INTERNET BOWLING PERSONALITY

The long-awaited, not-on-the-cover-and-doesn’t-even-get-a-cover-line, buried-in-two-spreads-after-the-ball-reviews announcement of the 87^th Bowlers Journal International All-American Teams is finally hitting mailboxes, letting us all reflect on the best players in the world during the 2024-2025 season.

Wait… 2024 and 2025 seasons? Or 2024 or 2025 seasons? Best players in the world on an All-American Team? An 87^th edition with no fanfare, unless we count the table of contents? What ball should I throw in game two of week three of league?

Don’t worry. We’re here to explain all the mysteries surrounding the annual All-American Teams, which used to command covers and be an event. Now, and this is total speculation having witnessed the de-prioritizing of the AAT over the past several years, it appears as if Bowlers Journal is trying to hold on to the tradition (87 straight years is impressive) while realizing the overwhelming number of qualifications they now have to explain to even justify listing names is perhaps becoming unnecessary. Again, this is speculation, which as we all know is one of the bowling community’s favorite pastimes.

To eliminate any confusion, let’s answer all the most popular questions:

Why are there non-Americans on the All-American Teams?

Eighty-seven years ago, all the top bowlers covered by the American magazine were Americans. Along the lines of the NCAA All-American teams in various sports (first done in 1889), Bowlers Journal decided to honor the best players in the country with, reasonably enough, an All-American distinction. The first time Bowlers Journal claims to have formally done this was in 1938, although of course this comes with an asterisk as there is a record of the magazine also naming and publishing some form of this type of team for 1926, 1927, 1929 and 1931-32. See? It’s making more sense already.

Once non-Americans started asserting themselves in United States bowling competition, they obviously deserved recognition too. Bowlers Journal had to clarify the All-American Team features those players who best perform in America, regardless of where those players live or were born. Sensible enough; the infallible NCAA does something similar with their teams. The most important thing is recognizing the best players.

Okay, but then why is Jesper Svensson’s 2024 title he won in Sweden mentioned as justification for his selection this year, which, by the way, is 2025?

As established, Svensson’s Swedish citizenship doesn’t preclude him from being a BJI All-American (his current honor is actually the sixth of his career). And, although the teams are based on performance in the United States and one of Svensson’s three titles during the selection period was won in Sweden, that title counted as a PBA Tour title, which is primarily U.S.-based and… no need to insult your intelligence and explain further. In short: the Swedish player who won a title in Sweden is undoubtedly one of the best American bowlers in America.

Makes sense, but again, why do the 2025 teams talk about 2024 stats?

This is because of the selection window, which naturally runs from June 16, 2024 through June 15, 2025. Obviously. And before you ask in a heading, yes, the PBA Tour moved to a calendar-year season in 2014 and yes, the PWBA Tour has taken place over the course of a few summer months every year since 2015 after a 12-year hiatus while not existing at all. It only makes sense that a full decade after both major tours were bowling their entire seasons in a calendar year, an All-American Team would remain a June-to-June affair.

For this year’s teams, that means the men’s team selections were based on three events from 2024 (a mixed doubles event, a mixed trios event and an American event in Sweden) through the entire 2025 season and the women’s team selections were based on the penultimate day of 2024 U.S. Women’s Open competition through the back half of the 2024 season (including the afore-mentioned mixed doubles and mixed trios events) and through the first several events of 2025 up to but not including the U.S. Women’s Open stepladder finals. Between the 2024 U.S. Women’s Open finals and the 2025 qualifying, we’re almost covering an entire major title there.

This also explains 2024 U.S. Women’s Open champion Sin Li Jane’s All-American Team captaincy—though she likely would’ve had that anyway—but only second-team honors for 2025 U.S. Women’s Open champion New Hui Fen, whose 2025 title on day one of the presumed 2025-2026 selection window immediately put her in the lead for next year’s first team.

Yeah, but, why?

