Pro Bowl takes hit in popularity; time for change?
Photo by NBA.com
By Collin Giuliani // Staff Writer
On Jan. 31, the Pro Bowl was held at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii. Out of all of the all star games in professional sports, the Pro Bowl is the one most criticized. The high-contact sport of football is transformed into a game featuring poor tackling and athletes playing out of position. Additionally, a record number of players dropped out of the Pro Bowl, resulting in more than 130 players being named Pro Bowlers this year. According to Austin Karp, who works at Sports Business Daily, this year’s Pro Bowl drew a 5.0 overnight rating, which was less than last year’s game of 5.6 and the 2014 Pro Bowl of 6.7.
Following this year’s game, Eric Edholm of Yahoo Sports stated, “The Pro Bowl is one giant cringe fest… There is nothing more insulting than watching a cheap, inferior product.”
On Feb. 5, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, gave a similar opinion of the event.
“I was disappointed in what I saw… [The Pro Bowl] is not real competition that we can be proud of, we have to do something different,” Goodell said.
In fairness to the National Football League, this year’s Pro Bowl had competition for viewers against “Grease Live!” on FOX.
Today, due to 24-hour sports networks covering teams and making it possible to follow teams no matter how far away, all-star games have lost their luster. Many sporting leagues have had to adapt their all-star game formats to draw a larger audience because of this. In the National Hockey League, the all star game changed to a 3-on-3 tournament involving the top all-stars from every division. In Major League Soccer, the all star game changed to involve the top all stars in the league going up against a European soccer team, such as Manchester United or Tottenham Hotspur. On a more drastic level, the Major League Baseball all star game was changed in 2003 to determine home field advantage in the World Series.
However, the NFL has always been in a unique situation with all star games, because football is a contact sport. Players in the Pro Bowl do not want to tackle hard like they would in a regular game due to the risk of injury to either themselves or that player; in this year’s Pro Bowl, cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie made a hard tackle, and immediately apologized after making the hit. Due to the decline in hard tackles in the Pro Bowl, there have been numerous criticisms of players not giving enough effort in the game, which, in turn, makes the Pro Bowl more boring to watch.
In a 1980 article by the Associated Press, Pete Rozelle, the commissioner of the league at the time, stated that the Pro Bowl would not move to the week before the Super Bowl.
“The fans would see the game as being very contrived when you advertise it as an all-star game and not have as many as fifteen or even more players absent because they’re on the Super Bowl teams,” Rozelle said.
However, in 2010, the league moved the Pro Bowl from the week after the Super Bowl to the week before it, so that the Super Bowl became the last game played in the season. This caused players participating in the Super Bowl to be ineligible to play in the Pro Bowl.
In 2013, in another move designed to increase viewership, the Pro Bowl went from a game between the top players in each conference to an un-conferenced game where the players would be selected through a draft.
According to Alex Rozis, who works for NBC Sports, the NHL all star game got a 1.17 rating and was praised by fans and critics for its format change. The Pro Bowl pulls in significantly more viewers compared to any other all star game in the United States. The International Business Times stated that when the NBA all star game is played next week, that it would be lucky to draw a 5.0 rating.
Over the years, many fans have offered solutions to fix the Pro Bowl, ranging from making it a flag football game to making it a 7-on-7 tournament. Others have stated to keep the Pro Bowl exactly the way it is, but to increase the prize money involved providing players with more of an incentive to play harder. With the sharp decline in ratings in recent years, the NFL will likely be looking for ways to improve the quality of the exhibition game for next season.