That's pretty excessive sandbagging. There's a difference between "Hey, I'm just going to miss a little so I don't strike, keeping my average from jumping up another 5 pins a night" and "My average is only 81" then throwing a 210 average series.Originally Posted by icon
When they put in 5 and 10 pin drops that will only promote them to dump even more. I see that in my league they try to dump at the beginning of the season first 3 weeks to get to the drop so they can abuse handicap, or they drop right at the end of the season so they can come in 5 or 10pins lower the next season to stack a good team.
I don't agree with this. Handicaps, whether its golf or bowling get people interested.
I use to golf in an annual outing. I was horrible...barely knew how to play. I'd get 177 over 18 holes. The only prizes I'd ever win was "most lost balls". One year, in the championship round I had the best round I ever played. Not good for scratch golfers...I mean I shot probably a 125. I won the tournament and the trophy. Sure, there were guys that shot 102, 100, 95, 92...but if there was no handicap...what would possibly be the point of ever even playing?? I've been playing golf for 10 years and never had a score under 115.
Same with bowling. You get 3-4 ole buddies together that have 215 averages...how are the Lanes going to find 9 other teams that want to pay $24/week to play against them? They won't.
My solution....other than being more strict with sandbaggers...divisions. A scratch division that plays for money, handicap division that plays for trophies. At some point...the 195+ average players will want to move up and play scratch...and at some point, maybe some of the better scratch bowlers will want to move up and play in tourneys rather than house leagues.
Unfortunately, it's like any sport:
1) When money is involved, people WILL cheat. Golf, paintball, bowling, hockey...every sport I've played in...when money was involved, people would cheat.
2) There's always gonna be that really good player that just wants to hammer the competition and is too afraid to play against people who could beat him. So instead of going to scratch tournaments and maybe a PBA open....he's gonna join a handicap house league where he's "king" for a day. Hockey was the WORST for that....guys who used to play junior hockey joining C-Leagues scoring 3-4 goals a night. Or even college football...non-conference games...University of Michigan vs. Our Lady of St. Francis....69-0.
why do they promote sandbagging???? They don't have to promote it! Sad but true, it's HUMAN NATURE!! Greed, the desire to win at all cost, including honor, and did I say money! Not all of us are sandbaggers, just like not all politicians are dishonest, cheats, and liars, ,,, , well maybe not a good analogy! But you get my point!! Honor is a rare quality now days!
Just having a thought about this: Since you can't account for all the scumbag cheaters out there, and you don't want to discourage new bowlers buy having a free-for-all handicap system, why not change the way scoring is done in the league by making the games further out in the season count for less points?
So, the first 20% of the game sets are scored by each individual game win gets 5 points and total pin count gets 5 points for a total of 20 points per week. The next 20% of games the points drop to 4 per game and 4 for total pin count for a total per week of 16 pts. The decrease in overall points keeps going until the final 20% of the games where you get 1 point per for a total of 4 points total. This may look like all the games in September are worth 20 points, the games in October are worth 16 points, the games in November are worth 12 points etc..etc...etc... The only down side I can see to this is that by the 3 round or so, if somebody is way a head, it would almost impossible to catch them, but at least you would not get teams 'playing off' for the first 3 or 4 weeks to establish a high handicap and then pour it on during the last part of the season.
Not sure if this would work well, and would be a bit confusing for folks to track at the team level....
The best way to handle these type of things is "divisions". The "problem" is...divisions require a large number of teams...which most sports can't generate. Like in hockey or softball...lots of teams...easy to make divisions. But as soon as you have a few elite teams...but not enough to make a full division...then you're screwed. But if it's "possible" to make divisions...that could work rather well. They do that in that ABT and TAT tournaments. They have a <202 division, under <189 division, etc...
The problem is, it doesn't really solve the sandbagging...because people will sandbag to get in the lower division. I don't know....nevermind...it's incurable.
In Bag: (: .) Zen Master Solid; (: .) Perfect Mindset; (: .) Brunswick Endeavor; (: .) Outer Limits Pearl; (: .) Ebonite Maxim
USBC#: 8259-59071; USBC Sanctioned Average = 192; Lifetime Average = 172;
Ball Speed: 14.7mph; Rev. Rate: 240rpm || High Game (sanc.) = 300 (268); High Series (sanc.) = 725 (720); Clean Games: 198
Smokey this is not 'Nam', this is bowling. There are rules. Proud two-time winner of a bowlingboards.com weekly ball give-away!
This is probably the best way to eliminate sandbagging. The company league I play in is like this....37 teams over 5 divisions (A-E). Each division has 8 teams (3 of the divisions have a "computer" team that the teams in that division play against...the computer teams get slightly less than the average score for the division they are in). If you win your division you move up to the next division, and the last place team drops down. This is by far my favorite kind of league set up, since you are bowling scratch against people of similar ability.
The biggest problem, like you noted, is the number of stable teams required (you can't just form some random team every year). You do still get some teams "sandbagging" so they don't move up to the next division because they think they will lose every week (stupidest thing I've ever heard), but that's also usually the minority.
As mentioned in one of the previous post it all boils down to greed in 99% of the cases. In my Friday league it runs rampant as the doubles pots atr $1800-2500/Game. Originally they were second and third game. But you would contantly see guys go 150/250/260. We changed to a drawing in the third game where we drew 2 chips to determine which games were the doubles. The chips are drawn in the 7th or 8th frame of the third game. It has slowed it down some but we willstill see guys throw away the last 2 or 3 frames if they draw the 1st & 2nd game. Or we will see guys have two good games to start and will then throw away the third because they know they will cash in at least one. They guys who run the pots make about $7,000 (they get 10% off the top) per year so they don't want to change anything. I made the suggestion to hire a secretary to do a pot average sheet. What would occur is any game 20+ pins below your average would not count against your average, We used to use this in a weekly red pin where therere was a $600.00 shot in which what you needed gor pinfall was based on your average and it worked well
Still love the game but had to quit because of my left leg amptation
High game 299 x 5 High sanctioned series 805 (1989)
Thats the other part that they need to do. I can't really stand soccer...but the way Euro leagues are set up where the best team in one league replaces the worst team from the year before is a pretty darn good system. That way, if you want to try and sandbag to win your <202 championship...guess what...you're in the <221 next season.
In Bag: (: .) Zen Master Solid; (: .) Perfect Mindset; (: .) Brunswick Endeavor; (: .) Outer Limits Pearl; (: .) Ebonite Maxim
USBC#: 8259-59071; USBC Sanctioned Average = 192; Lifetime Average = 172;
Ball Speed: 14.7mph; Rev. Rate: 240rpm || High Game (sanc.) = 300 (268); High Series (sanc.) = 725 (720); Clean Games: 198
Smokey this is not 'Nam', this is bowling. There are rules. Proud two-time winner of a bowlingboards.com weekly ball give-away!
Well, that's the advantage of this system.....since the teams in the divisions are equal, there is no handicap, so you can't really sandbag your way to division champion. It is a really fun system though, and gives the league and teams some cool history.
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