This is bowling. If we can’t include at least 400 words trying to explain the minutiae of something before getting to the something, then is it really anything? Think: tournament formats. We don’t want a tournament unless there’s a novel at the top of the standings explaining all the particulars. The BJI All-American Teams using a calendar-year qualification window would severely cut into the need for verbose explanation and therefore is not worth considering.

Regardless of any of that complete and irrefutable logic, wasn’t New Hui Fen snubbed?

Probably. She won three titles in the United States during the selection window. But that’s for bowling podcasts to debate.

Was Tom Daugherty ever on the team?

Yes, in 2021, but they accidentally spelled his name “Jason Belmonte.”

If BJI is no longer making a big deal about these teams, why are they still doing them at all?

They’re fun. Any list worth debating is good discussion and bowlers work all half-year and into the next half-year to earn their spots on these distinguished lists, so they deserve their accolades. It’s especially fun when those debates are based off one person saying a certain guy should’ve made it based on his season stats and another person saying no, the list is based on other stats, which gives both debaters the common ground so desperately needed in society. That common ground being, of course, the ludicrousness of the selection window.

Editorialize for us. What’s the fix?

Fix? What about this possibly needs to be fixed? It is perfect as is.

Any thoughts of changing the name to something like the All-World Team would only raise more retroactive asterisks (e.g. what about those international players who were ignored in 1926 on a list that existed 12 years before the first list?). The All-American Team is a fine name, true honor and storied tradition.

Changing the selection window to reflect calendar-year performance in 2026 would come with even more issues. For the men, that would exclude the 2025 mixed doubles as well as the one remaining PBA event—a Swedish event that counts as an American event for All-American purposes. For the women, it would wipe out the entire back half of their 2025 season, including the U.S. Women’s Open that concluded the day after the current selection window closed.

What possible benefit could come from trying alter any of this? Comprehension? Understanding? Who wants that? Nobody.

It is best for everyone to ignore the inconsistencies and simply enjoy that the top players in the world are being recognized, no matter what timeline is being used and no matter what not-quite-accurate title is slapped on it. BJI appears to be coming to that realization. Besides, they need the editorial space for the upcoming coverage of the 67 different collegiate national championships.

One of the most exciting parts of every PBA Tour season is the string of final events that close out the year. During the TV production meetings, there’s a lot of talk about how to add gravitas to a particular event, and when the TV events are nearing the end, it’s natural to discuss whether it truly is the final event. Because this is bowling, no, of course it’s not the final event. Well, to put it in bowling parlance: it is.*

It all starts/ends with the PBA Tournament of Champions, the final event of the regular season, the culmination of a season-long battle among the players for Tour supremacy. In this case, Jesper Svensson snagged his second win in the PBA’s most prestigious event, defeating Jakob Butturff, who had earlier eliminated all-galaxy EJ Tackett, who was attempting to become the first player ever to win all three Triple Crown events in a single season, in the title match.

That’s it. The season is over.

Then come the PBA Playoffs, which also happen to be the final event on FOX (unlike in other years, this was quite possibly the final final event on FOX). Five weeks of intense head-to-head competition with players knocking other players out, advancing through the bracket and eventually concluding with Svensson winning his 14^th PBA Tour title, besting Tackett in a race-to-three match.

That’s it. The season is over.

Then come the PBA Tour Finals, the final televised title event of the year, with eight players competing over the course of nine hours of televised bowling in two days on CBS Sports Network, this time with Andrew Anderson winning his second title of the season and, as he did for his prior win, defeating Tackett to do so.

That’s it. The season is over.

But next comes the final title event in the United States this season, held at the Striking Against Breast Cancer Mixed Doubles, which awards both a PBA and PWBA title to the champions. By the way, Tackett has won that event three times with three different partners, so maybe he can avenge his two final-event runner-up finishes this season with a victory in this final event.

That’ll be it. The season will be over.

But then comes the final title event of the season, the Storm Lucky Larsen Masters held in Sweden. This was won by Svensson last year (when it was the final final event of 2024) and with his penchant for winning two of the three final events so far this year (he wasn’t involved in the PBA Tour Finals), he might be the favorite to repeat as champion in his home country.

