America's Annual Form of Public Torture: The NFL Pro Bowl

The 2019 NFL Pro Bowl isn’t even over yet and it already sucks. The NFL Pro Bowl is like a person left on life support for weeks. Even after the doctors have expressed their opinion that the patient has a zero percent chance to live, the family still keeps the plug in. There honestly is nothing more painful than watching tight end Eric Ebron pull out his smart phone while on the field and start taking a video of himself. Then again, running backs Saquan Barkley and Alvin Kamara at one point lined up as defensive ends. Remarkably, Kamara was able to beat out right tackle, Taylor Lewan, and nearly stripped the ball from quarterback DeShaun Watson. If either of those examples aren’t bad enough Amari Cooper, who was wide open, just let a would-be touchdown catch go off his helmet. In short, it’s utterly pathetic.

So pathetic that I have done several things, other than watch the NFL Pro Bowl:

1. I took a nap.

2. I watched the Cleveland Cavaliers against the Chicago Bulls (this is pathetic because between both teams they have combined for 20 wins and 79 losses. The Cavaliers have contributed only 9 of those wins).

3. Watched Netflix

 

There are two main reasons why the NFL Pro Bowl is so bad.

 

The first, and what has already been briefly discussed above, is the lack of play. When I finally switched from the Cavs game to the NFL Pro Bowl, I was amazed – there was an actual tackle. The New York Jets’ safety, Jamal Adams, tackled Chicago Bears quarterback, Mitchell Trubisky. However, it was not without, like all plays in the NFL, controversy. The first piece of controversy is the fact that, apparently, blitzes are not permitted in the Pro Bowl. Blitzes are only allowed if it is a running play. In turn, on a pass, at most, a defense is only allowed to rush four defensive linemen. Furthermore, a defense must line up in a 4-3 formation for the entire game. Luckily, Jamal Adams blitzed on a flea flicker which is initially a handoff and therefore a running play. The second issue is that in the NFL Pro Bowl safeties are not permitted to line up on the line of scrimmage. Here, Jamal Adams, was lined up on the line of scrimmage, but the refs did not notice, most likely because they are not used to calling such an anemic, and egregious style of football. However the NFC Team’s head coach, Jason Garrett, tried to challenge the play, citing that Adams was on the line of scrimmage. To this viewer’s delight, the refs confirmed that a play could not be reviewed for Garrett’s grievance, implying reviewing the play would have only prolonged this atrocious, dreadful, appalling form of football for one second too long. 

 

The other issue is that the NFL is not a player’s sport, like the NBA, but is more of a team sport. In other words, fans don’t typically cheer for a team due to a specific player, but rather they cheer for a team, because the team represents something about that fan – namely the team represents that fan’s town, region, home. So when the NFL decided to copy the NBA so that pro bowl teams would be selected by captains in a fantasy draft format, it was no surprise that it wouldn’t make a difference in how miserable the play on the field was. Although their all-star game has little defense too, the NBA is more interesting in a fantasy draft format because it is a players’ league. Fans watch the NBA more so for a certain player rather than a certain team. So when Lebron and Curry select their teams, it makes it more interesting because the league’s best players will be partnered with scorers with whom they typically are never associated. In the NFL it makes little difference who Deion Sanders or Jerry Rice (the first fantasy Pro Bowl captains) selected because even on offense there is little to no effort. Thankfully in 2016 the NFL announced that the Pro Bowl would return to its old format, in which the AFC would play the NFC.

 

Aloha Stadium

The second issue about the Pro Bowl is its location. From 1980-2016, save but two years, the game was played in Aloha Stadium in Hawaii. This was actually pretty cool considering that Hawaii is a beautiful state, and so even if the game does suck (which it almost always does) at least a fan got to see cuts of the Pacific Ocean, volcanoes, nice beaches, and random scenes of people doing the Hula dance. That would all change in 2016 when the league announced that it would be taking the Pro Bowl from gorgeous Hawaii to the artificially created, swamp drained, beachless, city of hot and humid Orlando, Florida. The NFL must have forgotten that when it rains in Florida, it isn’t just a little drizzle but an epic monsoon like atmosphere that just causes the ground to steam up and become a natural sauna, like it did this year in 2019 (I’m sure the players loved those “ideal” conditions). To add insult to injury, Orlando was the best of all the poisons. The NFL was considering Orlando, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, Houston, and Honolulu.

Camping World Stadium - Orlando, FL

 



An evening walk in Rio de Janiero. Eagles fans would be used to it.

First, the best choice would have been keeping the Pro Bowl in Honolulu and to at least give the players somewhere nice to visit before having to “act” like they are playing football. Houston would have been a malign selection only because most of the players travel there either once a year or once every few years to play the Houston Texans. The Pro Bowl in Rio de Janiero just seems like the next Gerard Butler movie to fall in line with his Olympus Has Fallen series. According to the New York Times, “Brazil’s showcase city is plagued by a rise in lawlessness reminiscent of its darkest periods in the 1980s and 1990s.” In 2017 there was an 11 percent rise in murders compared to 2016. Whether the NFL decided not to move the Pro Bowl for financial or player safety reasons (I would like to believe the latter but it is most likely the former), doesn’t matter, it’s just a relief that the NFL’s greedy management wasn’t able to pull the trigger on that proposition.

 

Funny enough, it has been cited that in an effort to bring the NFL to a more international stage, the NFL is contemplating moving the Pro Bowl to Germany, Mexico or Australia. Like most of the NFL’s efforts to make the Pro Bowl relevant, this will be a monumental mistake. It’s one thing to keep the “drunk uncle” of the NFL in its home state (i.e. America), it’s another theory to parade the “drunk uncle” around and have the thought that maybe these other nations, who have repeatedly rejected American football, want to see this poor excuse of not only a sport, but entertainment. More importantly, if these foreigners do enjoy the Pro Bowl, the NFL might get the false idea that an NFL franchise could survive overseas.  The simple reason for this is the fact that like Orlando’s other attraction, Disney World, the Pro Bowl isn’t really real and even less amusing. It is a Luke warm, slow moving, half cousin of football, better kept hidden from sight.