Pro Bowl, Amateur Relevance?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that he would consider eliminating the Pro Bowl, the annual all star game that used to cap off the year, following the Super Bowl as a post-season party in Honolulu.

My reaction to this news: "Huh. I don't really care."

If my reaction was not unique--and I suspect it was not--that underlines the problem that Goodell was pointing out. Is the Pro Bowl still relevant and do people enjoy it?

Speaking for myself, it has been some time since I actually cared about the Pro Bowl, and that was even before the NFL moved it to the weekend BEFORE the Super Bowl, which struck me as really weird, and an effort to artificially give it more importance than it actually has. I haven't really watched the Pro Bowl for some time, so I don't know if I can advise the commissioner on how to fix it. I tried to watch it last year, but I got bored after two minutes. Nevertheless, I've been thinking about this question, so I'll put out the thoughts that occurred to me.

I used to love the Pro Bowl. I feel nostalgic for the NFL of the '80s and '90s, when I was growing up. I think those were halcyon days for the NFL, with stars like Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, John Elway, Dan Marino, Randall Cunningham, Barry Sanders, Warren Moon, Phil Simms, etc. I remember enjoying the spectacle of the Pro Bowl, because every sports fan enjoys those "what if?" moments, such as "what if Joe Montana could throw to Art Monk or hand off to Herschel Walker?" Those "what if" moments are the reason why the Pro Bowl--and any All-Star game--would appeal to fans.

Tradition is important, I can tell you that much. Clearly the advertisers understand that football fans like tradition, as the advertisements in the Super Bowl seemed to focus a lot on nostalgia, as highlighted in this article by Peter Hartlaub of the Chronicle--on a side note, the Matthew Broderick/Ferris Bueller ad for Honda was clever and creative enough that I did not consider Broderick a sell-out, which is saying something; I don't feel quite so charitable towards Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno, although to be fair, I have disliked Leno since Conangate.

In the spirit of tradition, maybe the Pro Bowl should have been left alone as a post-Super Bowl party. The Pro Bowl should be fun for the fans, and the fans would be more likely to have fun if the players were clearly having fun, and I suspect that players would be more likely to have fun at the Pro Bowl with a longer break between the end of the season and the exhibition in Honolulu, not to mention the fact that then the stars of the teams in the Super Bowl could play.

If you do want to make the Pro Bowl better, you need to do away with the idea of an extra regular season game or two, because that's going to be an extra game or two to exhaust the players, which will make them less likely to enjoy an exhibition.

Maybe the question of relevance is the wrong question. Should the Pro Bowl be forced to mean more than what it is? In Major League Baseball, they recently introduced a competitive element, in that the league that wins the All-Star Game earns home field advantage for the World Series. This wouldn't work for the Super Bowl, not only because the Super Bowl is a one-off game rather than a series, but also because the Super Bowl is at a neutral site that bids large sums of money well in advance for the right to host, so you couldn't really inject an identical post-season stake in the Pro Bowl. Even if you could, the Pro Bowl can't be held in the middle of the season, so the result of the Pro Bowl would have to impact the following year's Super Bowl, which is not an idea I would like. I also can't say that I tend to watch baseball's All-Star Game more now than I did before it was just an exhibition.

In the end, maybe the question Commissioner Goodell needs to ask is, "How do we make the Pro Bowl fun again?" If you can't make it fun, then there is no point to having it. There is enough competition and money and business factors throughout the NFL; return the Pro Bowl to the realm of fantasy and nostalgia and pure entertainment.