The Garden City Telegram
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Bowl bust
Published 2/2/2010 in Commentary : Editorial
Annual all-star games should showcase the best athletes each of the big-time professional sports has to offer.
Whether it's Major League Baseball, the NBA or the NFL, each major sport schedules one special game for its top performers.
In the NBA and MLB, that game comes mid-season. Most players who receive all-star recognition participate in the game unless they're injured.
The NFL had been the oddball in scheduling its all-star game, the Pro Bowl, after its championship game. Not so this year, with the Pro Bowl played this past Sunday, a week before the Super Bowl.
The timing appealed to viewers. This year's Pro Bowl was watched by an average of 12.3 million viewers, the most since 2000. That was an impressive 40 percent up from last year's 8.8 million viewers of a game that took place after the Super Bowl.
Advertisers with Pro Bowl spots this year had to be pleased. Even with strong competition from a Grammys featuring a Michael Jackson tribute, the Pro Bowl scored.
One obvious shortcoming was that the Pro Bowl move forced every player from the league's two best teams -- the Super Bowl-bound Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints -- to sit out.
That eliminated a whopping 14 players from those teams. What kind of a Pro Bowl could it be, for example, when the two Super Bowl quarterbacks didn't take a single snap?
Football isn't baseball. The risk of serious injury in football is greater, so no one can blame those players for passing on the Pro Bowl with the ultimate prize -- the Super Bowl -- just a week away.
Still, the schedule change hurt a Pro Bowl that already had lost luster due to millionaire players in fear of injury not giving their all.
Yet fans still tune in, and want to see the best players on the field.
Moving the Pro Bowl before the Super Bowl probably made sense from a financial standpoint. But the product on the field came up short.
It's just another example of money becoming even more of a driving force in professional sports while fans, unfortunately, get stuck with the loss.
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