Skip to footer

A strike or a bonk? Football plus bowling creates 'Fowling' in Michigan

The Fowling Warehouse holds 20 lanes, where players try to knock down all 10 of their opponents' bowling pins by tossing a single football from a distance of up to 48 feet.

|
(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
In a photo from June 19, 2015, in Hamtramck, Mich., Stacy Wesley throws a football during a round of Fowling, a sport created by Detroit area resident Chris Hutt by combing football and bowling. Hutt believes he can make a buck off the game, opening the 34,000-square-foot Fowling Warehouse inside an industrial park in the Detroit enclave of Hamtramck.
  • By Mike Householder Associated Press

| Hamtramck, Mich.

A Detroit-area entrepreneur believes he has scored a touchdown with his new business idea. Or thrown a strike.

Actually, it's both.

Chris Hutt owns the Fowling Warehouse, a 34,000-square-foot repurposed industrial site in Hamtramck that's devoted to a football/bowling hybrid sport — fowling — he and some buddies invented while tailgating years ago at the Indianapolis 500.

The facility features 20 lanes, where players or teams try to be the first to knock down all 10 of their opponents' bowling pins by tossing a single football from a distance of up to 48 feet.

The game is not complicated, Hutt said, but it's not easy, either. In the Fowling Warehouse's first six months of operation, only 29 strikes had been thrown over 100,000-plus games.

There's another quick way to end a fowling match: A unique shot called a Bonk, which occurs when a player knocks the middle pin — and only the middle pin — off the board on the first throw. The other nine pins must remain standing.

According to Hutt, there are about 60 Bonks per month. Those who record one are allowed to "honk your Bonk," or sound a Great Lakes freighter horn at the bar. The sonic blast is deafening, Hutt said, but it lets "everyone know ... that you're the coolest person in the room."

Hutt's business, which also has a 175-seat beer garden and a stage for live music, has drawn big crowds on weekend nights. Some take advantage of a deal that allows unlimited play for $10 until closing at 2 a.m. Others reserve lanes for group play, up to 10 players per lane, in two-hour increments.

Peter Grace's third fowling excursion came on a recent Friday night, when he and about 20 others celebrated a friend's birthday.

"It's just a great place to hang out," said Grace, a 27-year-old from Detroit. "It's the best of both worlds. You're bowling and you're playing football at the same time."

Hutt, 46, said he eventually would like to expand his fowling empire.

"This will work in any major city," he said, "and we really want to target the college towns."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to A strike or a bonk? Football plus bowling creates 'Fowling' in Michigan
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2015/0721/A-strike-or-a-bonk-Football-plus-bowling-creates-Fowling-in-Michigan
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe