So the NFL has a plan to spark interest in the Pro Bowl.
Players will now be selected in a draft with Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders as opposing captains. The Hall of Famers will be assisted by top fantasy football players.
Really? It’s still a meaningless game, played by players who mostly care about not getting injured. Unless they also add naked cheerleaders, nobody is going to watch. May as well let Rice and Sanders settle it in 30 minutes with a Xbox and the latest version of Madden.
OK, this is weird. There should be a link to an article in this post. It shows up in the edit screen, but not when posted…somebody forget to feed the hamsters again?
The only thing I’d watch is if they had a skills competition like they often did before the probowl. Have 4 jugs machines rapid-fire balls at receivers, have running backs go through a ninja warrior style obstacle course, have QBs throw balls through moving targets, that sort of thing. That’d be a lot of fun. Even do AFC vs NFC to make it a competition.
I still maintain that nobody in the Pro Bowl actually plays it as a real game. The chance for injury is so great, for one thing. In NHL, NBA, and even MLB, an individual player can punch it up a notch, as it were, with all the other high quality players. In NFL games… well, it just seems so different to me. YMMV of course.
I actually hadn’t watched a Pro Bowl since sometime in the 90s until last year, and after watching that 2 1/2 handjob, I see it still is a completely irrelevant exercise.
This new format seems more like a sports channel “reality” show than any attempt at a real game.
Just take them to Hawaii and give them a variety show! Let them showcase their singing voices, their dance moves, their large calibre handgun marksmanship, their drunk driving skills.
I think the Pro Bowl is just a bad idea in general. Football is too high risk for an exhibition game. I think the skills competitions are far more interesting, and I have fond memories of the Quarterback Challenges of years past. It seemed like the participants were pretty competitive in those - moreso than in the Pro Bowl itself.
Here’s the tough part about the Pro Bowl, how do you celebrate and reward the league’s best players? There’s a precedent set in all sports for an all start game but when player’s career’s are on the line with a moderately souped up exhibition game nobody wants to do it. Skills competition is nice, but it’s not a game. How do you fix it? I don’t know if it’s fixable. Can you do flag football and have the players and fans still satisfied?
The other big issue with the Pro Bowl is that a long snapper doesn’t get voted to it.
OK, this strikes me as quite odd, particularly the assistance of “top fantasy football players”.
But I think we’re now just one step from the Commissioner going up to the mic, throwing up his hands and saying “we give up”.
Heck, even in MLB after that 2002 tie they felt they had to add an incentive to the All-Star game so that they’d seriously try to play to win. But yes, a NFL All-Star game played “for keeps” would be a much higher risk proposition given the state of gameplay (and hey, isn’t it the fans who want to see big crunching hits?).
Start the game in hula outfits and lose them by halftime. It’s GOLD, Jerry, I’m telling you!!!
OTOH we’d need more than the approximately 1.5 seconds per quarter the networks let the camera focus on the cheer line anymore…
Set it up with four teams, with retired HOF players as coaches. The coaches draft their team sandlot style. They play flag football in a 4-team playoff series, with a 40 minute running clock for each game (10 minute quarters). Of course - that leaves out a ton of positions. Anyone have any proposals to rotate linemen in there?
Conventional wisdom among fans seems to be that “nobody watches the Pro Bowl.” I certainly don’t, and nobody I know does, either. I’d have guessed that its TV ratings are terrible - and I’d have been wrong.
I just remembered this but Jeff Saturday got to hike the ball to Peyton Manning one more time before he retired during this past Pro Bowl despite the fact that they were on opposite teams. i think that’s another reason to like the Pro Bowl, you get little things like that between players that wouldn’t normally happen in the season.
Compared to the rest of the NFL TV numbers “nobody” watches the Pro Bowl. but if that number of people watched it and the players took it seriously, I don’t think the NFL would be hand-wringing about adding gimmicks to the format. The player disinterest is the main problem.
Twelve million people watch? We need a couple of those to come in here and explain why. I mean, really, why the fuck why?
Somebody asked about other sports that are on at the same time. NBA, NHL and EPL are all going on with games that actually count. I don’t even like two of those leagues and I’d still watch 'em all over the Pro Bowl.
What if they were combined into a drinking game, the “Pro Bud Bowl”? Miss a tackle? Drink! Get sacked? Drink! Whiff on a block? Drink! Give up a TD? Social! And no peeing allowed!