Why Pro Bowl Voting Is, and Always Will Be, a Complete Joke

You're always going to get people whining about Pro Bowl selections and who deserved to go versus who just made it on reputation or popularity.

The problem is, guys are referred to as Pro Bowlers for the rest of their careers once they make it. The amount of times you made it to the game is often a measure of how great your career was. 

With that in mind, the process needs to be taken more seriously, since at this point it is nothing better than a popularity contest.

Until the voting is switched up and certain factors are considered, it will remain a joke and guys like Dwight Freeney—who had a career low 18 tackles and just 7.5 sacks this season—will continue to be starters.

Here is how the voting should be set up. Forget the fan vote, since that never garners balanced results. As we've seen with Major League Baseball's All-Star Game, that just leads to major market teams having all the starters.

As ESPN's Mark Schlereth said on air the other day, players don't take the voting seriously, and often vote for guys who won't make it to increase the chances of someone from their team getting on.

Head coaches should each get a vote, as should one offensive and one defensive assistant. They should not be able to vote for their own players, and should base their vote on who is having the best season and who they have to game-plan against. That would yield the most realistic results.

Now, will the NFL actually take my suggestions under advisement? Absolutely not. And that is why the Pro Bowl will continue to be a joke of a game that no one cares about and no one pays attention to.

If we really want to start pretending like a selection to the Pro Bowl actually matters again, then the selection process needs to be more worthy of the prize. Until that happens the game will continue to be completely irrelevant.