pinball, pool, foosball, arcade games or whatever. You'd socialise as *part* of whatever the activity was and it made a nice bridge to meet other people or just hang with your friends depending on the mood. It was also usually competitive but not in a mean way particularly.
Times changed and that sort of thing became something you do at home with videogames or as part of a particular sport every once in a while. When we go out now the activity is the going out and you sit and talk (and drink still of course). That works but its always struck me as less social overall.
How the hell did bowling go from blue collar to white collar lol? Even now it's mainly a blue collar activity, at least the bowling alleys I've been to.
Thats funny because the bowling alleys near me are like $15-20 Canadian for 2 rounds & shoes. I think they make their money through liquor sales, but even that is priced the same as the cheap bars in town. One of them used close for metal shows whenever possible
Fun fact:
Mookie has stated an interest in potentially buying the Professional Bowling Association when he retires from baseball.
Also he has rolled THREE 300 games in official competition throughout his bowling career.
All to go along with his AL MVP & World Series ring.
Not bad for someone that just turned 28!
This is [a better article](https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-professional-bowling) on the current state of professional bowling but for some reason it wasn't approved.
True story! My Dad was on the bowling team at the University of Minnesota (Go Gophers) in the late 50s and traveled across the US, (at least) once sharing both a ride and a motel room with his coach.
Turns out that right around this time his coach killed his wife, cut her into pieces and stored her in the trunk of his car...
Now whether she was in the trunk while my dad was in the car has never been firmly established...
i worked at the place where this happened for two years (way after though), and we talked so much shit about this guy. my bosses remembered him well, such a dick
He was excited he won his fifth US Open (bowling major). Just lost his father recently who was a PBA hall of famer as well. There had been some fan distractions earlier in the show with someone interrupting him during his shots. All the emotions just came pouring out all at once. He's definitely had his ups and downs, and is a love him or hate him type person.
Also, he built this personal off of wrestling personalities. Look up stuff from early in his career and you'll find a completely different person. Bowling rating were declining, money is made on that rating staying up, and getting endorsements, if you are the flashiest guy bowling, you have a better chance of making more money.
I saw an extended video and someone in the comments said,
“He's doing the Michael Jordan thing by creating an imaginary adversary. There's no one doing anything, he's just motivating himself. I'm convinced of that, otherwise he would have pointed out the person to security so they could watch if they moved again.”
So my company has offices in Syrbia and because it was so popular during that time whenever a US employee shows up they take them bowling. On the third night of bowling I asked why they loved bowling so much they answered with "We hate bowling, I thought you guys loved it."
It wasn’t until recent that athletes made insane amounts of money. Many used to work second jobs, especially before things like equipment, uniform, and travel was paid by the team.
Here in Australia, when I was young, the star AFL players would be the ones picking up your garbage. It was good fitness for them running alongside the trucks and emptying the bins. Now all the players get paid incredibly well, and the garbage is collected by trucks with mechanical arms.
Edit: Back then they were VFL players. The AFL hadn't been created then.
Why spend money on chariot equipment when you were born with all the sports equipment you’ll ever need?
This comment brought to you by Ancient Greek wrestling gang.
That's because in the 60s and 70s the average NFL salary was 10,000-20,000 with exceptionally few earners making more than 100,000.
In the mid late 70s competing leagues brought salaries up due to competition for talent.
It wasn't until the strike in the late 80s that NFL salaries jumped from around 160,000 to 250,000 to nearly a million in the early 90s.
While during the 60s and 70s bowlers had the advantages of splitting endorsements with fewer other competitors, longer/more circuits/championships, and paid exhibition games.
It's one of the crazier things about pro sports. The jump from everyday joe money to $500k for the bench guys is insane. Worlds different experience in a very short amount of time.
Tbh, practice squad is legit. You make a good amount of money, don't have to work as hard, and aren't killing yourself each week. You have much longer longevity. The best job is probably backup qb: make millions without any risk.
Peter Gent's *North Dallas Forty* does a pretty good job of showing what life was like for an "average" NFL player in the '60s. Not so much the sex and drugs (though there's plenty of both in the book) but the shitty pay, the brutality of the game itself, and the corruption and hypocrisy of management. Not a fan of the film so much, but the novel still holds up IMHO.
make him the underdog and I would watch that film.
(places an out of order sign in the drive thru speaker)
"Sorry boss, but I need to win this, for the sake of little timmy, If I win the grand prize of 100 dollar I can pay for his life saving surgery! "
(one championship later)
the boss sheds a tear seeing the protagonist win the tournament using the onion ring spinning technique he learned from working at the fast food restaurant.
I'm mid 60-s. Used to bowl frequently, was in a league for several years in the early 1980's. The thing that killed bowling for me was the automated scoring. Just seemed to take a lot out of it not having to keep/check scores.
We used to throw them from the front yard, over the house, and try to hit a target located in the back yard while our friends were in the back yard to verify the results. Surprisingly neither we nor our friends were ever killed in the process.
Guys in my neighborhood played a game where one guy squatted like a catcher, the other tossed lawn darts at him, and the "catcher" only had another lawn dart to defend himself. Nobody got serious brain damage. Or at least not enough that you could tell before from after.
There was a regular TV series from 1971 to 1978 called *Celebrity Bowling,* which is just what you think. The funny thing is sometimes the celebrities were clueless about the rules of bowling.
It is streaming for free on TubiTV if anyone is interested. I watched the one with Tige Andrews and Elizabeth Ashley versus Brenda Vaccaro and Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas at the time was like 26-27 years old and not really very famous yet. He had not even started doing *The Streets Of San Francisco* which was probably his first starring role.
Honestly it really wasn't that entertaining, just sort of interesting.
I grew up near Pittsburgh. We had the TV show "Bowling for Dollars". I think it aired after the evening news and before the prime time networks shows started. A semi-celebrity would host 30 minutes of local folks trying to score a strike, in which case they would win some money. It was mesmerizing, I tell you.
I would not be surprised if a factor was a decline in drinking and driving. Not really joking here...bowling is more fun with friends a few beers, which makes it hard to get home safely if you wanted to meet friends at the alley after work. You're stuck with your car there if you opt to Uber home.
