The Pro Bowl Is Broken, and Here Are 10 Ways to Fix It

The Pro Bowl is here, and this is what we know about it. 

It's terrible.

It needs to be fixed, even beyond the cosmetic changes the NFL has made to it. But before we get into how to fix it, we should know what the players think about it. And few are more honest than Geoff Schwartz, an eight-year veteran offensive lineman and free agent who can readily be found offering his opinion on the NFL and other topics on Twitter.

"The older players still think it's an honor and treat it as such," Schwartz wrote in a note to B/R. "The younger guys are probably more excited to be called a 'Pro Bowler' and what that brings. That's kind of where we are in the league as a whole. There's a big divide in the thought process of the older guys vs. the younger ones."

When asked how he'd fix the game, Schwartz suggested leaving the game in Hawaii and adding a skills competition before getting to the biggest issue—money.

"If you wanted to make the game better, money talks," Schwartz wrote. "If you offer the losing team 10k and the winning team 100k, the game would be better. But I think the risk is too high on players getting hurt. Teams will cut you in a heartbeat. They don't care if you got hurt in the Pro Bowl."

Well, then, how do you fix things?

Here are 10 ways to make the Pro Bowl decent again:

1. Get rid of it

What do you do with garbage? You put it to the curb. The Pro Bowl deserves to be in a landfill. But millions watch it, showing America's affinity for waste, so it's not going away.

2. More money

Schwartz is right in that more cash, duckets, moola, pesos, buckeroos, "cash money, yo" would offer an incentive for the best players to play and for those individuals to compete.

It's not like the league can't afford it.

Jeff Haynes/AP Images for Panini

Say, $200,000 for the winners and $10,000 for the losers. Make the game mean something to these already-wealthy men—make it feel like a playoff contest. And with $200,000 on the line, it would become an all-out brawl.

Schwartz is right about something else, though, that might undermine this idea: No team would want its players to participate in the game if the money was that big. Teams hate to have their players in the game now, when it's basically a pillow fight. Imagine how much they'd hate it if it became a blood bath.

Do you think the Falcons would want Julio Jones playing in that kind of Pro Bowl? Hell no.

But the game would be amazingly competitive. And the motivational element would fix a number of the problems, if not most of them.

3. Let former stars compete

We don't want to see the likes of Brett Favre sent to the hospital, but who wouldn't want to see him firing passes in the skills competition? It would be cool to see former greats compete against current ones. Former players such as Joe Montana might do better than you think against some of the current stars in a precision passing contest.

4. Broadcast everything live

The broadcast of this year's skills competition was tape-delayed. The event actually happened on a Wednesday and aired on Thursday. Why not air all of that live? Use a five-second delay as a caution for foul language (though cursing is always caught by network mics during live broadcasts, and I giggle like a five-year-old).

In other words, show everything you can as it happens. Make viewers feel like they're actually there instead of watching a homogenized, cleaned-up show.

5. Don't get too cute

Gregory Payan/Associated Press

There's a fine line between nice touch and gimmicky. The league is approaching that line. The idea of drones dropping footballs is cool and all, but going further than something like that would reek of desperation. If the next step is drones shooting passes at players...um...no.

The NFL just needs to realize that if you go too far with an idea, fans will laugh at the league instead of choosing to back it.

6. Compensate players and teams in the event of injury

If a player is hurt during the Pro Bowl and his career is threatened or severely impacted, pay him $10 million and compensate his team with a first-round pick.

A sliding scale could be created for different levels of injury. The injury would have to be certified by an independent doctor to prevent scams, but if the league wants players and teams to care, it has to share in some of the risk.

7. Let the fans vote on the game

This is gimmicky, I know, and it might violate idea No. 5, but it could also be fun.

Have fans go to a website, maybe NFL.com, and vote on player effort. That's right—effort. You could ask a simple question: Did each team play hard?

If the majority vote says yes, all players get to divide a $100,000 bonus per team. If the majority vote says no, they don't get that bonus.

There's a little bit of a Roman tribunal aspect to this, but all the players have to do is show some effort and they get the cash. That's not bad.

8. Celebrity coaches

Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

We're talking A-listers. Big-timers. The NFL would have to pay big bucks to get them, but, you know, the league can afford it.

Pay Jamie Foxx $1 million, mic him up, then have him make all of the coaching decisions during the game. Have Samuel L. Jackson say, "I'm here to kill all these mother-bleeping dudes on the mother-bleeping AFC (use the five-second delay, of course).

9. No field-goal attempts under 60 yards

Long field goals are actually among the most dramatic plays in the sport. If the other players are bustin' their butts, kickers should, too. At Pro Bowl practice, Baltimore's Justin Tucker made a kick, on grass, outside, from 75 yards away. Seventy. Five. Yards. It could have gone 80.

10. Allow any celebration, of any length, after touchdowns

Marco Garcia/Associated Press

Make it mandatory that someone has to dance.

I thought about having a dance-off after every quarter between designated dancers, but that would be way too gimmicky. (Or would it?)

No matter. Require someone to celebrate after each score. If they don't, the team is penalized.

With all that said, it's clear we need to Make the Pro Bowl Great Again.

Sorry, it was never great.

Let's settle on at least making it watchable again.

Mike Freeman covers the NFL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @mikefreemanNFL.