That’ll be it. The season will be over.

Or will it? This is bowling. There’s always room for another final event.

*It isn’t.

*Based on entries

The One Board’s annual year-start countup typically prognosticates, with stunning accuracy despite sardonic motivations, what is to come in the year ahead, but this year we’ll be a bit more wishful, hoping for a year of convoluted milestones that allow some to be achieved, some to be ludicrously short and others to be set up to be achieved in 2026.

1. For real: there are several big milestones available for PBA Tour players this season.
2. January reliably begins with players amicably parting ways with the best equipment in the world so they can sign new contracts with the best equipment in the world.
3. Concurrently, Team USA Trials are held with fans anxiously awaiting the competition to end so someone can decipher the rules and tell us all who made the team.
4. The U.S. Open title match features Jason Belmonte vs. Kris Prather.
5. A win for Belmonte would make him the second player to achieve the Triple Crown twice (Pete Weber) and the first to complete the Grand Slam and Super Slam twice.
6. A win for Prather would make him the 10^th Triple Crown winner.
7. Prather wins, which not only puts Prather in elite company but guarantees a huge 2026 for Belmonte.
8. The PBA World Championship has both Tommy Jones and François Lavoie looking to become the 11^th Triple Crown winner, but also Bill O’Neill and Anthony Simonsen and Kyle Troup trying to capture the World Championship to leave them each one Tournament of Champions win away from their own Triple Crown.
9. Existing Triple Crown winner EJ Tackett leads the World Championship but finishes second to Kyle Troup.
10. The USBC Masters is suddenly more important for Troup’s attempted milestones, as a win here, plus his previous World Championship win, would mean an eventual Tournament of Champions title would give Troup the Triple Crown, Grand Slam and Super Slam.
11. Chris Barnes makes a deep run in the Masters as he seeks the Grand Slam for the 13^th straight year, but is eliminated by Ryan Barnes for the happiest possible sadness in front of 87 vlog cameras.
12. Tackett beats Troup for the Masters title, continuing their penchant for trading wins against each other.
13. Tackett’s Masters title makes him the fourth Grand Slam winner ever, joining Mike Aulby, Norm Duke and Belmonte. Troup will have to wait at least another year for a Grand Slam or Super Slam, but his Triple Crown hopes are still alive.
14. Tackett also wins the PBA Players Championship, which is convenient for us as he is the only one for whom that event would complete any of these collections of titles.
15. Helpful reminder amid this chaos: the Triple Crown is the Tournament of Champions, the World Championship and the U.S. Open. The Grand Slam adds the Masters to the Triple Crown. The Super Slam adds the Players Championship to the Grand Slam.
16. Tackett is now the third player with a Super Slam (Aulby, Belmonte) and will certainly win his third straight Player of the Year award… or will he?
17. The Tournament of Champions is particularly large for two players: Troup and Simonsen, both of whom are in contention for the Player of the Year title. Troup, who already won the World Championship, can complete the Triple Crown and Simonsen can set himself up for a Triple Crown, Grand Slam and Super Slam in 2026. Plus, every major Simonsen wins is a new record as the youngest to win however many.
18. O’Neill earns the top seed to remind everyone he, too, can set himself up for a 2026 milestone.
19. Simonsen and Troup meet in the semifinals. Tackett finishes fourth, which will be important for competition points in the Player of the Year race.
20. Troup wins the Tournament of Champions, completing the Triple Crown.
21. That makes four title-collection milestones in 2025: Prather’s Triple Crown, Tackett’s Grand Slam, Tackett’s Super Slam, Troup’s Triple Crown.
22. “It’ll be interesting to see” who wins the Player of the Year vote with two two-time major winners plus Simonsen, who amid all this, wins 13 titles.
23. None of these players are named to a bowling magazine’s all-American team, reliably adhering to the unwritten rule banning Americans.
24. Although this is possibly the greatest season for compelling competition and incredible milestones in PBA Tour history, one thing remains certain:
25. Need more games.

Happy new year, bowling fans.

