Report: Pro Bowl to be held before the Super Bowl, beginning in 2010

The Pro Bowl is the biggest waste of time ever conceived. Football requires seamless coordination between big bodies on the offensive line and you're not going to get that in a week of practice in tropical paradise. Besides, everybody just wants to start the off-season and recover from the litany of injuries the average player sustains over a tough season.

Playing it a week before the big game is the equivalent of eating the appetizer BEFORE your main course. If anything, more people will watch than when it was played after the Super Bowl, when it seemed like it was tacked on to the end of football season. Who wants their appetizer AFTER the meal?

 

Flag football under arena football rules. Only way I'd consider watching.

 

Besides the fact it's an awful idea in baseball, the fact that the Super Bowl is played on a neutral site means that home field advantage is rarely ever a factor. Thus, this idea really would not provide any merit to the Pro Bowl.

 

After one year of that fiasco, they'll put the game back in Hawaii because it's the only way to get players there. I've also always figured that only fans in places where there's no team, such as Honolulu, would attend the game in numbers because it's their only chance to see NFL players.

Honolulu is perfect. Why screw with it? It will never gain a lot of attention anyway. What's the only other option? Play it before the season with last year's stars? (Didn't the CFL do that when it had an all-star game?)

 

How about the Grey Cup champion against an NFL all-star team with CFL rules?

 

Playing it a week beofre the Super Bowl won't accomplish anything. Most wrtiters don't get to the Super Bowl site until Monday anyway and they sure aren't going to go a day early just for the most useless game in the history of sports and most fans still won't care.

 

They should do a Battle of the NFL Stars. AFC vs. NFC in tug of war, swimming, cycling, kayaking, golf, tennis, Simon Says, weightlifting and, of course, the obstacle course.

 

Who plays the Howard Cosell role?

(As an aside, a Battle of the Network Stars would be a great reprise in this day and age of reality television. Surprised that hasn't happened yet.)

 

Gabe Kaplan should host. Though ESPN would have Berman doing it.

 

MTV already has the Real World-Road Rules Challenge.

 

Why would the NFL want to taint itself by playing against minor league competition?

 

Better yet, take the best NFL team not in the playoffs, play it by NFL rules and watch the Grey Cup champions get trampled.