Members of the winning Pro Bowl team receive a $58,000 bonus, while a $29,000 bonus is doled out to members of the losing team.
Advertisement
A couple of years ago, the Pro Bowl changed its format.
The scamminess of this edition is so scamtastic, so amazingly and shamelessly scamarific, it will go down in All-Star Game history as the boldest of bamboozling hoodwinks.
Still though, the big question regarding the Pro Bowl is “is it necessary?”
When debating the best players of a generation, or one guy’s Hall of Fame resume versus another, it seems the announcement of how many Pro Bowls a player made it to has always carried some weight.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the official number of players either voted to the Pro Bowl or added as an alternate had reached 133 total players. The previous high was 119 invitations in 2010. The Packers announced Wednesday that Mike McCarthy isn’t going due to a “stomach illness”.
On the defensive side, arguably the most feared player in the game, J.J. Watt, will not play either despite being selected to his fourth straight Pro Bowl.
Philip Rivers officially listed his reason for declining as “personal reasons”. Only two passers have hit the 20 attempt mark over the last two years, while another two threw 13 or fewer. Andy Dalton…naw, dude. I completely believe this. Magic Johnson won several championships and is one of the best players of all time, and we’ll still remember his first All-Star Game after his sudden retirement as much as we remember anything. “They see it as not only a waste of time, but a detriment to their recovery process”.
The lack of rushing production doesn’t mean you should fade Pro Bowl running backs, though. It is, compared to real football, a pillow fight.
Think about what the league is asking of the players though.
If what these agents are saying is accurate (and it is), the record number of declined invitations to the game isn’t just coincidental, it’s sabotage. All seven were healthy enough to play football last week, but all seven declined their Pro Bowl invites, from Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski down to kicker Stephen Gostkowski and special teamer Matthew Slater. Even though the Pro Bowl is the only major professional football event in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, it has been thoroughly clear over the past decade or so that absolutely nobody cares about this event, not even the players participating. Now it’s totally different. I’m far more likely to watch this. Russell Wilson is the lone voted-in holdout. Jones hasn’t yet accused McCarthy of faking his illness.
The best way to fix the Pro Bowl is… well… not having a Pro Bowl. If the National Football League were to find a way to create some sort of “AllStar Break” in the middle of the season, fans would be dying to see their product, even if it were an event as unentertaining as the Pro Bowl, it would still get monster ratings if it occurred in October/November rather than in January.
Advertisement
Or, yeah, just get rid of it. Otherwise, there’s a good chance a new absentee record will be set every year. Mike Freeman of Bleacher Report talked to an agent who believes players are intentionally declining to kill the game.
