Bowling is the only sport that the best aren’t rewarded as the best. Either through earnings or public acknowledgement.

Top prize for winning a regular Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) tournament this year is a mere $25,000. Phil Mickelson won 1.4 million dollars last week in Florida. Now $25,000 isn’t a bad pay day but remember, that’s IF you win.

But what if you don’t? Entry into a regular PBA tournament is $500. Minimum prize fund check is $1800. You profit $1300. Well, sort of. That’s before your travel expenses: food, gasoline (or airfare and rental car depending on tournament location) and your lodging at the local Motel 6 (sponsor of the PBA tour). Average weekly expenses for a touring player are in the $500 range. And don’t forget at the end of the year, you have to pay taxes on those earnings.

Ok so you’re thinking, “wow it’s a $500 entry and $500 in expenses and I’m guaranteed $1800 – that’s $800 in profit, not so bad. Especially considering that if I was good enough to make it on tour; I wouldn’t finish last every week”. Well… I forgot to mention that the tour season is only 20 weeks long. So what do you do for the other 32 weeks of the year that you still have a mortgage, car payment, phone bill & general living expenses? Your guess is as good as mine!  Good luck finding a decent payment “regular” job that allows you to take 20 weeks of vacation – in a row.

In 2008 NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Champion (think of it as player of the year), Jimmie Johnson won earnings of 7.3 million dollars. That’s one year of earnings. That’s not too bad for spending four hours in a car making a left turn.

Now let’s put that in perspective for anyone who’s not a math major. A professional bowler would have to win EVERY tournament (in a 20 week tour season) for 14 years to win that much money. You can get the calculator out…I’ll wait.

Ok so what IS the professional bowlers association doing for our sport? It’s pretty obvious they’re not providing an extraordinary lifestyle for their best athletes. And what are their corporate sponsors doing for the sport? Certainly TV wouldn’t be the same if Tiger Woods didn’t adorn the ever branded Nike swoosh on every piece of apparel he wore. Or Derek Jeter didn’t ask the standard: “is IT in you” in every other Gatorade commercial. What if Jeff Gordon wasn’t drinking Pepsi after every race he won?

The NBA, through its NBA Cares program, understands the responsibility they have to give back to the communities that support them and they do so through a diverse array of outreach programs and events. I can’t remember a PBA event where fans got to interact with the professionals in any manner that was free to them.

During the breaks on the PBA telecast, PBA sponsors air their commercials every week. Over the years only a small number of these commercials show a professional bowler, using or endorsing any of these products. Why??? I drink Gatorade, wear Hanes and eat Ball Park Franks because “I wanna be like Mike”.

More people participated in the sport of bowling last year then any other recreational sport. So why don’t people want to be like Walter Ray Williams?

I am a huge baseball fan and I try to watch as many games as I can during the season. However I haven’t participated in a game of baseball since I was in high school. Yet I live and die with every inning April through September in hopes that my team will get to see the likes of October.

On the flip side of that, I bowl in a league four times a week. I participate in local, state and national tournaments on a more than average basis. However, I could care less about who wins on the PBA telecasts on Sundays. Why is this?

This isn’t something that only I’m guilty for either. As I stated earlier, bowling has more participants than any other sport. Why aren’t these people watching the PBA telecasts? Why aren’t these people rooting their favorite bowlers onto victory? I hope you have the answer because I’m pretty sure I don’t and I’m almost positive no one at the PBA has it.