Pro Bowl shakeup
The NFL will try to add a little more life to the Pro Bowl this year, and it's a worthwhile experiment. The game will be played the week between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, and it's at the site of the Super Bowl -- in Miami. Why not? It will add a little bit of substantive hype to Super Bowl week. The NFL all-star game really is the poorest of the all-star games for the major sports, becuase it's played at the end of the season, and the brutal nature of the sport precludes the players from giving an all-out ultra-competitive performance. The players like having the game in Hawaii, and it will return there in 2011 and 2012. Obviously, the players from the two Super Bowl teams will not compete, so a lot more replacements will be named. That's no real problem as far as the game is concerned. But it will dilute the meaning of "Pro Bowler." Even now, if a player is a five-time Pro Bowler, it's worth pointing out how many times he was voted into the game and how many he was added as a substitute.
--Mark Gaughan
