Football players, like high school seniors, mentally clock out for the summer as soon as their duties are done for the season, meaning the Raiders usually get a 3 month head start, the Chiefs start their annual "rebuilding" season and Ricky Williams gets to toke up in January--also like high school seniors. But then the players are dragged back to play in sunny Hawaii; and yes they are dragged, as each "honored" player is given a sizable bonus check (likely buried in the back of the end zone). Imagine how much effort students would put to an assignment a week after getting their final grade. Now imagine those students are already promised no less than $600,000/week next fall if they don't get injured. Football fans are then forced to watch this attitude manifested on the field for three arbitrary hours. I think last year they actually caught Matt Hasselback tampering with the game clock to shave off 11 or 12 minutes.
Now, I say fans are "forced to watch" this game because it is an unusually pathetic all-star game. Perhaps this steams from the physical nature of the game, as baseball players can still try to hit home runs in their all-star game and basketball still gets classic one-on-one match ups. But with football, the season is over and nobody cares about scoring (or stopping) touchdowns. You can almost smell the Hawaiian rum from the field to your living room.
Not only is the Probowl game regrettably less forgettable due to its two-week bump, but now it's been rendered even more useless as 14 players for the Colts and Saints will obviously not be playing. Forget injury on the field, if there's an off chance somebody were to throw a hot dog at Drew Brees and blind him with mustard, I wouldn't want him to play a week before the Game of the Year. As these players were still selected, they must unconscionably miss out on pre-Superbowl team practices and meetings, as they are expected to physically be at the Probowl. That gives the NFL 14 designated drivers who are supposed to be prepping for the game of a lifetime.
Even beyond the Superbowl teams, players are waving off their Probowl invitations. No Tom Brady this year. Or Randy Moss. No Ben Roethlisberger. And--this may foreshadow a future post--definitely no Brett Favre. Instead, the NFL is turning towards players who didn't even play for the entire season to fill out their all-star rosters. Is the 19th best QB in the NFL an all-star? Apparently. All of a sudden the NFL Probowl is becoming a try-out camp for next year, not unlike the NCCA's "Senior Bowl." Which actually brings me to...
Don't have an all-star game. Have an almost-star game. Pick the players on teams that don't get much field action and have them play against each other. You better believe they'll play harder than your commercial/SNL/press conference boys will play. And if the competition gets harder, you'll really be able to see just who has some talent. As it stands now, nobody tries so fans can't really gauge if that was a good play or poor defense. And no coach or owner will have to say this to the players, but the message will be clear: you are playing for the privilege to be on a team next year. Here's a general writing lesson the NFL should know: it doesn't matter what the hero wants, if they want it badly, the audience will want them to get it. Translation: if the players WANT to win, the audience will want them to win.
And that's how the NFL can win, too.
EDITING NOTE: Just realized there wasn't one "prediction" in this blog post, so let's just say...uh...the NFC will win.
No comments:
Post a Comment