The Pro Bowl “Games” were held this weekend, and what a fuckin’ joke. I didn’t think the Pro Bowl could get any worse, and then it did with “events” like flag football, “kick tac toe,” and a goddamned water balloon toss!
I get the superstars don’t want to get hurt during a game that doesn’t mean anything, so make the game mean something. But it’s been like this for years, so I don’t see it getting any better. So just scrap the whole idea. But the ratings will make sure it stays around. They’ll get me to watch when the pry my eyes from my cold, dead hands.
The Endquote tag needs to be on a line by itself.
If that doesn’t fix it, also ensure the Quote tag is on a line by itself.
I did both to fix your post’s bottom 2 quotes.
As to the Pro Bowl, yes, it was a sad little joke. I watched some of that thoroughly uncompelling flag football match during dinner at a restaurant. It was laughable but not in an entertaining way.
Though to be fair, I don’t recall any compelling Pro Bowls anyway.
The Pro Bowl is just not a compelling competition (and, honestly, hasn’t been for a very long time, if ever), and the league has tried various things over the last decade or so to try make it worth watching.
I found the flag football at least somewhat entertaining, but I didn’t watch for long, and didn’t really care about the results.
Getting rid of the full-contact game was a wise idea, but ultimately, they just need to scrap the Pro Bowl idea entirely. That said, they won’t, because even lousy football “games” will draw some eyeballs, and the NFL is utterly committed to wringing every possible dollar out of fans and advertisers.
It’s always been a pointless game. Any attempts to make it relevant are futile. Let’s examine some of the ideas:
Play for home field at the Super Bowl
The Super Bowl already takes place at a pre-selected “neutral” site, so giving the conference that wins the Pro Bowl home field for the SB doesn’t work. Not to mention the site is predetermined for a very good reason: a team and a city can’t just put on an event as huge as the Super Bowl on the fly.
You could play for home field at the next Super Bowl, but that wouldn’t work because of the amount of player movement and non-guaranteed contracts. Many of the players in the Pro Bowl may legitimately not know who they’re playing for next season. Why should I help the NFC win home field if I might end up playing in the AFC next season?
Play it mid-season
It necessarily takes place during what is, except for the players participating in the Super Bowl, for all intents and purposes the offseason. Players would never participate in a meaningless game in the midst of the season. There is no “half-season break” in the NFL anyways. They introduced bye weeks because at several points in the history of the league there was an uneven number of teams (1960 and 1966), but they brought it back in 1990 and kept it because it allows them to extend the season one more week.
“Fun” teams
They could try things like Rookies vs Veterans or picking captains and teams schoolyard-style, but I doubt any of those sorts of novelties would entice anyone who wasn’t already watching the Pro Bowl to tune in.
Have the two worst teams play for the #1 draft pick
That would certainly make it a meaningful, competitive game, but that does nothing for the players selected to the Pro Bowl. If they don’t play for the two worst teams, why should they care? Not to mention if I’m the starting QB or an expensive star player for one of those teams, how hard am I really going to play just so they can draft my replacement?
This pretty much sums up the whole affair. I saw a few minutes of the flag football game and at least it looked like the guys were having fun. The only interesting thing about it to me was seeing everyone not in their usual uniform. Also, at least where I live, there is a push to popularize flag football (girls flag football just added as an official HS sport), with help from the NFL, so it seems logical that they would showcase the sport with some of their own athletes.
They actually tried this a few years ago – in 2014, rather than having the traditional NFC and AFC lineups, they did a “fantasy draft,” with Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders acting as the alumni “captains,” who then picked their rosters from the players who had been selected to the game. It looks like they used that format for three years, and then reverted to the traditional format.
The rosters, as picked by Rice and Sanders in 2014:
And that’s another reason not to watch: they keep changing formats. Sure, the league revises rules for the regular season, but they don’t change the fundamentals of the game. Instead, the Pro Bowl is more and more like Calvinball.
Playing for home field for the next Super Bowl wouldn’t work for the same reason playing to host this season doesn’t work. Suppose the NFC wins the Pro Bowl, and gets to host next year’s Super Bowl. Where would that be? You don’t know the winner of the NFC until the championship game, and then you still only have two weeks to throw the whole event together.
One could, I suppose, designate the conference which wins the Pro Bowl as the “home” team for the Super Bowl, for purposes such as the coin flip, but that’s a pretty weak benefit to the winner.
It’s hard to make it a game worth watching in the modern era. Back 40 years ago and more, the pay for the Pro Bowl could be bigger than even a top player’s regular game day check. That’s enough to consider playing an exhibition game, even with the injury risk.
These days, there’s no good reason a Patrick Mahomes or a Travis Kelce or a Christian McCaffrey should risk themselves for at most $80000 (if they win). They risk far more than that if they suffer an injury that keeps them off the field the following season. And the game itself isn’t lucrative enough to bump the pay to their level, either.
I like the new Pro Bowl format. It’s just “Battle of the Network Stars” being done by NFL players. They play some goofy physical skill challenges that have no meaning except bragging rights. It’s an exhibition. And I see nothing wrong with that.
These are top athletes who week after week during the regular season and postseason get in front of a camera and compete against each other physically for the entertainment of viewers. And that’s exactly what they’re doing during the Pro Bowl as well. The difference is that it removes the drama and tribalism you find in an NFL game.
Some people won’t like that and I understand. But it can sometimes be fun to just watch a competition where it doesn’t really matter. And it’s better than the previous Pro Bowls where they tried to pretend there was a real NFL game going on, the same way that other sports have All-Star games, but then watered it down so much that it bears little more than a superficial resemblance to an actual game.
This. I’ve watched as many Super Bowls as my work schedule permits, and most of the rest a few days later, at least since the DVR era.
Pro Bowl? The last one I watched I was in college. Or was it high school? Pointless poorly-played football with an enforced sugar high of over-the-top commentating. Spare me.
Just shoot the damn thing. And the MLB All-Star game while you’re at it. Both are relics of a bygone era of stable leagues with stable rosters, no inter-conference / inter-league play, and not nearly enough sports on TV.
Although I admit this next idea has merit and I’ll gladly subscribe to @Leo_Krupe’s /@running_coach’s newsletters.
Can they have Dunk Tank and Simon Sez? Obstacle course could be fun. Tandem bicycle races, with one speed player and one lineman. Same for relay races - must have two linemen.
BotNS also had two-on-two football.
Note: The closest I have ever come to watching an NFL Pro Bowl was watching Blue Crush.
Best athletes in the NFL? Let’s see how good you are at basketball, baseball (or softball) or some other pro sport. Have them play against each other, or maybe have some stars of those leagues as captains/managers/coaches/ etc.
Unpopular opinion: I thought it was fun. Except for being a huge Geno fan, I didn’t like the first flag football game, but as they went on I figured it out. I was surprised how humanizing it was to see the players without helmets. They were having such a blast. Didn’t really see the need for Snoop Dogg and Pete Davidson, and the half-time show was certainly not for my demographic, but overall I enjoyed it.