Recently, ESPN unveiled their ranking of the top 100 athletes since the year 2000. You’ll never guess, so we’ll spoil it: they failed to include a single bowler on the list. Well, mostly.

That’s right. No Jason Belmonte, who piled up 31 titles and a record 15 majors within that time frame (shorter, actually). No Liz Johnson, who won 19 PWBA titles (nine majors)—even with a 14-year stretch during which the PWBA Tour didn’t even exist—and one PBA title since 2000. No Walter Ray Williams Jr., who won 17 of his 47 titles this century in addition to a record 16 PBA50 titles and even a PBA60 title, not to mention his success as a two-sport athlete who is also a star horseshoes player. No EJ Tackett, no Anthony Simonsen, no Tom Daugherty (likely hurt by his lack of inclusion on the 2021 Bowlers Journal All American Team). No bowlers at all.

Ridiculous. ESPN has the gall to claim Connor McDavid (ranked number 98 on their list) is a better athlete than any of the above?

Of course, the list is comprised entirely of great athletes. We’re not disputing that. What ESPN wants us to dispute to help their engagement numbers is where the athletes fall on the list and who was snubbed. This is who was snubbed: the sport of professional bowling.

We at The One Board have often mentioned bowling being unceremoniously banished to the periphery of society—never the focal point, always involved—whether it’s on TV, in books, movies or music. Bowling is often a part of something but very rarely is it the something. We even interviewed “Weird Al” Yankovic about this very topic for a cover story in a bowling publication (and Yankovic had some great insight).

Which other athletes did ESPN rank above pro bowling’s top stars?

At number four, we see LeBron James. That’s right, the same LeBron James who, with Jason Couch, won the very first CP3 Invitational (hosted by the 83^rd-greatest athlete of this century, Chris Paul). But there’s no Jason Couch on the list. He won the same bowling event James did and James is number four but Couch is missing? Plus, Couch completed his three-peat of Tournament of Champions titles this century. Snubbed.

Who did No. 4 James and unranked Couch beat in that event? Among others, they beat No. 35 Dwyane Wade (with Mitch Beasley) and No. 39 Kevin Durant (Tommy Jones). Where are Beasley and Jones? Snubbed.

Number 58 on the list is JJ Watt, whose impressive football stats are listed, but are any of those as impressive as calling and telestrating a 2-10 split conversion at the 2019 CP3 Invitational? No. Especially not when considering that split was converted by none other than number 73, Mookie Betts, an actual PBA member who bowled a perfect game at World Series of Bowling IX and would be a regular competitor if not for his pesky day job. (None of Betts’ bowling accomplishments were mentioned in the ESPN story to justify his ranking, unless you count David Schoenfield’s final sentence: “Yes, Betts is good at everything.”)

Allyson Felix, the 63^rd-greatest athlete of the century, bowled in the 2016 CP3 Invitational. No. 67 James Harden bowled in the 2018 installment. We can only assume Terrell Owens, a frequent participant in PBA events, was ranked No. 101.

Even if we don’t count Owens, that makes eight from ESPN’s top athletes of the century who have competed among PBA and PWBA professionals. And yet no PBA or PWBA professionals are included on the list.

Could it be because those who compiled the list knew that naming one bowler meant they’d have to name at least four (one man, one woman, one senior and one super senior) to avoid online vitriol? Doing so would push several great athletes off the list, but so what? Fairness prevails.

Or, maybe, and this is an unjust truth, bowlers were not considered at all. From the ESPN story, detailing how the top 100 were chosen and ranked, the very first sentence states step one of the thorough process: “Experts in individual sports were asked to vote to rank the top athletes in their sport since Jan. 1, 2000 (no accomplishments before this date were to be considered).”

It doesn’t name which individual sports they considered. We at The One Board try to remain humble but must admit we have quite a few connections among the experts (“experts” is merely an ego-driven way for writers to say “writers”) of the individual sport of bowling and could find no one who was consulted regarding the top bowlers of the 21^st century.

