Another year, another lackluster Pro Bowl is at hand for us football fans.
Simply put, uninspired play and presentation have been dragging the Pro Bowl’s stock ever since we could remember. Players don’t want to get hurt in a glorified exhibition game, and the result is a watered-down affair of our favorite pastime, which really should be entertaining as hell given the season’s top performers are about to take the field (or should be on the field at that).
We’ve had it with this joke of an All-Star celebration, so we’ve decided to list down three of the best possible fixes needed to save the Pro Bowl from becoming a mere footnote in the annals of NFL history.
NFL News and Previews
- Washington Redskins vs. Kansas City Chiefs Preview - October 2, 2017
- Oakland Raiders vs. Denver Broncos Preview - October 1, 2017
- Carolina Panthers vs. New England Patriots Preview - October 1, 2017
- 2017 NFL Week 4 Picks and Predictions
How to Improve the NFL Pro Bowl: Three Possible Solutions
*view all 2017 Pro Bowl and Super Bowl LI lines HERE
1. Better Incentives for Players and Teams
$50,000 per player in the winning Pro Bowl team and $25,000 for losing players is no chump change, but that’s now how the players themselves see it compared to their respective contracts. Is fifty grand really worth it if your career can go kaput instantaneously with an unfortunate accident in the Pro Bowl?
The NFL is arguably the most lucrative major sports organization in America, so why not shell out more cash for the participants to up the ante? With more at stake for each player, the on-field presentation will follow suit with better performances.
Teams should also be properly recompensed if a player does indeed suffer an injury during the event – preferably tantamount to that player’s supposed earnings during his injury’s timespan. That way, both the player and his team won’t financially suffer as much from an unfortunate ordeal that happened in an exhibition bout.
2. Change of Schedule and Venues
Okay, sue us for listing three key factors into one argument, but the Pro Bowl needs a major overhaul desperately.
If the Pro Bowl wants to showcase the cream of the crop of the current season, then why hold the event a week before the league’s championship game wherein a good number of said standout players are set to perform at what should be their very peak? Wouldn’t it be better if the Pro Bowl was held maybe a week or a month after the Super Bowl? Players from the losing Super Bowl team can even exact some form of revenge in the aftermath of the Super Bowl at that.
And why is Orlando this season’s setting of the event? Wasn’t the appeal of a Pro Bowl berth for a player partly because of a virtual vacation in Honolulu? Didn’t the NFL realize that three of its frickin’ teams are already based in Florida?! Haven’t we raised one too many rhetorical questions in this article already?!?!
If yearly trips to Hawaii have become very costly for the league, then there’s really no turning back from the mediocre atmosphere of the event moving forward. Not even Vegas can suffice as an alternative venue, mainly because a flight out to Hawaii feels like an overseas location already.
Heck, we’d even want to see the Pro Bowl played in different countries. Not just for fans outside of the U.S. to experience a great gridiron clash (regular-season games in the UK notwithstanding), but to also give the players more motivation to partake in a star-studded battle to be held outside of America’s 50 states.
3. Get Rid of It Altogether
Let’s be honest and ask ourselves: do we really need the Pro Bowl at all?
It might just be the NFL’s ego in believing as such, but the league doesn’t need an All-Star game like the NBA, MLB and NHL to showcase a top-notch product. Football does not translate into quality programming if the action at its finest, and us fans are already delighted enough in witnessing regular-season games – even preseason games to an extent – that have the desired level of intensity on most occasions.
That doesn’t mean that the league should also stop handing out Pro Bowl awards to those deserving of the recognition. However, don’t force those same players to put out a barely passable performance just so the league can milk even more money from network ratings and endorsement deals.
But in the end, we really hope that the NFL can fix the Pro Bowl, as it would still be sad to see football’s equivalent of an All-Star game be ironically laid to rest due to the lack of weight and prestige.
Create a betting account now to place your stakes on this year’s Pro Bowl, or at the very least Super Bowl LI itself, before it’s too late!
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