Can we move the Pro Bowl? Please, can we?
NFL Football is the most popular sport in the United States. By far it has more fans, and more eyes on the television screen than NBA Basketball, Major League Baseball, and NHL Hockey. So why is its all star game, the Pro Bowl, the lamest, least watched, least covered, and least talked about of all the major sports all star games? Major League Baseball has a whole weekend of activities. Monday before the game is televised with the Home Run Derby, celebrity games, and other assorted activities. The NBA likewise enjoys a days long extravaganza of the Slam Dunk Competition, and the 3-Pt Shot Competition leading up to the All-Star Game. Hockey has its own skills competitions showcasing the skills that make the game so great.
Additionally these 3 events all take place in the middle of the season. They're a break of sorts where fans take a short break from the races that only then are about to be getting underway to celebrate the best participants the respective sports have to offer.
The NFL Pro-Bowl by comparison sucks. It totally sucks. It's a sucktacular sucktacle of suckage. No skills competitions, non-participation by a significant number of fan selected starters because of sore ankles, elbows, turf toes, hamstrings, and a general "who gives a shit, I'm here because of a contract bonus" air surrounds the entire affair. Well, I'm here to say it does not need to be that way, and it shouldn't.
The most important thing the NFL can do is move the Pro-Bowl. It's in the completely wrong time of the season. It's at the end. All the players are tired of playing. They're beat up, and worn down from the season. It's also played the week between the Conference Championship games, and the Super Bowl. Who gives a shit? How anti-climactic can you be? We've been ramping up to the playoffs all season, and then we're following the playoffs and all the drama entailed there. Then, finally, when we find out who's playing in the Super Bowl, the Worlds Championship of the biggest sport, but wait, let's take a break and watch an exhibition. What?!!?!? Really?!?!?! It's 15 degrees outside, and I'd rather take down my Christmas lights. (I know - slacker)
Move it to the beginning of the season. It can't be a mid-season break like the other sports. Move it to the beginning. Instead of the Hall of Fame Game between to teams, have the Pro-Bowl be the Hall of Fame Game. Really, it's at the beginning of the season. People are ready for football to be back. The athletes are just back from the off-season, and are ready to compete instead of ready to go home and rest.
It's a whole weekend. There's the Hall of Fame Inductions. There's a whole weekend to do skills competitions. There can be a NFL Fastest Man competition. There can be a Strongest Arm competition. There can be a Strongest Man competition. All of it on NFL Network, or ESPN. Then instead of an exhibition between tow teams 2nd and 3rd stringers hoping to make the kickoff coverage team we can watch the Pro-Bowlers we all elected the previous year.
The game will always be half-assed because guys don't want to jeopardize their careers, but I completely agree about the need to have a skills competition. It would really be the feature of the Pro Bowl experience. Moving it to the beginning of the season is also a good idea. Gets people geared up and catches everyone while they're healthy and ready to get back to football.
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