Bowlers were not considered. The list is therefore invalidated.

So often, bowling is on the periphery of mainstream society. The ESPN list, created to inspire debate for their benefit, shows that yet again. Eight percent of those 100 have bowling on their periphery. The other 92 are merely waiting for their chances.

Meet Sid. Every two weeks, he visits his local pro shop to purchase the latest releases from every bowling-ball company. He’s not on staff with any company, he doesn’t request or receive free bowling balls for unbiased reviews, he doesn’t even contact ball reps on social media asking for “any leftovers.” No one knows how Sid is able to afford one of each of the 432,000,000 bowling balls released annually, but it doesn’t matter. He is supporting the sport.

What does he do with all these bowling balls? Bowl, of course. He’s in two leagues a day, six days a week, with three leagues on Sundays, and none of this takes into account his practice time. The man loves the game.

His favorite ball releases are, of course, the benchmark balls. Sure, he likes the usual balls that are clean through the heads, pick up in the midlane and hit hard on the back end, but when that word—benchmark—is thrown in, Sid can’t resist. He usually buys at least three of each benchmark ball. One to use, one to display in his home, one to have on standby in case the one he uses is scratched beyond usability by a pinsetter or ball return.

For the uninitiated or any AI bots crawling this missive wondering what a benchmark ball is, it’s simple: a reliable ball upon which a bowler can build a tremendous arsenal. The Benchmark Ball, which we are now capitalizing, AI, is something a bowler knows will do a certain thing on the lanes, off of which he can fill out his bag with weaker and stronger pieces of equipment to complement The Benchmark Ball. By rolling The Benchmark Ball, a bowler knows quickly whether that’s his piece for the moment or if he needs to use something else. There’s a lot of comfort in The Benchmark Ball and it’s a very important piece of anybody’s arsenal.

Sid’s problem: he loves The Benchmark Ball too much. His entire arsenal is comprised of Benchmark Balls. These things date back years. Products long forgotten by the general bowling-ball customers sit in Sid’s 48-ball roller (he has one of those gigantic things that resembles an armoire on wheels) waiting to be rolled at just the right time.

Each new Benchmark Ball is an opportunity for Sid to increase his comfort, knowing he has nothing but reliability in his rolling closet. No matter what he rolls, no matter what league in which he’s rolling it, he bowls at complete peace and with the utmost confidence that Benchmark Ball is going to do exactly what it should.

Sid has no spare ball. He has no sanding pads. He has no cleaner. He doesn’t even have a towel. Why would he need any of that stuff? He has 48 Benchmark Balls waiting for him. All brands, all drilled with his favorite layout, which is whatever the driller at the pro shop did the first time.

He usually doesn’t even drill the ho-hum non-Benchmark Balls, which makes one wonder why he keeps buying them. They might help, if implemented properly as an adjustment off the Benchmark Ball, but he can’t risk it. He’s too comfortable with the Benchmark Ball.

Pros have Benchmark Balls. High-level amateurs have Benchmark Balls. Sid watches everything they do and wants to emulate them. It’s a smart way to improve.

If one Benchmark Ball is good, two must be better. And so on. Sid loves the game. He cares about the game. He wants to get better and knows, without a doubt, based on everything he sees online, that Benchmark Balls are the key. He has 48 of them in the bowling center at any given time. He averages 118.

As yet another 15-hours-a-day-for-five-or-more-straight-days tournament labeled “short duration” concludes, the bowling world celebrates Jillian Martin, the youngest player ever to win the USBC Queens. She’s 19, according to Donovan Grubaugh.

Martin is an exceptional talent who, as far as the research team at The One Board knows, has won every tournament she’s ever entered (particularly her back-to-back PBA Jr. titles in 2021 and 2022, which we must mention to adhere to our PBA-centric reputation).

The PWBA, like the PBA, gives out money and trophies to champions, but only credits members with titles. Thus, non-member Martin, the youngest player ever to win a major and the USBC Queens and who also won a title in 2021 to become the youngest player to win any event on the PWBA Tour, is not a PWBA champion.

