A Plan To Make the Pro Bowl Exciting Again

Long were the days when we watched the Pro Bowl and it excited us. Now it seems that the Pro Bowl has just become a glorified sparring session. Ask the players, they'll tell you it's still "competitive." Sure.

Okay, who the Jay Frank are we kidding? The Pro Bowl has lost it's luster and with it, it's credibility. But fear not! I have a plan to fix that and to make the NFL Pro Bowl Weekend worth the watch.

First of all, let's get rid of the whole Sunday afternoon football idea...fans have been watching that idea for the past 21 weeks...the last thing they wanna watch is 22 guys on the field who are barely trying to stop or make first downs. That concept is dead. Scratch it. 

A successful Pro Bowl for a lineman is a Pro Bowl where he doesn't get injured. Since there's no blitzing allowed anyway, the lines are pretty much ornamental in a Pro Bowl game. We send them to Hawaii, but we keep them off the field. Sorry, big fellas, but that's the way it goes.

I take a more simpler idea that will represent all teams and make the celebration of the best in the league much more competitive. I propose that we introduce a 32 team Flag Football Tournament. Okay, before you close this article, at least hear me out.

Each team can pick 5 players from their team along with one alternate. Each team is required to send a QB and at least one lineman (regardless of offense or defense). Lets use my homeboy Vikings as an example. You grab a Tarvaris Jackson (heaven forbid), Adrian Peterson, Bernard Berrian, Jared Allen, and Antoine Winfield. And then pit them against say, the New Orleans Saints. Okay, tell me you wouldn't wanna watch Adrian Peterson covering Reggie Bush and vice-versa.

It's injury free. And not to mention it also adds a competitive edge in the whole event. The Pro Bowl's all about displaying talent and putting on a show, right? Come on, you wouldn't want to see Steve Smith covering Braylon Edwards and vice-versa? Adrian Peterson spinning and juking in the open field, keeping his flags away from defenders? Torry Holt one-on-one against Larry Fitzgerald? Ben Roethlisberger applying the pass rush against Daunte Culpepper?

Being flag football and all, we'd have to sacrifice the hitting that generally comes with football, but that's okay, because we don't see any hitting in the Pro Bowl anyway. In the entire history of the game, we've had, what, exactly one big hit? We're not missing much.

On a big, open field, with that kind of talent, we could see some spectacular throws, catches, and runs. Make man coverage mandatory, so no team sits back in a zone and forces the offense to dink and dunk. This is backyard-style.

We play the first round on Friday, with 16 games running on ESPN and ESPN2, all day long. On Saturday, we play two more rounds, and we narrow the field down to four teams. Sunday on NBC, we play the semifinals and finals back-to-back, with all the eliminated teams in the stands watching, and the winning team splits a million dollars and $200,000 to those that came and played.

That's my plan, and I think it would be fun. Certainly a lot more fun than we have now, which is basically a three-hour light contact drill with men in Hawaiian shirts repeating again and again, "No, we swear, these guys really do care who wins."

Pro Bowl or not, what do you think?