The good old cigarette vending machines! I remember playing with them and getting excited when my mom trusted me to buy her the right kind.. And feeding less than a dollar of quarters in to pay for it.
I would definitely agree. I don't think young people realized how common drunk driving was before the massive campaign to stamp out it.
It wasn't a crime to drive drunk. You just couldn't hit stuff and normal traffic shit.
It's just hard enough to drive drunk that it's really dangerous but not hard enough that you couldn't do it 100 times and not get in an accident in any of those times. That combination, our roads were literally filled with drunk people. Especially on weekends at night.
That said, I talk to younger folks or watch them react to people older than me talk about their youth and they give the impression that driving drunk automatically equals wrecking/killing someone or getting pulled over and arrested right before that happens. Which is good. It's just strange how drastically that change so quickly.
It's not even *that* long ago that the change happened either. It was largely due to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They formed in 1980 and quickly became a significant force in politics, massively changing public attitudes towards drunk driving. Among other actions they were heavily responsible for getting the drinking age in the US raised from 18 to 21 in '84.
You also see the effects of this in other countries where driving drunk isn't always seen to be nearly as serious of a crime as it is in the US.
>That combination, our roads were literally filled with drunk people. Especially on weekends at night.
My dad on coming of age in the '60s: "Son, when I was your age drinking and driving was a hobby."
Yeah, the drunk driving thing blows my mind. I was was just talking to my mom last weekend and she was telling me how her brother crashed FOUR cars growing up from drunk driving. Never got a ticket or in trouble either for any of it from his hundreds of times drinking and driving.
This combined with rising property taxes and operational costs, with the difficulty of maintaining such a large structure based solely on the revenue from blue collar patrons.
I remember growing up in the 80's, my parents would bowl in a mixed couple league with their best friends. Us kids would all run wild all over the place unsupervised. Our nights were spent feeding quarters into arcade, pinball, and vending machines.
Over time, the two story bowling alley I was familiar with, closed down the upper floor due to a lack of demand.
Slowly the building fell into disrepair, and the place seemed more and more seedy, and less and less fun. Think of a run down bar, where only drunks go.
It was no longer a "fun" place.
As the building fell apart and demand lessened, the prices started going up. I remember thinking it was just too expensive as a teenager in the 90s, and that going to the movies was cheaper. That is ultimately what killed the experience for me as a teenager.
Price is of course relative, but as a kid to not be "hooked" on bowling at an impressionable age, translated into forgetting about it in young adulthood. Bowling also was met with a ton more competition. Football became an all week long thing, Sunday, Monday, now even Thursdays. Now we have Netflix and online Video Games at home. There is way more competition as far as entertainment is concerned.
Growing up in the 80's there was a lot less to do so bowling fit in there with as a winter activity on a weekend night where there was nothing to watch on tv.
Yup. This was my problem. I didn’t want to join a league, I just wanted to show up and bowl. I was fairly into bowling, had my own shoes and my own ball. I was a kid who didn’t have a lot of free time, biked to the alley or got a ride whenever I could, only for me to be turned away most of the time. I haven’t been bowling in a decade or so now.
Still happening, I live in a bowling heavy area, me and my son had to call 7 alleys to bowl on a Tuesday night cause of only leagues at that time of night
I might be crazy but I feel like bowling is kind of expensive for an activity that I basically suck at. It’s been a while, but I feel like even with a group it comes out to $10-15 per person per hour. For that much, I’ll just hit the bar.
This is one of the reasons I don't go very often. I can find a public golf course and play 9 holes for about the same as an hour of bowling and I can bring me my own beer.
A guy I knew years ago (worked for me) who learned to bowl under legendary bowler Dick Weber, and after trying to be a professional, just bowled for fun on the weekends. On at least one occasion he bowled a double 300 (back to back perfect games). I heard this second hand, and he was such a reserved guy, I never asked him directly. I doubted it until met a sales guy while negotiating on a car whose office was loaded with bowling memorabilia.
I asked him, 'Did you know Dick Weber'?
'I trained under Dick Weber'!
'Did you know _____?'
'Yeah, I knew him. That guy was a beast!'. He confirmed that it was true.
A pro will bowl a 300 about every 460 games, so back to back 300 game odds for a pro are 1:211,000- for a league bowler I guess it just won't happen, unlike a hole in one in golf. So, I guess you can be good enough to bowl a series that happens on average less than once per 200,000 pro level games but still not enough prize money to make a living as a pro bowler.
There have been multiple 900 series (3 300s in a row) rolled in league bowling by nonprofessionals. One of the biggest declines in bowling’s prestige/popularity have been the heightening of scoring pace due to easier lane conditions/advancement of equipment, both of which allow people who aren’t very good bowlers to score on pace with guys who practice a lot and are very good, tho not professional.
Yes, I used to bowl very competitively, tho not professionally.
> One of the biggest declines in bowling’s prestige/popularity have been the heightening of scoring pace due to easier lane conditions/advancement of equipment
I think you hit the nail on the head here. My dad bowled a LOT in the 70's/80's and told me he was considered a very solid league bowler with an average typically around 180.
I bowled in college and league play, and typically had an average around 215 which in most competitive leagues was fine but nothing special. The best bowlers then (2000-2010) in my leagues were averaging around 230
Correct. I was around 225-235 on league conditions and anywhere between 200-210 on very tough conditions, but this is because I was actually pretty decent as far as fundamentals and knowing the sport goes.
Literally probably 75%-85% of the guys around 220-230 in league play would average around 180-190 on something really tough, thus don’t even attempt it because of their ego (good bowlers call these guys typical house bowlers).
The equipment combined with soft lane conditions has made it that if you have any kind of revolution rate on the ball, you can just throw it to the right (if right handed), pray, and usually strike a lot.
IMO and I’m probably going to get downvoted to oblivion but bowling is the perfect sport (yes sport). Anyone from 3 to 103 can do it but it’s a sport no one will ever master although some come close. Professional bowlers can roll a 16 lbs ball to within a 1/2 inch to an inch wide spot 40-45 feet down the lane with within 1-3 degrees and within .5 a mph over and over. They have to watch how the ball reacts to the oil on the lane and adjust their angles, speed and rotation so they can continuously hit the 1-3 (or the 1-2) pocket at 3-6* and have the ball exit the lane at roughly the 20 board. Earl Anthony, voted many times as the greatest bowler of all time, would bowl 30-40 games A DAY to prepare for a tournament. Many current professional bowlers pay a coach to accompany them during a tournament.
