The Pro Bowl Games

The NFL finally decided what they're going to do about the Pro Bowl.  Not have it.  It was a decision that was a long time coming and seemed inevitable.  Simply put, no matter how hard they tried, there was no way to improve the Pro Bowl.  So doing away with the "game" element really was the best solution.

It wasn't always like this.  The Pro Bowl has always been the most unique of the four All*Star games because of when it's held.  The others are all in the middle of the season, but you can't really do that with the Pro Bowl, so it had to be after the season.  (Although, it would've been interesting if instead of two random teams playing in the Hall of Fame game, they combined it with the Pro Bowl and had the Pro Bowl in Canton as the opening game of the preseason.)

Still, for a while they were still able to make the Pro Bowl a worthwhile event.  They played it in Hawaii for 30 years!  So, even if guys didn't necessarily want to play in the game, they still got a week-long Hawaiian vacation out of it!  Then Roger Baddell had to get involved and kill the Pro Bowl once and for all.

Almost as soon as he became commissioner, Baddell set out to "improve" the Pro Bowl by moving it from the weekend after the Super Bowl to the weekend between the conference championship games and Super Bowl, thus ensuring that all players from the two best teams in the league would be unavailable!  He also made the brilliant decision to move the game out of Hawaii, first moving it to the site of the Super Bowl before it settled in Orlando for a little while.  Where would you rather spend a week?  Hawaii or Disneyworld?  

Last year it was in Las Vegas, which actually seemed like a smart long-term solution.  (Again, where would you rather go?  Vegas or Disney?)  It was the same weekend as the NHL All*Star Game, which was also in Las Vegas, which made for a pretty cool doubleheader.  That, of course, would prove to be the last Pro Bowl as we knew it.

Speaking of the NHL, they gave us that ridiculous "choose your own teams" All-Star format that for some reason every league except Baseball (which has always had the best All*Star Game...and always will) decided to adopt.  The "pick your own team" thing was just as dumb as it sounds and was coupled with just as terrible florescent green and florescent orange uniforms.  Fortunately, that format only lasted a few years before they reverted back to the traditional AFC vs. NFC.

Personally, I think the Pro Bowl was doomed as soon as it left Hawaii.  Aloha Stadium, where they played the game, has since been condemned, and it was never an NFL-quality venue, but it didn't need to be.  The game itself was secondary.  It was more of an experience.  And people still watched it.

That, to me, is the biggest takeaway from all of this.  Yes, the Pro Bowl most years was little more than a pillow fight where tackling was optional.  But defense is optional in the NBA and NHL All*Star Games, so I don't really see the difference.  And, even preseason-quality, non-competitive NFL is still better than the spring football that the AAF, USFL and XFL keep trying to force on people.

And, again, for all the complaining people did about the Pro Bowl, people still watched it.  So clearly the low-quality, not-as-competitive-as-people-would-like-it-to-be game still drew viewers.  Was it because it was still "football" and the only thing on?  Perhaps.  It wasn't typical NFL-like numbers, but you still had enough people watching the Pro Bowl to justify its existence, no matter how poor the football.

Although, we probably shouldn't be surprised that the NFL ultimately decided to kill the Pro Bowl.  Frankly, that seems to have been Baddell's mission with all of his changes.  Because they did nothing to improve it.  All they did was turn it into more of a joke and make it something people can live without.

But they still want to recognize the 88 Pro Bowlers (that's another issue I've always had with the Pro Bowl...teams have 53-man rosters, so why are there only 44 players per team in the Pro Bowl?), so they'll instead have the "Pro Bowl Games," with a flag football game as the main event.  Sorry, but that's dumber than what they did for the 2020 Pro Bowl, which was played over Madden because of the pandemic.

I'm sure part of the idea for the "Pro Bowl Games" came from the Skills Competition that they've had at the Pro Bowl in recent years (another brilliant Baddell idea!).  Have you ever seen that Skills Competition?  It's practically unwatchable!  And the dodgeball game, which seemed like a cool idea on the surface, turned out to be just as bad as the rest of it.  Which further turned the Pro Bowl into nothing more than a joke.

So, it's been clear for a few years that the NFL was trying to move away from a traditional game for the Pro Bowl.  I'm actually somewhat surprised they had an actual game last season after the 2020 cancellation, which would've given them the perfect excuse to not bring it back.  Instead, we'll get a flag football game, which is essentially what the Pro Bowl had become anyway.  Is that better?  Who's to say?  But my inclination is that it's not.

Whether this is a one-year experiment remains to be seen, but I doubt it.  The NFL has been letting the Pro Bowl die a slow death for a while now.  The decision to replace it with the "Pro Bowl Games" is nothing more than digging a six-foot-deep hole, pushing the Pro Bowl into it and covering it with dirt.  All that's missing is the headstone.