The NFL Has Finally Mercy Killed The Pro Bowl

Kirby Lee. Getty Images.

The Athletic- Since 1951 the NFL has conducted some version of the Pro Bowl. The all-star competition has crossed the country and, particularly in the past decade-plus, gone through several different iterations, including turning the game itself into a series of games. Now, The Athletic has learned, the Pro Bowl is being eliminated.

On Wednesday, league executives presented to team owners the future of the Pro Bowl, which will no longer have a standalone game — be it tackle or flag football — or games. After surveying players over the years, the NFL will now make the Pro Bowl effectively an individual performance award. Eighty-eight players will receive the Pro Bowl honor with no alternates, corralling a key aspect of the all-star event that had gotten out of whack in recent years.

I don't know if this is just the Old in me coming out or what, but I was so fucking happy to see this news break. I'm pretty sure there was a time in my childhood when the Pro Bowl was exciting and fun, or at least as exciting and fun as an exhibition football game can be. I'm not saying every play was Sean Taylor decapitating Brian Moorman. But I feel like the Pro Bowl was a decent viewing experience, partially because you just wished you were in Honolulu wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a bunch of the best football players on the planet.

Then the NFL moved it from a cool place like Hawaii, players started turning it down at a comical rate, and it became a bunch of gym class games played by some of the greatest athletes in the universe with a flag football main event. Don't get me wrong, seeing superfreaks do crazy athletic shit is cool. But the entire narrative around the Pro Bowl being dead and players like Tyler Huntley being named a Pro Bowler after throwing two touchdowns in six games would just lead to people kicking the corpse of the game long after all heat left its body, which THEN led to people saying the game's ratings were great because we are a country with a crippling addiction to football.

So now I guess we'll just get a Pro Bowl team that features the actual best players in the NFL so players can get their bonuses if they make said team and fans/media members can overreact with who was snubbed from an imaginary team. Not the most glorious ending to a fixture of football. But one that felt like it was a long time coming once players stopped getting an all expense paid trip to party at a pool in Hawaii for a week in exchange for strapping on the pads one last time during the season 

So now we will do what we always do during times like this, which is tweet out memories of the good ol' days.