Don't miss this!!!!

Former NFL star and Hall of Famer Lynn Swann, bowling great Nelson Burton Jr. and CBS Sports play-by-play announcer Bill Macatee will call the action for Bowling's Clash of Champions on CBS Sports.

The trio will usher in bowling's return to network television for the first time in nearly a decade when the Clash, presented by the United States Bowling Congress and Strike Ten Entertainment, airs on CBS Sports on Saturday, May 10 from 5-6 p.m. Eastern and Sunday, May 11 from 4-5 p.m. Eastern.

The Clash, which will be taped at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium on May 8, will bring together 16 champions of USBC events and the U.S. Open ranging in age from teenagers to seniors competing for $100,000 in prize money.

Swann will serve as sideline reporter, Burton as color commentator and Macatee as the event's play-by-play announcer.

"With bowling returning to network television, we wanted to assemble a special announcing crew and we have done that," said USBC Vice President of Communications and Marketing Tom Clark. "Bill Macatee is one of the most talented hosts in all of sports broadcasting. Nelson Burton Jr. is bowling's most familiar voice. And Lynn Swann brings his style and charisma to bowling for the first time."

A 2001 NFL Hall of Fame inductee as a wide receiver, Swann helped lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl titles in the 1970s - including Most Valuable Player honors in Super Bowl X in which he caught four passes for what was a Super Bowl-record 161 yards and a touchdown in a 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. After retiring from the NFL, Swann served as a football and sports broadcaster for ABC Sports from 1976-2005.

"I'm excited about covering bowling for the first time as a broadcaster," said Swann, who has served as spokesperson the past two years for the NFL Super Bowl Celebrity Bowling Classic. "The sudden death format of this tournament should provide a much stronger sense of urgency for the competitors. It will be interesting to see how they respond."

Macatee joined CBS Sports in 1995 and plays a major role as an announcer not only for CBS Sports' golf coverage, including the Masters and the PGA Championship, but also for the NFL, the U.S. Open Tennis Championships and a variety of CBS Sports events, including skiing, Track and field and the ATP Tennis Tour. Macatee served as the weekend daytime co-host of the 1998 Olympic Winter Games on CBS and as play-by-play announcer for college basketball, including the NCAA Tournament.

Burton, a member of the USBC and Professional Bowlers Association Halls of Fame, was part of one of sport's most famous broadcast teams, partnering with lead announcer and fellow Hall of Famer Chris Schenkel as color analyst on PBA Tour telecasts for 23 years. Burton has most recently served on the announcing team for the U.S. Women's Open in 2007. He also had an outstanding bowling career winning 17 PBA Tour titles and holds the record for most USBC Open Championships titles with nine, including the 1976 Masters.

The Clash will be taped on Thursday, May 8 from 6-9:30 p.m. at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium, which is also hosting the 2008 USBC Convention the same week. Tickets to the Clash are $10 and can be ordered on bowl.com/clash. All seats are general admission and USBC Convention attendees are not required to pay for admission.

If you missed this, Lynda Barnes won the event, defeating Sean Rash in the final match. I've posted some of my thoughts about it on my blog. I would love to see how the shows did in the ratings, which may determine if there are future bowling shows like this on network TV.

I really enjoyed this event and hope it got good ratings. Lynda Barnes, wow, what can you say. She is really bowling at a high level right now and creating her own breaks. Still can't believe she defeated Rash. She is mentally rock solid tough and has the physical game to match.

As a 41 year-old "stroker", I was rooting for Lynda in the final match. I love the fact that she prevailed against the 25 year-old cranker with the big hook. Well done!

Its the First Time a Woman has beat a Man in televised Event - they said. What a year for Barnes Family - Chris Barnes Player of the Year with two titles - Lynda Barnes Queens Title and Clash of Championship.

Yep, $80,000, in two weeks, not bad for a Girl.

I would have had to quit bowling and coaching and pretended like the game never existed if the back up ball throwing kid from Saturdays match had won it, he lasted longer than PDW though.

This TV match was great without having a big scoreboard in mashing unit. It looks better than big scoreboard in PBA TV matchs.

I was surprised to see a back up bowler on the show. Most of the ones I've ever watched bowl tend to be hit or miss, at least the males ones that do it with a stronger release. Somehow he was consistent enough to win the event that got him on the Clash.

I wonder what was going through Liz's mind during her shootout through the elimination round.

I have to say, Linda got tons of breaks. A couple people got away with brooklyns, but Linda got so many breaks on high and light shots (that 4 pin, the 7-10, several trip 4-7-10s) it was starting to get ridiculous. I say it all the time though, it's about getting lined up so that you have room, and she had that.

All in all it was a good match. Notice that every time Sean made a bad shot on the right lane, he fell off of it. Sounds like me!

Sean looked really off balance the whole day. When he was bowling in the semi-final, his feet were way left and he was having problems with the approach. During the finals, he moved further right with a tamer ball to get away from that part of the approach. That being said, I thought (like cgeorg) that Linda got a lot of breaks. Then again, that is bowling.

I noticed one shot in particular, on the left lane I think, where he went real tight, moving out to about 3rd arrow. It went high flush. He never got that far outside again though.

I guess that for me, watching that was probably like a Jaros fan watching the Masters earlier this year.

What goes around comes around.

One other thing, what was that Black/Grey Zone he switched to? The first was a Vapor Zone, right? Looked like the Vapor had a pin over the bridge, the second ball was way over middle finger, possibly in his Track. Pfiefer (born in the town I work in!) Was using a Cell with pin below bridge... any other equipment thoughts?

One thing that stuck out to me. I want to say that Linda was on Storm's staff last year. She was throwing a Columbia ball this past weekend just like her hubby.

You sign one Barnes, you get them all.

The black Grey Zone was a Blast Zone, it has been out for a while, but not many Brunswick bowlers have made shows and the ones that did were throwing fury series gear for the most part. Most of the shows have had Storm or Columbia or Hammer staff people, not much Ebonite or Brunswick for some reason.

My theory is neither Brunswick or Ebonite have very good heavy oil balls and it is hard to break a shot down to your liking without one. Brunswick has the Copperhead coming out soon, so you will probably see more Brunswick players next year, I'm not sure what Ebonite has coming out, their problem is the NV series is not very good on heavy oil.

Perhaps the "NVD".

Right now, the Gamebreaker is their heaviest, right? I've seen sanded down NVSs as well that looked pretty gritty.

The Game Breaker was the most aggressive ball used on tv this year Jones used it on the shark and it still over skidded, so hopefully the NVD will fill the void.

I have to say I like the announers, especially Bo Burton. I guess it is because I grew up listening to him.

Unfortunately, the event didn't do well in the ratings. Pete Dougherty, writing in the Albany Times-Union's sports media blog, reported that the "Clash" only garnered a 0.6 rating (percentage of TVs tuned in) on both days, with a 2 share (percentage of TVs in use tuned in) on Saturday and a 1 share on Sunday. For comparison, the average rating of a PBA telecast the past 3 years is 0.8. Dougherty believed that the show's ratings could've been better if it was a live event rather than taped.