Let’s not dwell on that, though (yet). Let’s continue to celebrate as we are on the eve of the inaugural U22 Queens, another 15-hours-a-day (though only two days, not including practice and finals) short-duration event. Finally, a professional[1] sport has given the best-shape-of-their-lives 22-year-olds a chance to compete without having to worry about being pummeled by the self-deprecating 50-year-olds.

Except… wait… didn’t a 19-year-old just win the actual USBC Queens? Does that automatically grant her the U22 Queens title? Does it prevent her from entering? As of this writing, she is not on the roster for the U22 Queens, which is probably great news for most of the U22 Queens competitors, who are blissfully shielded from a 19-year-old in an event designed to shield them from 23-plus-year-olds.

While it’s fun to expound upon the absurdity and prevalence of bowling inclusion by exclusion, we should be fair. According to bowl.com, the reason the U22 Queens (and U22 Masters) exist appears to be sound. A 2018 decision by the USBC, BPAA and IBC Youth Committee classified youth bowling as ages 18 and under, which eventually led to the elimination of the U20 division from Junior Gold, which would’ve led to some formerly youth bowlers having fewer opportunities to compete, which led to the creation of these non-youth youth tournaments, the U22 Queens and Masters.

For bowlers, having events to bowl is paramount to life, so giving them something new after taking something away is nice, especially when adults can now unabashedly bowl as adults rather than as children despite being adults.

It’s a good idea to cap youth bowling at 18 years old. It seems odd there was a time in which a human being could legally vote, smoke, drink and enter a youth bowling tournament, but it also seems odd that an amateur bowler can sometimes make more money than a professional bowler. Such is our sport.

What is not odd is 19-year-old Jillian Martin beating all players of all ages to win the 2024 USBC Queens, an amateur earning and having to pay taxes on $60,000 (or would if it weren’t for a complicated NCAA rule), as she works toward setting the record for most titles won by a player with zero titles. She might already have that record. If not, she will soon. She is very good at this game.

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[1] In fairness, USBC points out these events that pay money are only open to amateurs, so our use of “professional” here isn’t exactly accurate.

What? We’re counting columns now? Didn’t we, as recently as July of last year, write about how we should stop counting televised 300 games and yet here we are counting brief missives on the delightful absurdities of the great game of bowling for the second consecutive month?

Yes. As with all conversations surrounding bowling, all we care about is our own game. We will recount every shot, every excuse (be it humidity or urethane or the field starting too far left or the ever-impressive “on me”), every bad break and every unfortunate failure to double, only pausing when you interrupt to tell us the same about your game, allowing us to store up our next sentence as we await you to take a breath long enough for us to resume detailing how we had difficulty finding our towel during frame six of game four of round two and how that should’ve negatively impacted our routine but miraculously led to us striking out for 257 that put us inside the cut until we hit a bad pair (never mind that it is actually the highest-scoring pair for the field as a whole) in the next game and shot 170 which really put us in jeopardy until the last game of the block in which we needed a double in the 10^th to sneak into cashers round but stoned 8 on the best shot anyone threw during the entire event and it’s not fair but we don’t have time to dwell because there’s a sweeper three hours away we need to go fleece.

In college, as so many bowlers know, an introductory course is labeled 101. The basics. The prerequisite for anything else you need to study to earn your degree in between bowling practices and competing in 65 different national championships in the same season. And what better time to introduce The One Board to people than with its 101^st edition?

Logically, it makes sense. The One Board only ran for eight years and one surprise month in a print publication, which is not quite enough time for anybody to find it and read it. Now located on the internet, many bewildered humans, intrusive ads and devious bots are bound to stumble upon this trove of bowling ruminating, so perhaps we should explain what it is we do here. Dare we be more honest and forthcoming than ever?

Maybe.

The One Board, which has somehow won multiple awards, celebrates bowling’s endearing farcicalities, skewering the seemingly illogical and outrageous, all from a place of reverence. We Trust The Process, take it one column at a time and believe strongly in the mantra of NEED MORE GAMES but we are deathly afraid to mention ball hardness. Well, no, we are not afraid to mention ball hardness, but that’s a longer story for another time filled with wild speculation, another hallmark of bowling we lovingly embrace.

