Pro Bowl thoughts

Roberto Ruiz-Maki

The NFC beat the AFC 55-41 in an extremely ugly game. What is the point of having the Pro Bowl the week before the Super Bowl? The Super Bowl is the biggest game of the year, and one of the best parts is having two full weeks to hype the game. For the second straight year, though, the NFL decided to have the Pro Bowl squeezed in between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. Logically, this makes no sense. Not only are the players who should be representing the two top teams not involved (along with all the other players who come down with mysterious injuries during the week leading up to the Pro Bowl), but it detracts from the Super Bowl hype. Having two weeks to digest everything that is about to happen is excruciating, but the good kind of excruciating. Not only is the game hard to watch because neither team is really trying (tell me how, in a defense driven league, the scores seem straight out of a video game), but players are being more obnoxious than usual. At one point in the game, with the NFC leading 35-0, Steven Jackson took a hand-off and ran it in from 21 yards out; I became sick to my stomach while watching Jackson waltz around defenders while they played as if they didn't have enough money to get their jersey dry cleaned after the game.

The Pro Bowl is not a football contest, it means nothing to the players involved, and it is a disgrace to have it as the last football game played prior to the Super Bowl. The game used to be played after the Super Bowl, and that is where it belongs. Every player who wants to participate can do so, instead of leaving the players from the two best teams out of the game.

On a somewhat separate topic, the NFL does not have a site chosen for the Pro Bowl in 2012. Hawaii has payed four million dollars to have the game in Honolulu this year, and it has traditionally been held in Hawaii (every year since 1980 except last year, when it was held in Florida). Players have made it clear that if it is not held in Hawaii, they are less likely to go. The NFL should stop entertaining offers from other locations, and realize that the location that is best for them is Hawaii. Players view it as a vacation if it is in Hawaii, most players already live in Florida, so why take time out of their schedules to play another game there?

Go Packers.