On Sunday, the NFC beat the AFC in a high-scoring Pro Bowl, 76-63. But with the craziness of the NBA trade deadline and the Super Bowl looming, another year has passed when the NFL’s star-studded event was given little attention. The Pro Bowl has been criticized for various reasons over the years, leading to considerable devolvement of the event. The NFL has experimented with several ways to reignite the spark but to little effect. They’ve tried everything from drafting teams to playing games and flag football. Now, another Pro Bowl has gone by with little fanfare and excitement.
The Pro Bowl Scheduling
The fall of the Pro Bowl can be attributed to many things, but one of the biggest is the placement. The game has always taken place on the weekend between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. Theoretically, it makes sense. It’s the only weekend of the NFL season where 30 out of 32 teams are available. But that is also a problem. The season is over for 30 out of 32 teams, so they have nothing to play for. This year, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, and many others opted out of the game because they saw no point in it. Their seasons ended heartbreakingly, and they had no desire to play the next week.
The NBA and MLB hold their All-Star events in the middle of the season. In the MLB, the winning league gets a home-field advantage in the World Series. And while the NBA has similar issues of player disinterest, the players get a week-long break, and no one opts out. The NFL is very different from these sports because of the contact and injuries, but if the Pro Bowl remains a flag football game, it shouldn’t be as big of an issue. But it would take some serious rescheduling, which would be a problem for the league, given all their TV deals.
The Pro Bowl’s Changes
Beyond the scheduling of the game, the events have gone through serious changes. It started when the NFL ditched the concept of NFC vs AFC. For a couple of years, they brought in former players to draft their teams. They would pick from a pool of players and face off like a pickup game. This was fun and revitalized the Pro Bowl for a few seasons but then reverted to stale. The NFL went back to NFC vs AFC, but that didn’t work much either.
Now, the league has gone further to encourage fun and injury-free football, turning the Pro Bowl into a flag football game. Still, players are opting out. This year, Drake Maye and Russell Wilson were quarterbacks for the AFC, when neither was at the top of the conference in stats and production. JJ Watt took to social media and called the Pro Bowl the “participation bowl,” and he is not wrong. The event is supposed to be full of stars battling it out. But if an All-Star event is filled with non-All-Stars, it is hard to take it seriously.
The Reality of the Pro Bowl
The reality is that little will change. Despite its seemingly dwindling popularity, the Pro Bowl will continue to make money for the league. Players will likely be unhappy if they have to return to full pads and potential injuries and the only scheduling changes the NFL seems interested in is adding more games to the regular season. So, despite the complaints from fans missing the hard-hitting Pro Bowls of old, or the criticisms of stars opting out, it will likely stay the same. A high-scoring pickup game with fun highlights and big plays, but little value in the landscape of the league and season.
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