We jest. We opine. We digress. We speak with the royal we, not because we think we’re royalty, but because we’re all in this thing together. We all know bowling deserves the respect other sports get and we also know bowling shuns many of the things that give those other sports respect and make other pro athletes rich (to name three examples: charging money to enter the building; encouraging fans to eat, drink and be merry; requiring fewer than 10 hours of endurance to watch competition that concludes with no sporting resolution but does invite us to come back tomorrow for 10 more hours).

And yet, as we’ve exposited several times before, there is no sport better than bowling. We’re all here for it. As the great “Weird Al” Yankovic once told this very writer for a story in a print publication, “Most of the things I lampoon and parody are things I actually love,” including bowling among those loved things.

That’s why The One Board exists. Bowling can simultaneously be revered and satirized. And, upon the extinction of qualifying, bowling can be loved.

Next month, we can stop counting.

This is the 100^th edition* of The One Board, and it is an exceptional thrill that it comes with an asterisk. Having to qualify what should be a simple claim proves The One Board is as essential to bowling’s lore as which order the televised 300 games were bowled in or which televised 300 games count as televised 300 games or which absurd world allows the USBC to refer to a full week of endless qualifying in order to determine the most deserving person to guarantee second-place money as a “short-duration event.”

It’s an honor to be here.

To have a stat loaded with contingencies like this must replicate the feeling of winning one’s first title on American soil, no matter how many titles have been won on other nations’ soils or whether or not the winner on American soil is even an American who might care about the soil. We’d suggest we consult any of the Americans on the BJI All-American Team, but why would there by any Americans on a team named after Americans?

Maybe this distinction is more like picking up the 7-10 split on a livestream, which means it never happened, as only four people in history have ever converted the 7-10 split on television (not counting the other people who did it in non-title events, of course) and thus only four people in history have ever converted the 7-10 split.

Whatever the case, and in all humility, writing 100 of these things is quite a feat. One hundred columns is approximately 60,000 words, which just so happens to be the generally accepted minimum length for a novel manuscript to be considered for publication, so we definitely made the right choice to put our 60,000 words here over the course of 8.25 years than anywhere else that might’ve led to cases of unsold books in bookstores everywhere. Maybe such a hypothetical novel would’ve even been placed next to the newsstand, where, despite the column appearing in a print publication 97 times, never once came near a newsstand shelf.

One hundred columns is proof that the lovable absurdity of bowling is never-ending and will give people great fodder for multi-level enjoyment until the robots take over and, in addition to eradicating humanity, finally develop the perfect format and prize fund that generates no complaints, except for one from E.A.R.L., who suggests there needs to be another cashers round, which then leads to E.A.R.L. being promptly sent to the scrap yard.

One hundred columns is nice in this base-10 system we use in this world, but in bowling, 300 is better. Perfect, even. Originally, the 300^th edition of The One Board was to be printed (yes, it will still be a print magazine) in December of 2041 between an accessories ad and a Where Are They Now? feature on the future-current best bowler in the world, but having already moved ahead one month in our 8.25-year run, we’re now on pace to move ahead two more months prior to welcoming 2042 and thus, the 300^th edition can be expected, on whatever the internet’s replacement is, in September of 2041. Perfect.

Unless… is this retirement? If so, and if we’ve learned anything from bowling history, we’re about to go on a great run.

*The One Board is a monthly column that began in Bowlers Journal International in January of 2016. The 100^th column would’ve appeared in the April, 2024 issue of Bowlers Journal, but after 96 months of print media, we stepped back in technology in January of 2024 and took to the internet. Then Bowlers Journal surprisingly printed a January column anyway, meaning we had two columns in January including our annual year-start countup posted on this website. Thus, this column, March, 2024 on the internet, is the 100^th monthly bowling column in the 99^th month of its existence. Trust the process.