Although there exists no earthly reason or viable method to do it, you could analyze every human conversation in the last 100 years, recorded, unrecorded, recalled, misremembered, real, imagined, or even hypothetical, and never find the following question:
“Who won the Pro Bowl?”
That’s because it was said by no one, ever, and that’s why I’m doing something I rarely do today: commending the National Football League on a high-level decision, a decision shockingly lacking in its trademark dubious logic or outright toxicity — the move to finally eliminate the Pro Bowl, or at least stop pretending it’s a football game.
Bravo. Wish that baseball, hockey and basketball take a look at their own all-star games and shutter them like nuisance bars. In a culture that’s not exactly lacking for spectacle, there is no rule that says the all-star break has to include an unreasonable facsimile of the product.
Fittingly, the Pro Bowl is the first to go, because it is by far the all-star game most comically inferior to the game it represents. It’s been a full decade since Roger Goodell first threatened its existence, saying after the 2012 affair that if the Pro Bowlers didn’t play more competitively, he wasn’t inclined to play it anymore. More recently, the commissioner considered a plan to stage the Pro Bowl in Brazil, aka the “here, you take it,” solution.
Though it’s morphed into various versions of itself every year since, the event remains an eyesore of abject meaninglessness. The basic rules of football have changed almost annually to conform to the will of the modern Pro Bowl participants, which is primarily to avoid injury. The early 21st Century version thus allows no blitzing, no rushing the passer, no rushing the punter, no rushing the kicker, no rushing the holder, and most importantly, no rushing the telecast, which somehow includes a two-minute warning in every quarter.
When Bills quarterback Josh Allen opted out of last year’s game, as many of the top players do, he instead played in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament. I figured it was because he was looking for something with a little more physical contact than the Pro Bowl.
But my favorite Pro Bowl rule is that while real NFL games can end in a tie, the Pro Bowl cannot.
That’s right.
Don’t ask.
The game’s history instructs that a laughably uncompetitive Pro Bowl wasn’t always a thing. The game’s elder students remember when players on the winning team got $10,000 and the losers got $5,000, the difference being enough incentive 50 years ago for participants to take it seriously. Today, the idea of providing an “entertainment” vehicle where Tom Brady can always pick up a little spending money lacks a certain dignity, no?
Even in its earliest incarnations, the Pro Bowl was something of a societal menace.
On January 14, 1951, it drew 53,676 to the Los Angeles Coliseum at a time when that city was just getting its footing in the still relatively new medium called television. When that first Pro Bowl drew 53,676, pioneering television executives no doubt turned to each other and said, “See that, people will watch anything — anything!”
Thus a seemingly harmless yet demonstrably terrible idea about football put American culture on the inextricable path to “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and “Bachelor In Paradise.”
The unfortunate part of this week’s news was that the league prevented itself from ripping the Pro Bowl away like a band-aid, instead hemming and hawing about evolutionary opportunities and such.
"The Pro Bowl is something that we've been looking at for a while, really continuing to evolve," NFL executive Peter O'Reilly told the Associated Press. "Coming out of last year's game, we really made the decision based on a lot of internal conversations, getting feedback from GMs and coaches, getting a lot of feedback from players. We think there's a real opportunity to do something wholly different here and move away from the traditional tackle football game. We decided the goal is to celebrate 88 of the biggest stars in the NFL in a really positive, fun, yet competitive way.”
Sounds like potato sack races, I know, but there will still be a flag football game apparently. Since Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions company is involved, I was hoping they meant something like a competition in the tradition of that “College Bowl” show Manning hosts with his brother Cooper. I’d love to see the AFC stars take on the NFC in the Elizabethan Poetry category. O’Reilly went on to say there would be multiple skills competitions, not limited to football skills. Maybe Cleveland’s Myles Garrett or former Steeler Antonio Brown could demonstrate their driving skills somewhere where it’s safe to do so. Philadelphia center Jason Kelce tweeted, “Please tell me there’s a hot dog eating competition for OL/DL!! This is so awesome, the skill competitions were always more fun to watch anyways.”
Not more fun than “Bachelor in Paradise.”
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter: @genecollier.
First Published: October 2, 2022, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: October 2, 2022, 12:15 p.m.
