the thing is, they do go up against other sports though. They go up against NCAA games on saturday and during the week. The only difference is, they get coverage on Sportscenter and ESPN News. The only time the PBA gets any kind of coverage is when something of "historical" significance occurs.. I/E a Woman makes the telecast, a bowler passes an all-time great in career titles, or a 300 shot on tv (in which case it's doomed to a 10 second mention in the top 10 most likely in the 6 spot)
Moving the show to saturday is going to have the same effect given that the majority of the season is in the heart of football season, you move the show from NFL (less games to deal with) to NCAA Football (a ton of games to deal with) at which point it does not matter which network it is on, the big four (ABC NBC CBS ESPN) are covering football from 12 noon til 10pm at the very earliest (eastern time).. College football has a bigger fan base than the NFL simply because College kids (including bowlers) go ape shiat over games, especially come conference play and rivalry week.
It's a dream to get coverage of bowling throughout the week on tv, but one thing that golf has over bowling is the fact that a golfer takes up air time through his planning stages of a shot. A bowler, no matter how slow, still takes on average 10-15 seconds on approach. People are not awe stricken by a bowler hitting a deck of pins. They are awe stricken by a golfer nailing a long drive or shanking it into a lake or bunker. Because basically the mentality is "wow I know I can't hit a golf ball that far or that well, but I know that my chances of knocking down this many pins are significantly higher." Add the fact that at bowling tournaments, there is action constantly going on, the viewer will get lost in the crowd of bowlers, it's impossible to focus on one particular bowler at a time. That's the beauty of golf on TV.. I know I will be seeing coverage of Tiger Woods because he's the leader.. I won't see just Pete Weber shots, I'll see Pete Weber and half a second later Rhino Page is 2 lanes away shooting, 3 seconds later Walter Ray is shooting, back to Pete for his spare, on to Parker who has front 8, too much going on at once.
sorry for the rant. It really does suck that we can't get proper coverage to attract sponsors..
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Justin Buford