Family Comes Before Bowling - bowler Nelson "Bo" Burton Jr

Bowling Digest, August, 2000 by Paul Kreins

Television was an excellent opportunity for Burton. After his meeting with Arledge, Burton went from receiving a free-lance weekly paycheck to being a full-time salaried and vested employee of ABC-TV, complete with pension and stock options. "TV became the deal," Burton says. In the 1980-81 season ABC-TV expanded its schedule from 13 to 21 shows, and "PBT" consistently outperformed all its competition, including major league baseball.

As ABC-TV came to rely more on the PBA tour as a steady lead-in to "The Wide World of Sports," Burton's commitment to television grew accordingly. "We were doing 18 to 24 shows a year," he recalls. "Now that became a full-time job. It was more production, bowling tips, commercials, and promos."

Burton's business-like approach to his new career paid off with four Emmy nominations in the sports analyst category. However, at the same time, his bowling took a back seat. "I just didn't have the commitment to bowling anymore," he says. That is, until Dennis Swanson took over the ABC Sports reins from Arledge.

"Dennis Swanson added years to my bowling career," Burton says. Swanson encouraged Bo to bowl more, at least on the winter tour, in order to stay in touch with the bowlers, the fans, and the PBA. Burton continued to be competitive right up until the PBA tour's run on ABC-TV ended in 1997.

Part of the credit for Burton's longevity goes to his penchant for exercise and fitness. Long before bowlers were commonly perceived as athletes, Burton raised the bar when it came to fitness, nutrition, and bowling. A former wrestler, he routinely lifted weights and ran, and he watched his diet carefully. "My bowling ability may not have been as good as a lot of players," he says, "but my physical ability allowed me to compete with them, and the longer we went the better chance I had." He still runs three days a week and lift weights; he even competed in amateur power lifting competition. "At age 57, I had the best lift of my career--180 pounds--and did a 280-pound bench press," he says proudly.

AS BURTON'S CAREER blossomed and his celebrity status grew, his personal life took a different direction. Behind the scenes and away from the public eye of television, he became driven to cut back his bowling schedule and business commitments because of his desire to raise and care for his four children, whom he had been awarded custody after his 1989 divorce.

"I made a commitment to give my children as fair a chance as I had, because I had terrific parents," he says, "so I cut everything back in 1990." With his youngest child only four years old at the time, Burton all but quit bowling for three years while he got his family life organized. Only when his girls entered college did he feel free to begin bowling again.

Today his children are happy and successful. Catrina, 30, is the chief financial planner for City Group Worldwide. Niki, 26, went to Alabama on a golf scholarship, graduated with a radio/television journalism degree, and now works for an advertising agency. Twenty-one-year-old Nelson Burton III, known as "Tripper," is a sophomore on a golf scholarship at Missouri. Brett, 14, is better known as the "Axeman," a moniker he picked up while boxing competitively. "He likes that name," Bo says, "But we have to get him to stop boxing because he's too good at other sports." Brett is a high school freshman and scratch golfer.