Pro Bowl and its fight for survival – NFL Feature
Pro Bowl game has done many favours to professional league players. Often, a player’s experience is counted with the number of Pro Bowl nominations. The higher the number of nominations is the better the profile of a player is considered.
Beyond this, Pro Bowl has failed many lovers the game despite the fact that it once was as popular as Super Bowl. Over the past few years, it has lost its charm, its followership and its credibility.
Now the situation is so bad that it appears the game is fighting for its survival. National Football League (NFL) commissioner Roger Goodell has threatened to wrap up the game of Pro Bowl for good if he does not see any purpose of it.
The competition appears to be so vague that fails to turn on even diehard football fans. They do not see a point to watch players competing with each other without holding a badge of loyalty.
For example, Pittsburgh Steelers are loyal to the Steelers. They are Steelers and they play as Steelers. In Pro Bowl, one is from Cleveland Browns, other from Baltimore Ravens and another from another team. So the players do not have a sense of association,
belonging and loyalty.
Also, the fans do not see who they should be supporting. So, all the exercise appears to be purposeless. As the commissioner had asked for, the organisers need to make the game more competitive.
They should look into different ways to seek patronage to the game. As an economist would say, they should market it in a way that players feel more rewarded after getting a Pro Bowl nomination.
May be they could introduce some in-kind reward scheme for the players They could think of giving the two teams some exclusive names etc, which could help the fans to support the team they want to and feel a sense of attachment to their selected team.
In present setting, it all looks artificial, friendlier and less competitive, although the participants can mention of it in the future, and writers and analysts can quote the number of each player’s Pro Bowl nominations in their respective pieces. In reality,
even games in the preseason between two franchises look more competitive than Pro Bowl.
So, at the end, the sense of pride to mention the Pro Bowl nominations is no more there. Pro Bowl game should be more competitive than a preseason or regular season game, so the players who are selected for it could feel pride. The game has to find its lost
purpose and glory.
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