Wayne Webb, a 20-time PBA champion, told a documentary camera in 2004 that pro bowling had already died underneath him. The PBA used that same film to sell its comeback.
A League of Ordinary Gentlemen followed the PBA Tour through the seasons after three former Microsoft executives, Chris Peters, Rob Glaser and Mike Slade, bought the bankrupt tour for $5 million in March 2000 and hired former Nike marketer Steve Miller to run it. The film went out on PBS Independent Lens as the story of a rescue: sponsors up from 2 to 17, a three-year ESPN deal, a prize fund that jumped from $1.8 million to $4.3 million, and the first pro league to hand its players stock options. Miller says on camera that the two things that drive the business are the audience and the sponsors, not the players, and that the players will figure it out.
The same film holds Wayne Webb figuring it out. Webb turned pro in 1975, won the 1980 Firestone Tournament of Champions at 22, was the 1980 PBA Player of the Year, the only man besides Earl Anthony and Mark Roth to win that award between 1974 and 1984, finished with 20 PBA Tour titles, and was one of the first ten bowlers in PBA history to pass $1 million in career earnings. In the film he is bankrupt for the second time, singing karaoke in bowling-center lounges, describing a coming attempt to make a living as one of his last chances, and explaining what it is to give a whole life to something and watch it die. The 2004-05 exempt tour that Miller built cut the field to 64 and pushed out veterans like Brian Voss and Amleto Monacelli for a time. Webb was b-roll inside the PBA’s own comeback story.