The Pro Bowl’s Last Stand?

Sunday’s Pro Bowl in Hawaii marks the fourth consecutive year in which the game will be held one week prior to the Super Bowl. This means members of the San Francisco 49ers (nine Pro Bowl players) and Baltimore Ravens (5 Pro Bowl players), who will meet in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans on Feb. 3 will not be in attendance.
I’m guessing that this will be the last Pro Bowl played.

The league says it will watch the game and check out the amount of effort the players put in before making their final decision….which is pretty funny, because the game means absolutely nothing to the players. Maybe they haven’t tuned in to watch the game the past few years? The voting is a joke and half of the guys who were voted in are either playing in the Super Bowl next weekend or have come down with a sudden hangnail which will prevent them from making the trip.

In all, 29 players who were supposed to represent the “best of the best” in the NFL won’t even be at the game.
Last year, I wrote that the league needed to make some serious changes to the format of the game if they wanted it to continue. Apparently, they didn’t read my column.

Has the NFL learned nothing? In the past, the game was looked at as such an honor, not just a free trip to Hawaii. Players who were selected actually showed, excited to play and be among their peers. What went wrong? The game used to be played after the Super Bowl…which allowed players to have more time between the end of their season and the Pro Bowl. It also gave fans one last game to get excited about before having to wait eight long months for the start of next season. Now, although the trip to Hawaii is nice, nobody really wants to play in the game. Why would they? Who wants to risk unnecessary injury playing in a game that doesn’t matter?

That’s one of the many problems with the Pro Bowl. The result of the game means nothing unlike other all-star games.

As I said around this time last year….the Pro Bowl is the worst all-star game of any sport and it either needs to be pushed back two weeks and count toward something or it should be ended completely.

Another funny thing to note…oddsmakers actually placed a one point spread (in the AFC’s favor)….and people are actually betting on it! You would have better luck predicating a coin flip than predicting which team will care more to win the game.

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