Miller Highlights

Now that we’ve crowned a Super Bowl champ, the next most exciting thing for NFL fans should be the Pro Bowl. It’s too bad that the Pro Bowl happens to be the most boring of all the all-star games. I would rather watch a preseason game where the starters play five minutes than a Pro Bowl where all the stars lounge around in Hawaii.

The reason people love football is because of the big play excitement. Whether it’s a 75-yard pass to Chad Johnson or a monster hit from Ray Lewis, fans demand the rush of seeing their favorite athletes perform super-human feats. During the Pro Bowl, the most exciting thing is when the hula girls enter the field at halftime and then leave promptly after. Whew! What a game!

There isn’t a true fan that has any love for the Pro Bowl. There is no fantasy challenge to give the fantasy junkies their fix. No one bets on who is going to win because no cares what the outcome is. Not even stat nuts can get into it because no player plays for more then 10 plays.

Fans like other all-star games because they have entertaining activities that go along with their games. The NBA all-star game holds on to fans because it has a dunk contest and a three-point contest. The MLB has the celebrity softball game and the homerun derby that are very entertaining.

All the NFL offers is a set of weird skills challenges that are stupefyingly boring. One is a straight lifting challenge where a group of the strongest players in the league lift 325 pounds until they can’t lift anymore. If I wanted to see that I would go to my local Gold’s Gym and enjoy the body builders go to town on a barbell.

In another challenge, a group of tight ends and wide receivers stand in the middle of a circle where a machine throws balls at them from four or five different directions. This is mildly entertaining but also sort of impossible as the balls are timed to shoot one after another, making catching more than three in a row a feat. Sometimes the receiver takes one in the face, which is always classic.

The worst of these skill tests is the quarterback’s challenge. Star quarterbacks have to throw 12 or so balls through targets placed at different intervals on the field. All the quarterbacks end up doing poorly and it makes them look like Pros vs. Joes Rejects.

The Pro Bowl is a good time to recognize the stars of the league and its process of selection is much better than that of the NBA all-star game, where the fans selected Shaquille O’Neil as an Eastern Conference starter, even though the big man hasn’t played more then 20 games this season.

I’m definitely not advocating getting rid of the Pro Bowl, because players should be honored for having a successful season. But good lord, throw in something more entertaining, like a five-on-five tackle football game with no pads, or a longest throw competition. Something that doesn’t make me fall asleep in my bowl of Cheetos. Definitely keep the wide receiver competition though. Seeing that one player get planted in the face by a ball is definitely worth it.