Reports out of Hawaii this past weekend said that something known as the NFL Pro Bowl took place. Allegedly, this featured the best talent in the NFL. The AFC won the battle of the all-stars, and some guy named Palmer won the MVP award. However, if you are like me you didn’t watch it and couldn’t care less about the results.
The NFL has the distinction of being the most popular sport in America, yet continues to feature the worst All-Star game. The Pro Bowl has nothing to offer. Where baseball and basketball have exciting events such as the home run derby and the slam-dunk contest, the NFL gives us weight lifting by lineman and beach football by retirees.
Other sports give us memorable events from their festivities. Who can forget back in 1999 at Fenway Park when Mark McGwire kept crushing balls over the Green Monster? Or what about the NBA’s Slam Dunk contest? Last year, 5-foot 9-inch Nate Robinson dunked over Spud Webb, a memory that won’t soon be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
These are classic memories from All-Star festivities, which begs the question, what classic memory has the Pro Bowl given us? The answer is none, unless you count the time Peyton Manning attempted a few passes to a hoop 30 yards away.
One event unique to the Pro Bowl holds is a race among the league’s fastest players. Yet with the inclusion of a race between NBA Hall-of-Famer Charles Barkley and 67-year-old NBA referee Dick Bavetta in the upcoming NBA all-star weekend, the NFL has once again been outshined by an adversary.
The Pro Bowl simply lacks the lust, which its contemporaries possess. It is essentially a waste of time for everyone except the actual participants. The game has no importance to the season, and is nothing more than one final fleeting image for football junkies to gaze upon for six months. It will continue to remain a sham; nothing more than an excuse for the elite of the league to go to Hawaii with their families for a week, until wholesale changes are made. The NFL, a source of entertainment for millions of fans around the world, gives nothing back in the season’s final game.