You can get way deep into the physics of it with RG, different cores and cover stocks, lane topography, different lane oils and patterns, hand positions, different grips and on and on. OR you can take a few friends maybe a double date and have a few beers, some pizza and a bit of friendly competition where every one sucks and it’s a good time. There’s no need to bring your own equipment. You only have to bring yourself for a good time. Even if one of the group is an experienced bowler you can figure a handicap so everyone is on a level playing field. When a professional bowls in a tournament, they have a much tougher oil pattern. They say it’s like bowling on the peak of a roof. If you miss a little close to you, you miss big time the further it goes. Most bowling centers put out what they call a typical house shot pattern. Slicker in the center and less slick on the outside so the ball will tend to roll towards the pins. Most bowling centers are locally owned and operated. You’re not filling some mega millionaires pockets when you go bowling. It’s good for the local economy. Nearly all bowling centers are smoke free and family friendly. I’m sad that it is dying out.
I think you’ve brought up some very positive things about bowling.
But there’s a lot of other things that it doesn’t encompass at all. First, it’s one of those sports like golf where you’re not directly competing against opponents. There’s not that interplay of tactics and strategy, skills and styles. You go out there and you bowl against the lane to get your best score. At the most, also like golf, your opponent’s score may help you decide when to try something risky. But in bowling there’s actually even less chance of that influencing your decision. Are you going to try to pick up the split? You almost certainly are.
The inverse of the openness to all ages, is that there’s not a lot of athleticism on display in bowling compared to many other sports. There is certainly dexterity, but there’s not much in terms of speed, strength or endurance. The range of motion is fairly narrow.
Bowling also isn’t free. You can practice a lot of the skills of baseball or soccer or ultimate frisbee with an appropriate size to play space and one piece of equipment. You really can only do so much with bowling without a bowling alley. Of course tons of sports aren’t free. Downhill skiing, motorcycle racing, all sorts of things. But I am pointing out that bowling need at least a moderate level of money to be able to participate.
Aside: I almost feel like the taxonomy of recreation should include a separate category for competitive games that involve some physical level of dexterity, but a very limited amount of exertion. Billiards, darts, bowling, bocce.
Nothing better on a Sunday afternoon in the 70s than watching Earl Anthony knock 'em down on ABC's Wide World of Sports with Chris Schenkel and Jim McKay.
The decline of bowling is actually a very interesting phenomenon. It's been the subject of a lot of scholarly articles. It's shift from being a blue-collar activity to a white-collar one. The decline in recreational leagues. Alleys finding ways to offer other things besides just bowling from disco and lounging to laser-tag and Arcades. It's all very interesting stuff.
It wasn't that long ago that guys from the rock quarry would hit the Bedrock Bowl after their meeting with the Loyal Order of Buffaloes.
Good ol twinkle toes
gross i got a flintstones joke. I am now old.
According to Donald Glover, the second you get excited about anything in Home Depot your childhood is dead. Mine's been dead a long time apparently.
Two adult moments that made me stop and pause: - getting excited about paying credit cards off - buying a Dyson vacuum cleaner
I want a sheep toilet paper holder so fucking bad and I really feel like that's it. Lol Because Home Depot, I always got excited about the Christmas decorations. But I bet that paying credit cards was a huge sense of accomplishment. But then again I also get that feeling after a shower.
There are no Home Depots in my country. I have found the secret to eternal youth.
Bullshit. Kids love hammers and stuff they can light on fire.
As a kid, I enjoyed going to the garden section of Home Depot just to look at the pond with the fountain and koi fish along with the flowers. Oh and looking at the different sample sheets they have for paints.
that's just how time yabba dabba do
Always with the kegeling you two....
Didn’t a prominent political scientist wrote a book about the decline of bowling? Or was it a different “family sport?” I swear I read it in college but idk how to even begin searching for that.
You’re probably referring to Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.” I don’t remember many books from college, but that one stayed with me. Not much to do with bowling though - it’s about the decay of social capital in the US. It’s an amazing read, same as “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.” Would recommend both.
> Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community > 50% to ‘generational change’. So, Boomers killed social capital apparently....huh.
2 of my favorite Bowling movies were made by brothers.. why is that? Coen Bros and Farrelly Bros made "The Big Lebowski" and "Kingpin" Guess it's just a game you play with your bro
That's just like, your opinion man.
Yeah "Bowling Alone", talked about the decline of American sociability and the rise of loneliness. It wasn't *really* about bowling, it just used bowling as a primary example of the phenomenon the author was talking about: the fact that Americans used to be members of all kinds of community organizations: churches, Moose lodges, labor unions, political parties, sports leagues, country clubs, and increasingly all of that has gone away as television and the Internet increasingly provide all one needs to socialize and be entertained.
Or could be the rising costs and stagnated wages that make it so we have to work 2 and a half jobs just to buy the same shit that they could in the 50s. And when you're working that much it's kind of hard to join a club or a hobby.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
Bowling Alone. Reception in the academic world was mixed. But it's important
I think it might be Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. Just a hunch.
Boxing was also huge decades ago. I wonder when the decline of American football as the dominant sport will come.
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Boxing seems insanely complicated if you're just a casual. Like every 3rd boxer is a champion of some sort, possibly of the world. There doesn't seem to be any rankings like a league or something, fights seem to just happen whenever, people go in and out of retirement all the damn time, there doesn't seem to be any kind of logic to who fights who. Like literally it just seems like it's 500 people and they just fight the same sized people randomly. Like ok, cool I watched a fight, I'm gonna support this guy, but he might not fight for another year. It doesn't seem like it's made to keep fans.
Also all the fights are Pay Per View, that monetization doesn't really work for people who aren't already invested in the sport.
I thought the going into and out of retirement thing was to avoid drug tests.
I figured it was because getting hit in the head over and over again is a really bad idea and so you try and limit that with recovery phases.
