Team Rice: “Do you care who wins this game?”
Team Sanders: “No, but I do care about not getting hurt!”
Some of us less enlightened souls were surprised last night to TV surf into the NFL Pro Bowl and find a school recess-like game going on between “Team Rice and “Team Sanders.” The NFL, we learned, had decided to do away with the “AFC vs. NFC” identity of their All Star Game this year due to an apparent lack of fan interest in same.
Huh? Then allow us the stupid question? If nobody’s even interested in “AFC vs. NFC”, why have the boring game in the first place?
Oh! Forgive the stupidity, please! Somehow, the game still makes money on TV – and, this year, it even takes NFL big wigs, rich fan hot-n-tots, and the big TV eye to beautiful Blue Hawaii as an even greater contrast to the miserable site of this year’s Super Bowl next Sunday in freeze-your-asterisk-off Sopranoville, New Jersey.
It’s all about the money. Always. But this is football, a game played by 300 pound behemoths, who can still give each other a career-ending injury under the guise of playing out a friendly ballet of their normally violent war against each other. With all their silly new rules, all designed to re-focus the game on the players, and not the final score, so they say, even the broadcasting shills were pushing the new corporate slogan: “People don’t come to Hawaii to see who wins the game! – Fans come to the game and tune in at home to see the players!”
Oh, really? – It still makes you wonder how many people, including the players, only make the trip as an excuse to go to Hawaii once a year. Would they have as much “fire” for attending the Pro Bowl, if the game were played in Omaha, rather than Honolulu?
As a baseball guy, I do have to give the NFL credit for one thing. – At least, their latest all-star game rules do-over represents something of an effort to treat their contest for what it really is – a meaningless exhibition game where the damage from accidental injury is still self-defeating to the players and teams effected.
Meanwhile, Bud Selig’s Vision of Baseball has carried the MLB All Star Game in a 180 degree direction, making the winner of the MLB recess-game contest the factor that determines home field advantage in their very-important-to-millions-of-us World Series that same year!!!
What??? After all these years, I thought I’d be over it by now, but I’m not!!! How stupid! How distorted! How unfair! When do we get rid of this guy again? Some of us can hardly wait until Bud Selig retires from baseball and goes home to Milwaukee. Hopefully, his sinister activities there will be then forevermore contained to his former business of selling “previously owned” cars at one of those plastic flag, shimmering-light evening lots.
Imagine things for the NFL if they now decide to add the “Selig-Touch” to their own new, improved Pro Bowl format! – Perhaps, the rosters of future Rice-Sanders games can be secretly playing for the AFC and NFC. Once the game is determined, that secret assignation is revealed for the winning team at the post-game stage.
And here’s the benefit to being the team that eventually gets to represent their Pro Bowl winning conference the following season. The very next year, the Pro Bowl-winning conference gets to play the Super Bowl at the home field of their secret conference winner from the previous season.
So, you see? Every time things look that they are as bad as they can get, there’s always something out there that someone can do to make things worse.
I say – “to Hades with All Star Games!” – Just keep the break in baseball and let all the players have some time with their families – and then let the team with the best season record have home field advantage in the World Series.
Have a nice Monday too, Houstonians, and remember – the ice man is coming back upon us Tuesday.
Tags: all star games
The Pecan Park Eagle 
January 27, 2014 at 4:05 pm |
The Grammys came on tv last night and my wife commented that she would watch the Grammys in another room if I wanted to watch the Pro Bowl. I watched the Grammys. Bad decision on my part, due to the lack of talent in most musicians nowadays and sexual content, however, I think it speaks more of the lack of intrigue of the Pro Bowl.
January 27, 2014 at 4:18 pm |
Yes we Agree on the ” all star” farce , money determines what direction games are played and how insignificant they are ,but please pray for no ice here this week , let New Jersey have it.
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June 9, 2014 at 9:22 pm |
Pretty! This was an incredibly wonderful post.
Many thanks for supplying these details.