End the Pro Bowl?

The Pro Bowl: Looks intense to me! 

Football has become America’s number one sport. Yet its all-star game, also known as the Pro Bowl, still lags behind those of other major sports. The NFL recognizes its problem and is trying to find a solution. The issue, however, is how to fix it. The complaints range from a lack of effort to to too many players sitting out of the game due to “injury." The NFL started their quest to fix the Pro Bowl in 2010 when they moved the Pro Bowl from Honolulu, Hawaii to the site of the Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. The game was also moved to the week before the Super Bowl. The results have been mixed. The attendance was nearly 70,000 (compared to Honolulu’s 50,000), but players complained, as they wanted the trip to Hawaii as part of the tradition of the game. The Pro Bowl returned to Hawaii in 2011 and 2012, yet player effort continued to deteriorate.
The NFL openly debated canceling the game before this past Pro Bowl. The NFL is skeptical of getting rid of the game because its TV ratings are still high. The 2012 Pro Bowl had a 7.7 Nielsen rating, which, in comparison, is higher than the four game average for the 2012 World Series at 7.6. The NFL does not want to be the only major sport without an All Star game, but the quality of the game has become a laughing point in recent seasons. In the past four years, the lowest combined point total of any game was 75 points. Compared to the 266 NFL games already played this year, just nine, or 3.3%, of the games have had a total score of 75 points or more. The last three Pro Bowls were all higher scoring than any game regular season or post-season game this year. This just speaks to the lack of effort put in on defense for fear of injury.

The NFL also suffers from so many players sitting out the game. Unlike baseball or basketball, sports with a midseason all-star break, (where it is much harder to sit out the game for injury) the NFL suffers from this problem greatly. This year, all three of the NFC’s quarterbacks sat out the game, which  lead to the sixth ranked quarterback in the NFC playing in the game. The NFC quarterbacks were just three of 32 players who played in the game despite not being named to the initial rosters. It appears many players would rather collect their bonuses for being a Pro Bowler in their contract, skip the game, and not risk further injury.

The solution gaining the most ground for the NFL’s problem is a skills competition much like the NBA’s Saturday Night of the All Star Weekend. The idea is to have the top players in the league competing in events like obstacle courses or longest throw. The biggest issue with is that it completely eliminates the game, and when the NFL used to have a skill competition at the Pro Bowl, no one cared.



Recently there have been people who have suggested that the NFL bring back the 3rd place game that existed from 1960 to 1969 with the losing teams from the championship games playing each other. The issue with this solution is the fear that no team would play their top players. Anyone who thinks Bill Belichick would have played Tom Brady or Vince Wilfork against the Falcons if they played for 3rd place one week after the AFC Championship game is crazy.

Some of the most interesting suggestions to fix the game include increasing the compensation of the players for playing. If players were making an actual game check or got a fully guaranteed contract for the next year season regardless of them getting injured in the game would more players care? It is an unanswerable question unless the NFL commits that type of money to pay all those players.

I think the NFL needs to get rid of the game and save players the embarrassment of lack of effort. The NFL needs to make it a non-contact event with a skills competition and maybe a flag football game, too. The NFL cannot completely get rid of having Pro Bowlers, but trying to increase the effort in the game is a losing cause when players have way more to lose and nothing to gain from playing hard.