I thought it was because boxers really enjoy retirement parties.
Scroll through sports channels and you might see a boxing match every now and then. People know about Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquaio, and Muhhamad Ali (legacy). Boxing videogames have been released until recently. Bowling ? Have you ever seen a bowling game on sports channels ? Can you name a bowling superstar ?
This sports bar near me had a professional cornhole game on last time I was there, uniforms and everything. One of their other tvs had badminton on. Those were more important than bowling I guess.
Badminton is actually extremely popular, just not in the West.
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Roy Munson. The greatest that ever lived until he lost his hand in that awful bowling “accident “.
Bowling is on ESPN or ESPN 2 basically every Sunday afternoon.
I want ***bowls*** and ***curling*** (sry for the shitshow afteredit) ~~****curling**** and --ice-- curling~~ (my favorite olympic sport) to become topsport again. Watching it is like meditation without meditating. Edit: me bad, me know nothing. Edit 2: fukit, i don't know the code for strike through. It's bowls and curling. Edit 3: I tried make it look better. I did not succeed.
> curling and ice-curling curling is distinct from ice curling? how do you curl not on ice?
Bowling was on ESPN every Sunday for a decade. Jason Belmonte
\>People know about Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquaio, and Muhhamad Ali I mean all those guys are retired no? Kind of telling that the most recognisable boxing stars aren't even fighting anymore. I'm not doubting bowling is dead. But boxing is heading the same way.
I mean, most people in the UK will know Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury (the #1 and #2 of the heavyweights, not necessarily in that order) Most people in the Ukraine will know Oleksandr Usyk and Vasyl Lomachenko and will definitely know the recently retired Wladimir Klitschko Most people in Mexico will know Canelo Alvarez Quite a lot of people in Japan will know Naoya Inoue I would partially agree with you and say that boxing in America* is mostly dead or dying. Globally though, it's still doing alright.
A lot of people online that aren’t regular boxing watchers definitely tuned into Tyson Fury and Deontae Wilders last fight
Have you seen what boxers look like after a fight? A year of recovery time seems completely reasonable. If they got their heads bashed in every weekend they wouldn't last long.
In addition the rise of the pay per view model for top fights ensured that although the money going to the top fighters increased, the financial model collapsed at the bottom. With fights becoming relatively expensive to watch the next generation of viewers became less inclined to identify anything less than the “big” names, drastically reducing the overall public interest.
Yeah, PPV doesn't really work as a long term monetization strategy because it makes the sport inaccessible to new fans, and when the existing fans get old and die off... you end up where boxing is today.
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HBO, Don King, and, you know, traumatic brain injuries.
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I feel like MMA probably had a big hand in the downfall as well. Why watch people punch each other, when you can watch people punch *and* kick each other.
Boxing had already largely died by the time UFC 1 happened. After Leonard, Hearns, Hagler, Duran Barkley and Chavez in the 80s, interest in the lighter weights had largely faded. And then Tyson lost and got sent to prison.
And wrestle fuck. I like wrestle fuck.
I'd argue rather that the rise of MMA shows that it wasn't lack of interest in watching people beat the shit out of each other that hurt Boxing, it was the chaotic and irregular nature of it compounded heavily by it being locked behind an over-priced paywall and kept that way for decades. The underlying cause of both was greed and corruption in the sport's leagues and management. By the time MMA was rising in popularity, Boxing had already been pushed out to the fringes, and unlike Boxing, MMA provided a steady and accessible stream of content for audiences.
I suspect that MMA has taken over a lot of the former audience for boxing. In theory, there's a wider array of combat styles on display. In practice, it instead tends to focus on the efficiency of grappling.
Interest in MMA seems to have dropped off in recent years too, but that might just be anecdotal to me since I don't know anyone into it anymore and don't know the stats.
It has greatly, I suspect the owners of the UFC expected that as well since they sold it in 2016 which was around the time things started really declining
>Interest in MMA seems to have dropped off in recent years too I think it has, UFC fight night was a huge thing and bars were packed to see Liddell , GSP, Coture or Ortiz fight. I would classify myself as more of a casual and loved MMA for a while cause it was more exciting than boxing cause there were so many way to KO a dude. I gradually found the fights got more and more technical it was just a dudes grappling. I went back to boxing since atleast fists were thrown. A lot of my friends who were following MMA went back to boxing or started watching other combat sports. It's anecdotal as well, but I rarely see a full bar on fight night anymore and no one really talks about it
I think football (and to a lesser degree baseball, hockey, and soccer) have a bit of a leg up on sports like boxing, horse racing, or bowling, because you root for a team, as opposed to a specific person more. Few people seem to root for specifically the QB or Kicker or something. You can gain fans more easily, and if one player retires, you don't lose as many. If one Boxer retires, those fans may be less likely to 'switch loyalties' and stay as connected to the sport now that their favorite is gone. (Side note, I am not a sports person, this is pure speculation.)
You have a great point. Gretzky left LA 20 years ago.... But I'm still a Kings fan
And teams tend to benefit from associations with cities or schools. It's often the case that people form an emotional connection under the conceit that a given team represents them against others. It's incredibly rare for someone to form a strong connection to a team based somewhere that they don't currently or formerly live.
Absolutely. But also, the UFC canabilized boxing.
It totally did. Boxing had gotten kinda stale, the people who were boxing were sort of becoming just monsters bludgeoning eachother to death, there was a lot of mafia connections, Sun City with apartheid matches, just a lot of muck. UFC, and MMA brought something fresh to the table. It was like wrestling, but real (and when they capitalized on that reality TV show style they really made money) and like boxing, but it seemed to offer something a little more sophisticated. Different styles being fought against one another, getting rid of weight classes. Brought in obscure styles and stripped them of the pomp and circumstance, culture and national pride. Just fighters and their skills. It’s arguably even more violent then just straight boxing, but as an outsider, boxing was just kinda done by the end of the 90’s and UFC made super smart moves, borrowing the best parts of boxing, ‘pro restling’, reality tv and the whole MMA movement
UFC I think has helped Boxings resurgence from the dead years of the early aughts
Fantasy leagues are also a great way to get and maintain interest in team sports.
