How the NFL Can Make the Pro Bowl Relevant

The Pro Bowl has its draft now. We suppose that adds something, if only because there was no place to go but up. Clearly, the Pro Bowl still lacks something for fans. 

It doesn't have a winner.

Sure, it keeps score, but can anyone reading this remember who won any of the Pro Bowls?

Games are played to win. The Pro Bowl needs that carrot.

Fixing it won't be easy, but we have an idea of how it might be salvaged before it is sent to the sidelines permanently: Make the game's veteran stars play for something.

They won't play for money, necessarily. The best players already have loads of it.

But how about pride? Pride might be a motivating factor.

Face it: No one cared if the old AFL (now known as the AFC) was better than the NFL (read: NFC). That's the reason the Pro Bowl went to a draft structure. 

The NFL got to the root (pun entirely intentional here) of the issue: Everyone has to care who wins in order for the game to matter. It defined the problem. Congrats on that.

Its alternative solution didn't solve it, though.

Having Michael Irvin draft against Cris Carter doesn't get people to care either. No one is hanging on the drama of whether Irvin drafted a more capable Pro Bowl roster than Carter, even if fans might like to watch a draft unfold.

The Pro Bowl is still about playing a football game, not drafting a football team.

We have to come up with a Pro Bowl that means something to win. You play to win the game—right, Herm Edwards? Unless there is a reason to win the game, who cares?

Watching the Pro Bowl is like watching a peewee football game...except you don't have a kid out there on the field. It is still football, but there is just nothing in it that matters. The score definitely does not.

We understand there are limitations to an all-star showcase for football. It is a violent game and is meant to be played at full speed. Anything less winds up looking hokey. All of the elite players don't play—whether they're preparing for the Super Bowl, are too beat up from the season and the playoffs or are tired of traveling.

The ones who do show up just don't care enough to try that hard. Put some pride into it outside of AFC vs. NFC or Irvin vs. Carter. Make it a game with a true winner.

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game is the only major showcase that truly captures its fans' attention. It is held in the middle of summer and is the only major game going on at the time.

The NFL cannot, and would not, interrupt its season, especially because no one would risk getting hurt in the middle of it. It has to be a season-ending event, either before the Super Bowl or after—in Hawaii or at the Super Bowl site. It just doesn't resonate right now.

Baseball's All-Star Game still does. With its players. Its fans. 

The one big controversy it has had? It once tied. And that was a travesty.

See, games have to be played to win for anyone to care. Here are a few ways to restore pride in the Pro Bowl and make it a game to win...and, most importantly, watch.

Rookies vs. Veterans

The NFL finally altered its salary structure so the top draft picks aren't richer than the players who have cut their teeth in the league for years. Now, it would be interesting to watch those same vets prove to the world they are better than the young guns.

Father Time is undefeated in the universe. Let's see the big-name vets fight against it for 60 minutes.

Whether it is rookies or first- and second-year players, it doesn't matter to us. Put the kids out there against the game's older players and see what happens.

About the only way to get an older player to grind his ax is to suggest he cannot do it anymore. Put his livelihood on the line against a young player hungry to make his own.

This sure would amp up the the intensity for the older, big-name guys who have been to the circus and seen the strings.

(I loved this concept until the old gerbil spinning the wheel in my skull spun this out...)

East vs. West or North vs. South

Maybe you don't buy that veterans will show up to potentially get, well, shown up by the youth. How about this: Take the high school or college origins of the selected Pro Bowlers and divide them up into teams that way.

There is nothing more prideful in a man than his roots. There are prime-time football broadcasts that still announce the game's starters and show them saying where they came from. We don't necessarily care, but clearly someone does.

Then, similar to baseball, put the Super Bowl in the region of the winner.

Can you imagine Seattle Seahawks fans potentially getting a Super Bowl? You think the 12th Man was loud in the past two postseasons, but it would erupt for a Super Bowl. It would shake earth to potentially get the right to host the game and have that decided advantage.

Home-field advantage in a football world championship game would mean a lot more than potentially hosting a World Series Game 7, by the way.

This would take some advanced planning, since the Super Bowl sites are declared years in advance, like the Olympics. But AFC and NFC Championship Games go off with less than a week's notice without a hitch. Having a year to plan wouldn't be the end of the world.

Oh, this would raise the stakes for more than just the fans too. Franchises, cities and politicians would get involved. There would be millions, if not billions, of big business at stake.

Now, we are talking.

This scenario would certainly put pressure on the impact players to play. The fans would be angry if a particular region didn't do its diligence to earn the rights to the Super Bowl.

Angry, passionate fans can move mountains and Super Bowls.

The elite teams would be motivated to send their best players too, since it could mean a potential home-field advantage for the world championship the next year. Cities would thirst for the potential business.

Laugh at baseball's World Series home-field advantage concept if you want, but it gives some incentive. There is still no incentive in the NFL's Pro Bowl.

Earning the right to host the Super Bowl and its two weeks of events would make a lot more than the overprivileged players care.

Pride and money, fame and fortune...they basically make the world go around. They can make the Pro Bowl watchable again too.

Follow @EricMackFantasy

Eric Mack, one of the giants among fantasy writers, is the Fantasy Football Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, where you can ask him endless questions about your team, rip him for his content and even challenge him to a head-to-head fantasy game.