(Editor's note: Harold Sharp was the first tournament director Ray Scott hired. Sharp left BASS long ago, but as all readers of BassFan FeedBack know, he still cares passionately about the sport.)
When fans follow sports heroes on TV, or try to figure out who's going to qualify for what, it always helps if the fan knows and understands the system used to qualify the players.
I recently watched PGA golf and noticed that the top players who were trying to qualify for the Championship had over 100,000 points. Even the one about to miss the cut had 70,000 to 90,000 points. No one that I heard ever explained how they accumulated all those points or why you needed over 100,000 of them.
When Ray Scott started bass tournaments, his first few events had a points system. It was based on so many points for the place you finished, plus some bonus points for a daily limit. Some even had points for white bass. But it all started with how much your fish weighed in pounds and ounces.
The points and bonus stuff just made it more complicated for the fans and anglers to figure out, so after a few events, the scoring was simplified to just pounds and ounces of black bass that were weighed in. This weight was accumulated each day to determine where you finished.
Also, the tournament-weight totals were accumulated to determine those who qualified to fish the BASS Masters Classic, and everyone who could add pounds and ounces together could understand how BASS scored tournaments and qualified anglers.
It was also the fairest and most accurate way to judge any angler's ability to tournament-fish against other anglers.
A few years ago this was all changed to a points system, which awarded points for the place you finished. This did away with skill to locate and catch more or larger bass. If you finished an event 10 pounds ahead of the angler behind you, the point system just gave you a points advantage – same as if you'd finished 1 ounce ahead.
A few years later it was complicated more by spreading the points. Some places were 5 points less than the one ahead, or the deeper you finished, the more the points were spread.
Then bonus points were added for daily leaders, whoever had the best-looking boat, hairdo or uniform, or could cuss the loudest or run wide open (I'm not sure this was ever put into effect).
The scoring system for bass tournaments should be based on each angler's skill to locate and land bass. Bonus points are never a good idea, as they're only available to the one angler who fits that category on that day (you never have but one daily leader).
BASS, FLW and all should take a long look at their scoring system and get back to something the anglers and fans understand.