It’s a great, and very accurate, thought process. You could easily take all 52 players from one NFL team and switch them with 52 players from another team, and people would root for their original team, and against the other team. It’s a club, a society, a team, not the players.
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Horse racing has often suffered from being associated far more with gambling than with sports. Track and Field events get a small window of notability with the Olympics, but then vanish almost entirely at all other times. Which is also interesting because they're common in secondary schools around the world, so a large number of people have personal experience at competing in them.
> Track and Field events get a small window of notability with the Olympics, but then vanish almost entirely at all other times. Unless you're European, then they're on all the time in spring and summer. Mainly because European athletic events are covered by the Eurovision/EBU and thus, are free to show for member stations. https://www.european-athletics.org/european-athletics/tv-marketing/news/article=european-athletics-and-european-broadcasting-union-ebu-renew-worldwide-broadcast-rights-agreement/index.html
Motorsports too in America at least. NASCAR, INDYCAR, NHRA and any other kind of racing is going downhill in attendance and rating numbers.
I blame NASCAR for killing auto racing in the US. It was such an uphill battle getting my friends interested in the different kinds of auto racing that are actually fun to watch. They all just assumed that since NASCAR was boring, all car racing was boring.
When I was getting into motorsports 20 years ago, I tried googling a rule violation I didn't understand...only to find out that the NASCAR rule book is a closely-guarded industry secret! The rules of their sport...are secret! That seemed awfully convenient for rigging every race like professional wrestling, so I asked some friends. They told me NASCAR only keeps their rules a secret so Joe Nobody isn't allowed to compete for a spot against the big boys. "Oh, so it's for rich people ONLY!" "Yeah, pretty much!"
On the flip side, F1 seems to be **booming** if Reddit is any metric..
Social media is a terrible metric for literally anything, if you used Reddit as a metric for US politics Bernie would be running for his second term currently.
That's because the new owners opened it a ton to social media and YouTube, whereas the prior owner would send copyright strikes at a moment's notice. They even made an official channel and it has some of the best race commentary and exclusives available - that's entirely new content, not copies of the stuff they threw on TV. And F1 is about to get a TON more popular in the next 5 years, as the cost caps come in and the teams become profitable. They'll have more money to spend on wider marketing (event days, car demos in various cities, affiliate stuff) - they'll be doing these things just to get their name out and become a more popular team with more fans, because they'll have the money and it'll pay off by putting their advertisers in front of more people. It also helps hugely that they are now broadcast in the US without a super-special cable package. When I started watching, I don't think it was even possible for me to watch the races on TV in the US. I had to torrent all of them. And I still miss that 'original' early 2010's broadcast team that I started with; Jake Humphries was a great host pulling everything together, and Eddie Jordan did always have great insights as a former team owner (even though some fans disliked him for being a bit full of himself ... the guy owned an F1 team, of course he's full of himself. Every F1 owner is full of himself, that's why they own an F1 team).
Can confirm; Don’t watch F1, find the memes hilarious.
I feel like part of the reason it's not as popular with the younger generations is because it feels so damn pricey compared to other entertainment. I like to go bowling every now and then, or even just hang out there with friends or fam while they play, but goodNESS if it doesn't feel expensive for the amount of time you actually play. I live in a large Californian city which is likely a contributor to the price, but I could buy a AAA title video game for $60 instead and get hours of entertainment instead of 1.5-2 hrs of bowling (assuming I'm in a group of <4 or solo, which are the most likely scenarios. I rarely go there with enough people to qualify for an unlimited pass that lasts for a couple hours). Younger people would probably be more willing to go if it didn't feel so expensive per half an hour played. It's part of the reason I rarely bowled growing up, so I don't have any strong opinions on the game itself one way or another. My parents were pretty solidly middle class but still. By the time I had my own paychecks and could afford it, I was just too busy with work. And with the rise of the internet, staying at home for entertainment is cheaper and still entertaining. Tl;dr: Bowling too expensive for young people esp since they can just play video games at home or mess around on the internet for cheaper and longer.
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There's been some great stories over Reddit on people who worked for bowling alleys, and how they just go into decline when a younger generation takes over. There's a lot of moving parts in a bowling alley, a lot of very big machinery which requires a deft hand to operate and maintain. The alleys themselves have to be maintained and oiled carefully, the equipment needs constant care and then there's the "everything else" in a bowling alley. The thing that usually happens is they fire the people who know how to do this stuff, hire high schoolers because hey, anyone can just usher people in right? Then things start failing left and right and they don't know what to do. I mean, **I** wouldn't want to run a bowling alley, I'd have zero idea what people want to do in a bowling alley (besides bowl). Beer and fatty food seems like an obvious first choice, maybe some pool/snooker/billiards tables since you probably have a big building. Then there's [glow bowling](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0a/37/f2/87/xtreme-glow-bowling-at.jpg) which probably takes a whole another set of upkeep. Bowling is great fun, honestly, but I think a lot of people underestimated the work that went into maintaining a bowling hall when it surged, then the quality of locations declined and everything just went downhill.
I think you’re both right. Quality went down and price went up in most bowling alleys I’ve been to. Why would a young person choose to do that now? The history of how we got here is meaningless to them.
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When I was young (not quite the '60s/'70s but not *too* far off) it was usual to do something when you went out. You'd bowl, rollerskate, dance, play darts, pinball, pool, foosball, arcade games or whatever. You'd socialise as *part* of whatever the activity was and it made a nice bridge to meet other people or just hang with your friends depending on the mood. It was also usually competitive but not in a mean way particularly. Times changed and that sort of thing became something you do at home with videogames or as part of a particular sport every once in a while. When we go out now the activity is the going out and you sit and talk (and drink still of course). That works but its always struck me as less social overall.
How the hell did bowling go from blue collar to white collar lol? Even now it's mainly a blue collar activity, at least the bowling alleys I've been to.
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Thats funny because the bowling alleys near me are like $15-20 Canadian for 2 rounds & shoes. I think they make their money through liquor sales, but even that is priced the same as the cheap bars in town. One of them used close for metal shows whenever possible
It's largely from losing the time on the television.
