Michael,
Thanks for the reply, appreciate a polite discussion.
My argument is based on fairness to all parties bowling. I'm not exactly sure what reason the rule has been introduced, is it to increase numbers in tournaments or is it to build an elite female team at expense of open tournament bowlers? I think it may be to arrest the decline in participation of female bowlers and I think helping to improve the skills of women is a by product, the old spend more time with better bowlers so you can become better yourself principle.
"most females that enter the open tournaments, certainly have averages well above 200, and so do the majority of male bowlers bowling as well"
So you admit the known females will have an advantage in excluding equally skilled males from making cuts? Of course, there are plenty of bowlers who have skewed averages as most centres lay down a ditch, I know there are bowlers here in the local area who have averages 10-15pins higher than mine depending what centre they bowl in, but will never bowl a national tournament, just the way it is, much similar that these women may have averages the same way, but doesn't mean they are going to shoot the same in a tournament, it is possible that an equally skilled male bowler may lose out by 1 pin as much as whatever tally an eight pin handicap would present. Time will tell how much this really changes the course of things. As Brenton has stated and many others, this has been standard practice throughout the bowling world for well over a decade now. Time will tell if it works here. Tournament numbers there are certainly higher in other countries and the quality of female bowlers is definitely higher too.
"And I also don't see the bonus as being disparaging to women as some have suggested "
Females in Australia are capable of front line combat duties in our Armed Forces, but not capable of bowling on sports patterns without assistance...apparently. Seriously, if a female needs an 8 pin advantage to improve her skills to international competition, she is never going to cut it internationally anyway. Do some research and have a look at how many women actually do serve on the front line doing the 'grunt' work, not many at all, and even in this day and age they probably still have to prove themselves double to get there. Physicality is what it comes down too. The Army can skew its figures any which way they want to meet the governments KPIs but how many are in the actual partol and battle units?
"In regards to your post above about giving other categories assistance, the only thing I would suggest is giving juniors reduced entry fees to encourage their participation"
Give females reduced fees to encourage them to bowl rather than an advantage of more pins if you want more entries. I would be firmly against this, as male bowlers in general bowling in dual gender tournaments have had to prop up the female proportion of the prize fund way too many times for my liking otherwise they wouldn't have a tournament at all. Juniors I have no problem with because they generally don't have the skills to compete just yet unless they come through with exceptional talent like a Belmo or Cooley.
As far as sandbagging, easy to eliminate it by making the cost to achieve the average greater than the gain of winning a tournament. eg the average used has to be from a greater number of games (at a value of $3 ea game ) than the first place prize fund. So if you sandbag you need to spend more than what a win would receive in prize money. If you top ten in an event you lose your 8 pin handicap for 12mths. I understand this, but I am a pretty straight forward person and like to keep things simple, too much confusion and allows for variables. Maybe the system can be tweaked so that if a female does win a tournament they lose their 8 pin status or if making top 3 or cut it drops to 4 pins etc. That way there are defined parameters to work off.
I keep going back to this.. It's the principle of fair play which is of paramount importance. Once that principle is lost, you bring the sport into disrepute. Having only the females able to bowl the maximum score proves the rule to be unfair, that has already happened.
TBA should be accountable for making all competition fair, I think this rule breaches that principle. In a technical sense you are right, 308 beats 300 everyday, where I think this is all based on is what everyone else has mentioned, lack of physicality, lack of ability to impart the correct force on the ball (ie rotation) and an avenue to increase tournament numbers and improve quality. In the other post about this, I did some rough figures on how the females would have fared in last years open only tournaments, there wasn't a whole lot of effect. If it doesn't work it doesn't work, and to be honest whether females get 8 pins a game at a tournament or not is not really what is going to save bowling, it is working on getting an increase in membership numbers as I have alluded to earlier and unifying all the different associations.
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