The Pro Bowl May Never Be the Same

Once upon a time, the Pro Bowl was a game where the best players from the NFC played against the best players from the AFC. In today’s age, however, that is no longer the case. Today’s Pro Bowl is played when two NFL greats draft players for their perspected team.

Former San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders wide receiver Jerry Rice, former San Francisco 49ers, Atlanta Falcons and Dallas Cowboys safety Deion Sanders and former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin are among those that have had their “teams” participated in the Pro Bowl.

This new system in the Pro Bowl makes it much less exciting to watch for many reasons. One reason is that it’s no longer an All-Star Game. In the other leagues, MLB, NBA and NHL, the All-Star Game is between the greatest players in each conference.

With the NFL, players are now playing with players from the other conference and are also playing against their own teammates. This makes the Pro Bowl much less popular for the fans that grew up watching the NFC against the AFC.

Another reason that the Pro Bowl is no longer exciting is because the game keeps getting move to different cities and played on different networks. The Pro Bowl was played in SunLife Stadium in Miami, FL in 2010. Last year, the game was played at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, AZ, the same place Super Bowl XLIX was played a week later. The game not being played in Hawaii, where it is usually played, has hurt the TV ratings drastically.

The other problem is that ESPN has been the company that has been broadcasting the game. During the season, ESPN gets the lowest-rated game of the week, as they broadcast games on a Monday night, when people are usually in the middle of a work week. Having the game played on ESPN, compared to NBC, who gets the biggest game of the week to wrap up football Sunday, is terrible for the Pro Bowl and for the NFL.

While the new system and the new network playing the game has hurt the NFL, is the NFL to blame for all of these changes? Absolitely not. While we can’t blame them for the network change, we can blame the players for how the new system is run.

In the 2012 Pro Bowl, the year of Super Bowl XLVI, the players acted out of control, causing boos to be heard around Aloha Stadium. Players and executives alike were upset with the performance and were threatening to drop the game altogether.  


Had the players played the Pro Bowl like any other regular game in 2012, the game would be much more exciting to watch and the ratings of the game wouldn’t be dropping each year. 

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