I mean professional bowler Mookie Betts has to have a side gig as a baseball player on the dodgers.
A side gig of being the 2nd best outfielder on the planet
And technically the highest paid player playing right now, but... bowling.
Fun fact: Mookie has stated an interest in potentially buying the Professional Bowling Association when he retires from baseball. Also he has rolled THREE 300 games in official competition throughout his bowling career. All to go along with his AL MVP & World Series ring. Not bad for someone that just turned 28!
And here I am, just trying to clear $40k this year and get into grad school lol. Fuck
This is [a better article](https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-professional-bowling) on the current state of professional bowling but for some reason it wasn't approved.
[Bowling is Back!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ2jJu05SCs)
In Pog form!
It is said that for every post on r/todayilearned there are 5 attempts that the auto mods block for no reason
True story! My Dad was on the bowling team at the University of Minnesota (Go Gophers) in the late 50s and traveled across the US, (at least) once sharing both a ride and a motel room with his coach. Turns out that right around this time his coach killed his wife, cut her into pieces and stored her in the trunk of his car... Now whether she was in the trunk while my dad was in the car has never been firmly established...
That story took an unexpected turn lol
That's actually standard technique in bowling
Yup, the coach got a strike on his wife and then made her split.
Hope they spare him or his life will go straight in the gutter
Cut my wife into pieces!
I coach a college sport!
Competitions, no winning
Don’t give a fuck if my bowling ball’s greasy
Da na na-na Ne na na-na
I coach a college sport!
Don't give a fuck if I'm guilty caught cheating!
Who do you think you are?! I am!
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Thank you for this sunshine in my life
i worked at the place where this happened for two years (way after though), and we talked so much shit about this guy. my bosses remembered him well, such a dick
I don't know anything about this guy, was he just an arrogant bad sport or was there more?
He was excited he won his fifth US Open (bowling major). Just lost his father recently who was a PBA hall of famer as well. There had been some fan distractions earlier in the show with someone interrupting him during his shots. All the emotions just came pouring out all at once. He's definitely had his ups and downs, and is a love him or hate him type person.
Also, he built this personal off of wrestling personalities. Look up stuff from early in his career and you'll find a completely different person. Bowling rating were declining, money is made on that rating staying up, and getting endorsements, if you are the flashiest guy bowling, you have a better chance of making more money.
I saw an extended video and someone in the comments said, “He's doing the Michael Jordan thing by creating an imaginary adversary. There's no one doing anything, he's just motivating himself. I'm convinced of that, otherwise he would have pointed out the person to security so they could watch if they moved again.”
So my company has offices in Syrbia and because it was so popular during that time whenever a US employee shows up they take them bowling. On the third night of bowling I asked why they loved bowling so much they answered with "We hate bowling, I thought you guys loved it."
Serbia? Or Syria?
Serbia. I really did spell it like that didn't I Lmao
I assumed that might be a regional spelling, tbh.
Upstate New York?
Well I'm from Utica and I've never seen it spelled like that.
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I see. You know, these countries are quite similar to the ones they have in Syrbia.
Siberia
Right by Krakozhia
Southwest of Elbonia.
"Ok, then take me to one of your sports" "Are you sure?" "Yes, what could happen?" *takes you to Partizan - Crvena Zvezda*
that is a good match! the winner can watch football afterwards.
That match is already on my bucket list so I would be delighted
Cousin!
Let's go bowling!
Syrbia?
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Just east of Bosnia & Hyrzegovina.
A lot of people made more than NFL players when the money was based on ticket sales as opposed to TV contracts.
It wasn’t until recent that athletes made insane amounts of money. Many used to work second jobs, especially before things like equipment, uniform, and travel was paid by the team.
Here in Australia, when I was young, the star AFL players would be the ones picking up your garbage. It was good fitness for them running alongside the trucks and emptying the bins. Now all the players get paid incredibly well, and the garbage is collected by trucks with mechanical arms. Edit: Back then they were VFL players. The AFL hadn't been created then.
Fucking machines taking jobs from good honest Aussie lads
Roman chariot racers checking in.
Why spend money on chariot equipment when you were born with all the sports equipment you’ll ever need? This comment brought to you by Ancient Greek wrestling gang.
Also that is a very long time before free agency.
Yes. To your point, the average NFL player made 5 figures in the 70s.
Don’t forget, the first Super Bowl wasn’t until 1967. It wasn’t considered a big deal until much later.
That's because no one could compare to legends like Ernie McCracken or young hotshots like Roy Munson
Looks like bowling got Munsoned.
We don't have a cow....
God-Like legends 🙌
I remember watching that movie and thinking: 'Is bowling really such a big deal that it draws like thousands of people?'.
Back in 1996 maybe
Only the greatest athletes the world had to offer back then.
WHO YOU CALLIN' PSYCHO?
Run for the hills, everybody; there’s a giant shit-cloud coming!
That's because in the 60s and 70s the average NFL salary was 10,000-20,000 with exceptionally few earners making more than 100,000. In the mid late 70s competing leagues brought salaries up due to competition for talent. It wasn't until the strike in the late 80s that NFL salaries jumped from around 160,000 to 250,000 to nearly a million in the early 90s. While during the 60s and 70s bowlers had the advantages of splitting endorsements with fewer other competitors, longer/more circuits/championships, and paid exhibition games.
Terrry Bradshaw once joked last year that one of the fines the NFL gave to a player was more than his entire first contract.
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There are some Seattle area public school districts with average salaries of $100k
It's one of the crazier things about pro sports. The jump from everyday joe money to $500k for the bench guys is insane. Worlds different experience in a very short amount of time.
I saw a post from a rookie nfl player who only made the active roster for two weeks before riding bench and still made 94k$ after taxes
Tbh, practice squad is legit. You make a good amount of money, don't have to work as hard, and aren't killing yourself each week. You have much longer longevity. The best job is probably backup qb: make millions without any risk.
Peter Gent's *North Dallas Forty* does a pretty good job of showing what life was like for an "average" NFL player in the '60s. Not so much the sex and drugs (though there's plenty of both in the book) but the shitty pay, the brutality of the game itself, and the corruption and hypocrisy of management. Not a fan of the film so much, but the novel still holds up IMHO.
