The Pro-Bowl is a joke. It is a waste of television airwaves and it should not be watched by anybody, football fan or not. The players don't care about the game, they don't take it seriously and they're only in it for the free trip to Hawaii.
Rather than complain without offering a solution, I am here to offer a legitimate solution that could actually help make the Pro-Bowl into something remotely watchable, while keeping the party/celebration atmosphere that players seem to actually want: Make it flag football. That's what people are comparing it to anyway.
Here's the proposal: a school yard style flag-football tournament. Four teams, selected by 4 captains, selected from the Pro-Bowl participants. Players play both sides of the ball, the games take between 15 and 30 minutes of real time, and the entire process, starting with picking teams until the champions are crowned takes the same amount of time as the game does now.
Why is this better? Most importantly, the non-contact nature of the game means that players shouldn't have the same fear of injury that they do with a supposedly full-contact game. Players understandably don't want to get hurt in a meaningless game. Taking the contact out is the most you can do to reduce the injury risk without eliminating the game entirely.
The current game tries to put a legitimate veneer over what is not a legitimate NFL game. By removing the pretense that the game is anything but grown men at recess, and the added danger that comes from full contact football, both the players and the viewers can appreciate the game for what it is. No helmets means we can hear and see the players better, which will allow everybody to appreciate the lighthearted nature of the game. Flag football would also lend itself to the big plays and the displays of athleticism that people want to see from an exhibition game.
I am not sure that the Pro-Bowl can be saved, but I think that there are some things that can be done to give it every chance to succeed. I would like to see something similar to this implemented It might actually make the game watchable again, if it ever was.
