This past weekend and for the past three decades or so, I have ignored the Pro Bowl. Back when I was in my teens, the Pro Bowl was a must see, but it really hit the skids this year. This is saying a lot for a guy who watches a lot of NFL football - I saw more Raiders, Browns, and Bucaneers games than anyone should have to without being sentenced for a crime.
Of course, one problem has been that this is the only All Star Game in professional sports that was played after the season was over due, in great part, to the brutal nature of NFL football, and to the regimen that the game requires. In an attempt to deal with that this year, Commissioner Roger Goodell and the assorted brains with the league moved the game to the empty week between the Conference championship games and the Super Bowl. Of course, this means that the players from the 2 Super Bowl participants don’t play. The league figured out that most of the players from those two teams usually skip the All star game anyway.
Due to injury, however, many of the best players, particularly quarterbacks, opted out of playing. So, instead of Manning, Brees, Favre, Rivers or Rothlesberger playing, you had people like David Garrard and Matt Schaub playing. Schaub was deserving, as was Aaron Rodgers, but there were many better quarterbacks this season than Tony Romo and Garrard playing in the game was a joke.
The biggest knock on the game, of course, is that football is a contact game, and players are not going to hit each other with any authority for an “exhibition.” The best football players, especially in the trenches and on defense, play with huge chips on their shoulders and they try to knock their opponents on their asses. But not in a game where there’s no substantial money involved; where players know that injuries can happen at any time that can end careers and big money ; and the game is played at the end of the season, when everyone is tired, banged up, and just ready to go and heal up for next season. Plus, they didn’t even play the game in Hawaii anymore. It was played in Miami, site of next weekend’s Super Bowl.
I haven’t seen the ratings, but maybe the Pro Bowl has outlived its usefulness? I have long proposed that there be just one week between the conference finals and the Super Bowl, simply because we don’t need 6,000 journalists asking the same questions to 150 players and coaches on both sides. With the bye week, the NFL season already extends into February; we don’t need a second rate, half assed all star game played by disinterested players, for disinterested fans.
So, it’s time to cancel the Pro Bowl. The NFL and sportswriters can still vote for All Pro players and name the best at each position for both conferences, but do we need the seventh best players at each position sleepwalking through a meaningless exercise?