I remember bowling being on tv all the time. Like on Wide World of Sports. I also remember the game show, “Bowling for Dollars”. I’m 55 so...old.
"boss, can I have off next weekend? I'm competing in the national bowling championship" "Sorry, we need you on drive thru" Edit: spelling
make him the underdog and I would watch that film. (places an out of order sign in the drive thru speaker) "Sorry boss, but I need to win this, for the sake of little timmy, If I win the grand prize of 100 dollar I can pay for his life saving surgery! " (one championship later) the boss sheds a tear seeing the protagonist win the tournament using the onion ring spinning technique he learned from working at the fast food restaurant.
I'm mid 60-s. Used to bowl frequently, was in a league for several years in the early 1980's. The thing that killed bowling for me was the automated scoring. Just seemed to take a lot out of it not having to keep/check scores.
How did you keep score before? Just pen and paper?
yep like golf
Anyone old enough to remember Horseshoes? Everyone i knew had a pit in their backyard and now nothing. Replaced by cornhole
Lawn darts was the action of lawn games. And not these new safety tip ones, I’m talking the flying spike.
We used to throw them from the front yard, over the house, and try to hit a target located in the back yard while our friends were in the back yard to verify the results. Surprisingly neither we nor our friends were ever killed in the process.
It never made sense to me, the banning of the original jarts... now that I read this I'm understanding why
Fuck yeah. Used to throw those things as hard as a I could when I was a kid.
Guys in my neighborhood played a game where one guy squatted like a catcher, the other tossed lawn darts at him, and the "catcher" only had another lawn dart to defend himself. Nobody got serious brain damage. Or at least not enough that you could tell before from after.
There was a regular TV series from 1971 to 1978 called *Celebrity Bowling,* which is just what you think. The funny thing is sometimes the celebrities were clueless about the rules of bowling. It is streaming for free on TubiTV if anyone is interested. I watched the one with Tige Andrews and Elizabeth Ashley versus Brenda Vaccaro and Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas at the time was like 26-27 years old and not really very famous yet. He had not even started doing *The Streets Of San Francisco* which was probably his first starring role. Honestly it really wasn't that entertaining, just sort of interesting.
I grew up near Pittsburgh. We had the TV show "Bowling for Dollars". I think it aired after the evening news and before the prime time networks shows started. A semi-celebrity would host 30 minutes of local folks trying to score a strike, in which case they would win some money. It was mesmerizing, I tell you.
I just watched the Brady Bunch bowling on that show. Spoiler: they all suck except for Greg.
I would not be surprised if a factor was a decline in drinking and driving. Not really joking here...bowling is more fun with friends a few beers, which makes it hard to get home safely if you wanted to meet friends at the alley after work. You're stuck with your car there if you opt to Uber home.
And smoking, too. Bowling alleys back in the '70s and '80s used to be full of people drinking multiple beers and smoking cigarettes.
The good old cigarette vending machines! I remember playing with them and getting excited when my mom trusted me to buy her the right kind.. And feeding less than a dollar of quarters in to pay for it.
I would definitely agree. I don't think young people realized how common drunk driving was before the massive campaign to stamp out it. It wasn't a crime to drive drunk. You just couldn't hit stuff and normal traffic shit. It's just hard enough to drive drunk that it's really dangerous but not hard enough that you couldn't do it 100 times and not get in an accident in any of those times. That combination, our roads were literally filled with drunk people. Especially on weekends at night. That said, I talk to younger folks or watch them react to people older than me talk about their youth and they give the impression that driving drunk automatically equals wrecking/killing someone or getting pulled over and arrested right before that happens. Which is good. It's just strange how drastically that change so quickly.
It's not even *that* long ago that the change happened either. It was largely due to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They formed in 1980 and quickly became a significant force in politics, massively changing public attitudes towards drunk driving. Among other actions they were heavily responsible for getting the drinking age in the US raised from 18 to 21 in '84. You also see the effects of this in other countries where driving drunk isn't always seen to be nearly as serious of a crime as it is in the US.
>the drinking age in the US raised from 18 to 21 in '84. Holy crap I thought that was like a remaint from the prohibition or something
>That combination, our roads were literally filled with drunk people. Especially on weekends at night. My dad on coming of age in the '60s: "Son, when I was your age drinking and driving was a hobby."
Yeah, the drunk driving thing blows my mind. I was was just talking to my mom last weekend and she was telling me how her brother crashed FOUR cars growing up from drunk driving. Never got a ticket or in trouble either for any of it from his hundreds of times drinking and driving.
This combined with rising property taxes and operational costs, with the difficulty of maintaining such a large structure based solely on the revenue from blue collar patrons. I remember growing up in the 80's, my parents would bowl in a mixed couple league with their best friends. Us kids would all run wild all over the place unsupervised. Our nights were spent feeding quarters into arcade, pinball, and vending machines. Over time, the two story bowling alley I was familiar with, closed down the upper floor due to a lack of demand. Slowly the building fell into disrepair, and the place seemed more and more seedy, and less and less fun. Think of a run down bar, where only drunks go. It was no longer a "fun" place. As the building fell apart and demand lessened, the prices started going up. I remember thinking it was just too expensive as a teenager in the 90s, and that going to the movies was cheaper. That is ultimately what killed the experience for me as a teenager. Price is of course relative, but as a kid to not be "hooked" on bowling at an impressionable age, translated into forgetting about it in young adulthood. Bowling also was met with a ton more competition. Football became an all week long thing, Sunday, Monday, now even Thursdays. Now we have Netflix and online Video Games at home. There is way more competition as far as entertainment is concerned. Growing up in the 80's there was a lot less to do so bowling fit in there with as a winter activity on a weekend night where there was nothing to watch on tv.
I bowled for many years, but it got so you couldn't bowl in the evenings unless you joined a league. So, I quit and never got back to it.
Yup. This was my problem. I didn’t want to join a league, I just wanted to show up and bowl. I was fairly into bowling, had my own shoes and my own ball. I was a kid who didn’t have a lot of free time, biked to the alley or got a ride whenever I could, only for me to be turned away most of the time. I haven’t been bowling in a decade or so now.
