NFC Pro Bowlers Were Embarassing 



I couldn't agree more with the above statement.

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Does anyone find all star games in any sports necessary? I dont.

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I like the Pro Bowl, if only because it's my last chance to see (most of) my favorite players in uniform for another 6 months. But Rodgers is right - the lack of effort, while understandable, was embarrassing. If it's not going to be a football game, then why bother?

The problem is that it's not meaningful to the (majority of) players. Some guys just love the game and will go out and play hard for that reason alone. Some guys play hard because they're honored to be there. But a lot of guys (Deshawn Jackson, BJ Raji) are at less than half-speed because they don't want to get hurt in a meaningless contest.

So let's make it meaningful (but not with money. An extra $25K isn't going to get anyone's attention). Superbowl sites are chosen years in advance, so the oft-mentioned "home field" option is out, but how about eliminating the coin toss? If your conference wins the Pro Bowl, then you've already won the flip. Or give the winning conference one extra challenge in the Superbowl. How about making an 8th round in the draft for just the teams in the winning conference?

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One suggestion I saw was a winner-take-all approach: The winning conference players get their prize money, airfare, hotels, etc. paid for by the league, while the losing conference players forfeit all prize money and have to pay all their own expenses. The result of that would probably just be more players sitting it out, though.

Why was Selig's idea to base home-field advantage on the All Star Game so frequently ridiculed?

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Ohh, ooh... the winning team gets to bang the losing team's cheerleaders...

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I liked Selig's home field thing.
Of course that doesn't work with football, as the SB is never played on anyone's home field, unless they were to get REALLY lucky. I don't think it has ever happened yet.

But the point was made, people still pay to see the pro bowl, and the players are supposed to be the best at their positions. So shouldn't they give their all? I don't mean the "let's hurt the other guys" stuff, but just make plays. CM3 i saw several times just "jogging" after players. That kind of dissapointed me. I didn't even really care which side won, just that they PLAY the game, not just stand around.

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I think it should be played on the highest-seeded team's field.

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And if the seeds are equal, the conference winner of the Pro Bowl gets home field!

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They should create game infractions just for the Pro Bowl. A 15 yard penalty for "half-assing" the play. "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" for not trying to sack the QB.

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That would be an extraordinarily rare occurrence, but sure, why not use the Pro Bowl as a tie breaker in that case?

I wonder if there has ever been a Super Bowl in which both teams would have been seeded equally. I'm not talking about conference seeds here but rather overall seeds. There is an obscure formula I've seen used in some articles that seeds all teams in the playoffs individually. By that formula, the Packers came into the playoffs the #1 overall seed, the Patriots were the #2 overall seed, etc. Had both the Packers and Patriots made it to the Super Bowl under the system I propose, the Packers would have hosted the game as the top overall remaining seed.

Of course, such a system would require a shift in the culture surrounding the Super Bowl. It would be more focused on the teams' fans themselves and stop being such a corporate event. While I think that would be more fun for the fans, I doubt it would please the league as much. Which I think is a pity. I think the Super Bowl, while admittedly unique in the pantheon of championship games, loses some of its charm in being a neutral-site game.

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