RIPro Bowl
The Pro Bowl is dead.
To that I say: good. There was nothing left. The Pro Bowl was always a waste of time and energy and would never fundamentally work for football. The shambling corpse it had become over the past decade was embarrassing, and everyone who proclaims to have enjoyed it is just a football addict in denial of their problem.
The idea of a football all-star game is fine. A game where we get to vote for our favorite guys and they play an exhibition match? Sounds great. But from the start, there existed a major problem. Football is dangerous, with a near 100% injury rate. What veteran would willingly put themselves on the line for a meaningless game? Something like the Hall of Fame game is played by hopefuls trying to make a team, not guys who already proved themselves. Players didn’t really have any incentive to actually play the Pro Bowl.
This results in incredibly laid-back, gentle football. Recess football. The violence and athleticism of football is one of the main draws, and a game without either is just empty. A game without stakes in any capacity is soulless. All those goofy plays feel hollow in the end because there’s no substance to give it meaning. The Hall of Fame game is watchable not only due to the scrappy players trying to make a team, but because it occurs after months of football silence. The Pro Bowl took place right before or after the biggest cultural event of American sports and was destined to feel even cheaper for it.
However, the Pro Bowl didn’t need to be incredible. It was a cute dessert to end a football year. Players got a fun resort trip to Hawaii (starting in 1980) and generally seemed to have a good time. It was an honor, and they got a vacation out of it. So what if the play was weak? Well, the NFL apparently cared. We had entered the era of complete football domination, and a game that wasn’t an EVENT was now…a problem. So the NFL decided it needed to “fix” the Pro Bowl.
Putting lipstick on a pig is just…lipstick on a pig, but by golly the NFL was going to try every shade of lipstick they could as if it would somehow hide the pig. They tried doing a player draft and removing the NFC/AFC team split. They tried celebrity team captains like Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders, or the two Mannings. They brought back the skills competition. They made it an entire event, with dodgeball games and skills competitions.
But they also made the two worst mistakes of all in my opinion: moving the Pro Bowl to the week before the Super Bowl, and moving it out of Hawaii. They played the 2010 Pro Bowl in Miami, a stadium and city that most players already go to. After backlash, we got some more Hawaii games, then the NFL decided to fully commit to the Super Bowl week hype festivities and play the Pro Bowl in the same city as the Super Bowl as “part” of the Super Bowl. So we got a Pro Bowl in Arizona. Funny thing about that old comic: it has Andy Dalton laughing because he’s in the Pro Bowl. We’ll come back to that.
Taking the game out of Hawaii took away the main incentive for most players to go. Hawaii was special. Who doesn’t want to go on a trip to Hawaii? Hawaii was unique. It gave the game a unique personality. Now players were just going to cities they go to all the time, and it was even worse if they played for the city hosting the game.
As for moving it to before the Super Bowl, I see the logic they were using. Many people would simply view the Super Bowl as “The End” and not bother to tune into the lazy Pro Bowl a week later. The NFL figured more people would tune in if it offered a game in that two-week gap. They were wrong. People didn’t watch the Pro Bowl because the Pro Bowl sucks. Now it sucked at a different time, in a lamer location. Both of these major moves resulted in the true death knell to the game: players dropping out.
Players on the Super Bowl teams would drop out. Players who had gone to the Pro Bowl once already would frequently drop out. Players from the region would drop out. Anyone on the playoff teams who was nursing a leftover injury would drop out. The Pro Bowl stopped being an “all-star” event and started being a “decent level starter” event. Andy Dalton making the Pro Bowl is funny, but the game was suddenly being played by nothing but Andy Daltons. Shedeur Sanders getting the nod after a legion of abandons was probably the final sign the NFL needed that this dead husk of a game simply could never recover. So it’s finally dead.
We still get to vote for Pro Bowlers, but now it functions as a kind of people’s choice award they get to hang on their wall. I will not miss the game itself. The Skills competition is kind of a loss, but it wasn’t exactly must-see TV and you’d get the same level of entertainment just catching up on GIFs and TikToks of the funniest moments later. The NFL tried to make the Pro Bowl matter, but it never mattered, and it was better for it. If they ever want to bring it back, stick it back in Hawaii as a post-season nightcap where it belongs.
RIP Pro Bowl. We’ll always remember that one time Sean Taylor murdered a punter (nineteen years ago!), and nothing else.
Won’t miss the game, will miss all the shenanigans going on around it. Felt like an NFL special of Superstars.
And that punter deserved it. He was Buffalo.
You could say the same “superstar games are dangerous” about both MLB and NHL’s games (frankly the NHL should be getting much more scrutiny with how players are being worked to the bone there), but those also happen in the middle of their seasons as a kind of reprieve. A meaningless game in the middle of the season just works better when it’s a marathon like those leagues, but NFL’s current structure doesn’t really allow for something like that.
Honestly the skills competition could probably just be moved to compliment the Hall of Fame game. Genuinely think that would work really well and feel really appropriate with the whole “getting back into the groove” preseason has always been.
I’ll miss the minigames.
They needed work, no doubt. There were a lot more misses than hits. But when they worked, they showed off just how incredibly good these players are. We’re used to celebrating the touchdown scorers, but not so much the rest of the athletes.
And yeah, the skills games would be incredibly silly, but that’s half the fun of it. Remembering that this is a silly game and not something to be taken super-seriously. Its also why I think it worked better during the bye week, it helped maintain the sport’s momentum into the Super Bowl, and it took the edge off just a little bit.