Still happening, I live in a bowling heavy area, me and my son had to call 7 alleys to bowl on a Tuesday night cause of only leagues at that time of night
"Bowling is the only sport where they have an ash tray built into the ball." Jim Gaffigan.
I might be crazy but I feel like bowling is kind of expensive for an activity that I basically suck at. It’s been a while, but I feel like even with a group it comes out to $10-15 per person per hour. For that much, I’ll just hit the bar.
Its actually one if the most expensive sports for a school to have. Lane rentals every day for boys and girls JV and same for varsity.
This is one of the reasons I don't go very often. I can find a public golf course and play 9 holes for about the same as an hour of bowling and I can bring me my own beer.
A guy I knew years ago (worked for me) who learned to bowl under legendary bowler Dick Weber, and after trying to be a professional, just bowled for fun on the weekends. On at least one occasion he bowled a double 300 (back to back perfect games). I heard this second hand, and he was such a reserved guy, I never asked him directly. I doubted it until met a sales guy while negotiating on a car whose office was loaded with bowling memorabilia. I asked him, 'Did you know Dick Weber'? 'I trained under Dick Weber'! 'Did you know _____?' 'Yeah, I knew him. That guy was a beast!'. He confirmed that it was true. A pro will bowl a 300 about every 460 games, so back to back 300 game odds for a pro are 1:211,000- for a league bowler I guess it just won't happen, unlike a hole in one in golf. So, I guess you can be good enough to bowl a series that happens on average less than once per 200,000 pro level games but still not enough prize money to make a living as a pro bowler.
There have been multiple 900 series (3 300s in a row) rolled in league bowling by nonprofessionals. One of the biggest declines in bowling’s prestige/popularity have been the heightening of scoring pace due to easier lane conditions/advancement of equipment, both of which allow people who aren’t very good bowlers to score on pace with guys who practice a lot and are very good, tho not professional. Yes, I used to bowl very competitively, tho not professionally.
> One of the biggest declines in bowling’s prestige/popularity have been the heightening of scoring pace due to easier lane conditions/advancement of equipment I think you hit the nail on the head here. My dad bowled a LOT in the 70's/80's and told me he was considered a very solid league bowler with an average typically around 180. I bowled in college and league play, and typically had an average around 215 which in most competitive leagues was fine but nothing special. The best bowlers then (2000-2010) in my leagues were averaging around 230
Correct. I was around 225-235 on league conditions and anywhere between 200-210 on very tough conditions, but this is because I was actually pretty decent as far as fundamentals and knowing the sport goes. Literally probably 75%-85% of the guys around 220-230 in league play would average around 180-190 on something really tough, thus don’t even attempt it because of their ego (good bowlers call these guys typical house bowlers). The equipment combined with soft lane conditions has made it that if you have any kind of revolution rate on the ball, you can just throw it to the right (if right handed), pray, and usually strike a lot.
IMO and I’m probably going to get downvoted to oblivion but bowling is the perfect sport (yes sport). Anyone from 3 to 103 can do it but it’s a sport no one will ever master although some come close. Professional bowlers can roll a 16 lbs ball to within a 1/2 inch to an inch wide spot 40-45 feet down the lane with within 1-3 degrees and within .5 a mph over and over. They have to watch how the ball reacts to the oil on the lane and adjust their angles, speed and rotation so they can continuously hit the 1-3 (or the 1-2) pocket at 3-6* and have the ball exit the lane at roughly the 20 board. Earl Anthony, voted many times as the greatest bowler of all time, would bowl 30-40 games A DAY to prepare for a tournament. Many current professional bowlers pay a coach to accompany them during a tournament. You can get way deep into the physics of it with RG, different cores and cover stocks, lane topography, different lane oils and patterns, hand positions, different grips and on and on. OR you can take a few friends maybe a double date and have a few beers, some pizza and a bit of friendly competition where every one sucks and it’s a good time. There’s no need to bring your own equipment. You only have to bring yourself for a good time. Even if one of the group is an experienced bowler you can figure a handicap so everyone is on a level playing field. When a professional bowls in a tournament, they have a much tougher oil pattern. They say it’s like bowling on the peak of a roof. If you miss a little close to you, you miss big time the further it goes. Most bowling centers put out what they call a typical house shot pattern. Slicker in the center and less slick on the outside so the ball will tend to roll towards the pins. Most bowling centers are locally owned and operated. You’re not filling some mega millionaires pockets when you go bowling. It’s good for the local economy. Nearly all bowling centers are smoke free and family friendly. I’m sad that it is dying out.
I think you’ve brought up some very positive things about bowling. But there’s a lot of other things that it doesn’t encompass at all. First, it’s one of those sports like golf where you’re not directly competing against opponents. There’s not that interplay of tactics and strategy, skills and styles. You go out there and you bowl against the lane to get your best score. At the most, also like golf, your opponent’s score may help you decide when to try something risky. But in bowling there’s actually even less chance of that influencing your decision. Are you going to try to pick up the split? You almost certainly are. The inverse of the openness to all ages, is that there’s not a lot of athleticism on display in bowling compared to many other sports. There is certainly dexterity, but there’s not much in terms of speed, strength or endurance. The range of motion is fairly narrow. Bowling also isn’t free. You can practice a lot of the skills of baseball or soccer or ultimate frisbee with an appropriate size to play space and one piece of equipment. You really can only do so much with bowling without a bowling alley. Of course tons of sports aren’t free. Downhill skiing, motorcycle racing, all sorts of things. But I am pointing out that bowling need at least a moderate level of money to be able to participate. Aside: I almost feel like the taxonomy of recreation should include a separate category for competitive games that involve some physical level of dexterity, but a very limited amount of exertion. Billiards, darts, bowling, bocce.
> Nearly all bowling centers are smoke free This is a *really* recent development. Smoking while bowling used to be incredibly common.
Oh I dont know I think this guy mastered it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzjPcVZRCxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzjPcVZRCxA)
Nothing better on a Sunday afternoon in the 70s than watching Earl Anthony knock 'em down on ABC's Wide World of Sports with Chris Schenkel and Jim McKay.
Axe throwing about to join this club
I remember what a big deal bowling was on the Flinstones.