The NFL Pro Bowl took place this past Sunday, and for those who didn’t watch it or were utterly unentertained, it’s not abnormal. Out of the major sports’ all-star games, the Pro Bowl has to be the worst. It’s passionless, boring and absolutely meaningless. If the NFL wants fans to care about this game, it has to make changes that actually make it entertaining for fans to watch.
Most NFL fans are hyped up for the Super Bowl at this point. They’re looking forward to seeing two teams give everything they have for one game, but what they get the week before is a game where the players couldn’t care less.
Football is a game of passion. It’s about effort, skill and hard hits — even if the NFL is doing its best to eliminate the hitting part. The players have no interest in the Pro Bowl. They don’t want to get injured, which is understandable, but it makes it painful for fans to watch. There needs to be some type of incentive for the players to play and play hard.
What would be ideal is if the NFL was to create a skills competition to either go with the Pro Bowl or replace it altogether. The success of MLB’s home run derby or the NBA’s dunk competition shows that fans dig this. Let’s see a quarterback accuracy competition, or a long kick contest.
This kind of change would add some variety and excitement to a dull event. It would give the players incentive to show up and actually compete hard. It would give them a chance to compete against their peers in a new way to prove who the most athletic and talented players are.
It’s pathetic that the most popular sports league can’t put together an event that matters. The best players get together once a year only to put the fans asleep for three hours. This shouldn’t happen and it doesn’t have to if the NFL will just change things up.
Rather than play a meaningless game where players don’t try for fear of injury, the Pro Bowl could be one of the most entertaining event of the year where the best of the best go one-on-one with each other in different events. Imagine watching Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers trying to out-duel each other in a pass competition, or Sebastian Janikowski and David Akers trying to out-kick one another. It would be a lot more entertaining than watching the two-hand-touch game that the Pro Bowl has become.
Fans tune in to watch the Pro Bowl because they’re bored on Sunday afternoons and watching some football is better than no football, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The NFL should rethink the event and make it something that is engaging and exciting for fans to watch. Not only that, but make it something the players actually want to show up to. If this is done, not only will fans watch the Pro Bowl, but they’ll be excited to do so.
Kevin Bingaman can be reached at [email protected]