Pro Bowl: Does It Even Matter Anymore?

The Pro Bowl has already distinguished itself as one of the most irrelevant events in sports.

But by moving the NFL's version of the all-star game in between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, any relevance that the game had left has completely diminished.

Naturally, the league’s highest-caliber players are playing in football's most high-profile game, the Super Bowl.

With wedging the Pro Bowl between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, all players competing in the Super Bowl will not be able to play, as their seasons aren't quite over.

Heading into this weekend's conference championships, there are 24 Pro-Bowlers between the Colts, Jets, Vikings, and Saints.

The Vikings featured the highest amount of all-stars with nine, while six Colts, five Saints, and four Jet players earned the honor as well.

Say we see a Colts-Vikings Super Bowl. Then that's a guaranteed loss of 15 players on the Pro Bowl rosters. Are those spots going to be filled by alternates or does that just mean more playing time (aka opportunity to get injured in meaningless competition) for other players?

I really wonder if Roger Goodell even took that into consideration when sliding the game up two weeks earlier than it has ever been.

The moving of the game is supposed to make fans feel "more a part of the experience" as the game is now being played wherever the Super Bowl is (Miami this year) rather than Honolulu. However, as the Super Bowl competitors usually possess some of the league’s most talent, that eliminates a significant amount of players for the game.

This year the absolute minimum amount of slots that are guaranteed not to be filled due to Super Bowl players is nine. And if the NFL is going to select alternates for each of those vacant positions, then this "all-star game" has become a complete joke.

Some believe it already has.

Is being named to a Pro Bowl even an honor anymore?

You see it year after year—stars withdrawing themselves from the Pro Bowl action and just enjoying their offseason without the thoughts of a meaningless game.

The bottom line, however, is that the Pro Bowl no longer has as much meaning as it used to.

It used to be an honor to go out and spend a week in Hawaii with all of football's best players. The past few seasons we have seen stars remove their names from the elite field. And this year, with the game being played before the playoffs are over, many of the stars voted to the game won't receive the opportunity to play anyway.

The only solution to this problem is either to move the Pro Bowl back to the week following the Super Bowl, or to get rid of the game altogether.

Being named as one of the league’s best talents is a great honor, but if you aren't going to be able to play in the game because you are competing for the Super Bowl title or you would rather spend your offseason relaxing in a non-football environment, then the NFL should just stick with naming the All-Pro team and leave it at that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm one of the few people in the world who actually enjoys the Pro Bowl, but that may be just because I know I'm about to hit a six-month stretch of no football on television.

The Pro Bowl hasn't been relevant for many years, but now that the game will no longer feature players from Super Bowl teams, the game has lost all relevancy.