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When the leaders of your sport all agree it's boring, you do have a problem.

When the leaders of your sport all agree it’s boring, you do have a problem.

There are 36 different sports being played at the 17th Asian Games. If you tried to sit down and come up with what those 36 various sports are, you’d probably miss a few. Like kabaddi. Just because you never heard of them. Then there’s fluff – like synchronized swimming – that you might not think of even though it is an Olympic sport too. Badminton too is both an Olympic sport and one played at the Asian Games and while you may consider it more a fun pastime for playing in the basement, you’d be surprised how bloody the world of competitive badminton can be. Way down on that list – as in those sports you would not think of because few think of them as sports – would be bowling.

But since Thailand has won both a gold and a silver medal in that sport at the XVII Asiad, we’ll give bowling a pass. As most potential spectators do. Kinda like with cricket. But that may soon change. Kevin Dornberger, the president of World Bowling, who was bored to tears watching the a tournament in Hong Kong last month, thinks the game needs an update. Because then it would become an exciting spectator sport. And may possibly even become a rival for tennis. But for the beer crowd.

Bowling is not an Olympic sport, although it did appear once as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Games. It is, however, an official sport of the Special Olympics and has been since 1975. Which should tell you something. It’s difficult to get serious athletes to compete in a sport that requires wearing shoes a few hundred people have already had on their sweaty feet. And while its popularity can be traced to being one of the few venues in which alcohol is made readily available to competitors, as a sport – one that requires a degree of athleticism – it leaves much to be desired. Even if bowling alleys often do smell like a men’s locker room.

Naked bowling might help bring the sport out of the '50s. On second thought, never mind.

Naked bowling might help bring the sport out of the ’50s. On second thought, never mind.

Nonetheless, there are 177 athletes representing 19 nations who’ll be sticking their fingers in tight little holes at the 17th Asian Games. With luck, there may even be as many spectators. And since not all luck is good, World Bowling’s president is forced to be one of them.

“I’ve watched more world championships competitions than anyone in the world,” Dornberger told The Associated Press on Wednesday on the sidelines of the 17th Asian Games bowling competition in Incheon. “And it has occurred to me that the people who say we are boring have a point.” 300 of them in fact. If you’re keeping score.

“I’m open to anything because I love our sport,” Dornberger said. “I love tradition, but it’s vital that we become an Olympic sport. If we have to be dragged into the 21st century to do that, I’m ok with that.”

He’s suggesting some radical changes to the game which he hopes to see implemented by the 2016 World Championships in Qatar. While you may think adding hurdles would help, or – not realizing what the average bowler’s body looks like – skimpy body hugging uniforms, Dornberger’s ideas are a bit more basic. First, because bowlers are not known for their math skills, he thinks every strike should count for 30 points, no matter what the next ball is. And spares would count for 20. They could do away with the traditional perfect game score of 300 too. Which made for a better movie than an athletic score anyway.

There are more exciting things you can do with a ball.

There are more exciting things you can do with a ball.

He would also like to see an arrangement similar to the soccer World Cup that would pit players against each other in a group format, culminating in finals. Scoring, possibly only in the finals, could be simplified into a frame-by-frame showdown. The player winning the frame would get one point. Any player getting to six points would automatically be the winner, and that would be the end of it. But then only a bowler would think basing your sport’s scoring on soccer would keep it out of the gutter. Because there’s nothing like un-complicating a complicated system by complicating it further.

Other leaders of the sport agree that it’s time for a change. Bill Hoffman, a five-time world champion and Hall of Fame bowler who is coaching Hong Kong’s team at the Asian Games, says competitions last too long. “It took 11 1/2 hours to complete the two rounds of play today,” he said. “That is way too long for climaxes.” Not that bowlers are known for scoring that many climaxes anyway.

Mike Seymour, an Australian who is the World Tenpin Bowling Association’s vice president, said a working group is scheduled to make four or five proposals at an executive board meeting in December in Abu Dhabi. His vision of the sport’s future is that it will soon start to look more like tennis. “I think we will see change,” he says. “I think the industry in general knows the need for change so that we are more relevant in popular culture again.”

Because nothing would make bowling more fun for spectators than using tennis, or the World Cup soccer format as a competition model.

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It’s a shame the world of competitive bowling is considering such extremes in order to entice more viewers considering it had the opportunity to shine back in 2012, but let that PR bonanza slip through its fingers. Way before Michael Sam gave his boyfriend some tongue on live TV, Scott Norton – who has just won the 2012 PBA Chameleon Championship in Las Vegas – gave his husband Craig Woodward a big hug and a short kiss live on ESPN. That coulda been the kiss that was heard around the world, but since no one was watching, few remember and it took another two years before the haters vilified ESPN for showing the gays some love.

[‘The XVII Asiad’ are a series of posts about hot competitors and general articles about the 2014 17th Asian Games of interest to gay men. So, yeah, lots of hot male eye candy. Click the XVII Asiad’ graphic below for additional news, stories, and pictures.]

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