NFL Week 15: My Three Wishes

1. I wish there was a "Shame Game"

We've reached that time of the year when everyone starts getting disproportionately excited about the chance to play a pick up game of football over in Hawaii. Yes folks, it's Pro Bowl time again.

Has there every been a more over-hyped event in the history of sport than this farrago? Whilst players like the honor of being invited to take part, the sensible ones find any excuse not to actually go. Those that do go find themselves taking part in little more than a glorified training session and even the TV company unfortunate enough to be lumbered with the screening rights rarely sends their first choice commentary team.

Now we have talk of moving the game to the blank weekend before the Superbowl, with the inevitable consequence that none of the 106 players who reach the end of season will be eligible to take part. The logic in that eludes me, I am afraid.

If we must fill that weekend with a game of some sort, why not have a match between the bottom two sides in the NFL? A "Shame Game" if you will.

Think about it. By this stage of the season, there are always four or five teams with nothing left to play for in the season. However, the smart ones will be reasoning that, the more games they lose, the higher their draft picks come April. In other words, they have something to play for—just not the sort of thing that they ought to be playing for.

As a trade-off for those draft picks, let's have the worst two sides playing off for that first round pick. On prime time television. Then the rest of us can point and laugh, yet still be guaranteed a better game than the excrescence that is the Pro Bowl.

2. I wish I couldn't vote people to the Pro Bowl

If we have to have this travesty of a game, can we not limit the voting to the players themselves, or players and coaches? Why should I, as a member of the public, have a say in it? I don't get to choose which 53 players suit up for the team I support each Sunday, why should the end of season be any different?

As an example, Kevin Walter has had a quietly exceptional season over in Houston. Randy Moss has had a below par one and has, frankly, done little to show that he is anything other than a one-quarterback receiver nowadays. Walter has ten more yards this season than Moss. Who do you think will get the Pro Bowl votes? Let's stop this nonsense now.

3. I wish the NFL would sort its drugs policy out

I purposefully didn't write about this last week, as there were court cases still pending at the time I was writing. That the NFL finds it can suspend Matt Jones for a drugs offense committed during the off season, but not five players caught with banned substances in their system during the season, is baffling.

What puzzles me is that the players' defense seems to be that the NFL didn't tell them that the particular substance, StarCaps, contained the banned substance. The puzzling bit, to me at least, is why the NFL is telling players that any product should not be taken.

Why are they not just saying that if you get caught with any of a list of substances in your system, you will be banned unless you have a prescription for it? How difficult could that be?