The Pro Bowl needs to go. For now, it’s simply going from Hawaii to Orlando -- and going from the goofy fantasy football format back to the traditional clash of the conferences.
Via JoeBucFan.com, Falcons CEO Rich McKay recently told SiriusXM NFL Radio that the game likely will revert to the AFC-vs.-NFC format.
The once-and-future natural alignment of teams was ditched in favor of something that was supposed to generate more interest in an uninteresting game. It hasn’t worked. Beyond the issue of players not playing hard enough (and for good reason) during a meaningless game to end the season, more and more players are bailing (and for good reason) on one final opportunity to enter the offseason with an injury -- which is precisely what happened to Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert during the NFL’s most recent All-Star-Sort-Of game.
While the game seems to have more buzz when it’s played in the contiguous U.S., players will be less interested in a free trip to the land of Sea World and Disney and putt-putt golfing. With more and more players realizing that it’s not in their best interests to risk spending the offseason recovering from surgery, more and more will find a way out of the game.
They all should want to find a way out of it. At one point, Commissioner Roger Goodell huffed and puffed about getting rid of the game completely. The players, at the time, wanted to save it. Now, they should let Goodell blow the house down.
He won’t, as long as we watch the game. And we watch the game about nothing because it’s on TV. And it will be on TV as long as we keep watching. Which will keep happening as long as it’s on TV.