DAVID BERGMAN
With the Super Bowl finally over and the cries of dynasty slowly fading, sports fans are faced with the annual disgrace known as the Pro Bowl.
The Pro Bowl - or NFL All-Star Game, if you will - is the ridiculous spectacle put on every year in an attempt to showcase the best talent in the NFL. While the premise is nice, the delivery is far from desirable. Fans who bother to turn on ESPN on the Sunday following the Super Bowl soon realize the game is no more than a chance for idiocy and lack of effort to be showcased in a variety of areas.
When people tune in on Sunday the first thing they will see is a group of otherwise professional announcers acting foolishly by wearing Hawaiian shirts. It seems that because the game is played in the state the shirt is named after, a dress code is enacted. If this were the case year-round, I'd hate to see what they'd have to wear while covering a game in Pittsburgh - a beer-stained T-shirt and a mullet?
The other act of ridiculousness perpetrated on the fans by the game's announcers is the lack of interest shown in the game itself. While admittedly the game can be quite lopsided, at the very least it involves a lot of offensive action.
But never have I heard announcers ignore the sport before them in favor of discussing fashion and celebrities more than during the Pro Bowl. Sure, I'd like to know whom Jennifer Aniston is dating now, but let's leave that to Mary Hart.
If you can stand the announcers, you're subjected to a game so dull it can't even elicit a "boom!" from John Madden. Watching three different quarterbacks jockey for who can best scramble from an uninterested defense and bomb it 80 yards to a wide-open receiver is not exciting. It's bush league.
If I wanted to watch Mike Vick celebrate like he won the Super Bowl over such obvious ease, I would flip on "Madden NFL" on my Playstation 2, hit X, X, R2, O and let the game take over from there.
The second problem with the game is the lack of rivalry between the two sides. Unlike baseball, where there are legitimate differences between the AL and NL, football has no inherent problems between the two conferences.
Sure, there are team rivalries, but because all the players are actually friends with one another and have no interest in potentially getting hurt, the lack of effort is palpable. I could see a more intense rivalry in the same time slot by watching Vonda and Mel duke it out on "The Real World."
My final problem with the Pro Bowl is its utter lack of significance. Unlike baseball, where the winning league in the All-Star game earns home-field advantage in the World Series, the winner of the Pro Bowl gets nothing.
What is more significant than the game is getting selected to play in the game. Such a selection yields contract bonuses and increases a player's value, but a big play during the game earns him nothing more than a potential injury.
In fact, players selected to the Pro Bowl can claim to be "bothered" by lagging injuries and can withdraw from the game with no penalty, as their prize has essentially already been claimed. Frankly if I cared more about nominations than victories, I'd be more interested in John Kerry than football.
