Posted on 08/02/2013 6:59:21 AM PDT by Red Badger
Unwisely taking a page from the NHL All-Star Game, the National Football League announced today that it will further cheapen its annual Pro Bowl by scrapping the AFC vs. NFC format adapted in 1971.
Players will be selected without regard to conference in voting by fans, coaches and players. Deion Sanders and Jerry Rice will serve as alumni team captains for the teams.
The league is crediting (read: blaming) NFL Players Association president Domonique Foxworth for the idea. Players will be assigned to teams through the Pro Bowl Draft, in which two leading vote getters will join two NFL.com fantasy football champions — who will attend the Pro Bowl — to draft players.
“As players, we wanted to keep the Pro Bowl to honor excellence in individual performance and connect with the fans in a different environment,” Foxworth said. “To do that, I worked with a group of players to map out new ideas.”
It is similar to what the NHL adopted a couple of years back, and it’s hard to imagine a more meaningless game than what the hockey players put on annually.
The Pro Bowl draft will air Wednesday, Jan. 22, on the NFL Network. Players will practice with their teams on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The coaching staffs will be from the losing teams in the AFC and NFC Divisional playoffs with the best regular-season record.
The game will take place Sunday, Jan. 26, at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii, and will be televised by NBC and broadcast by Dial Global radio.
Other changes:
Game within the Game: A two-minute warning will be added to the first and third quarters and the ball will change hands after each quarter. This will increase the opportunities for quarterbacks to direct “two-minute drills,” which are especially exciting for fans.
No Kickoffs: The coin toss will determine which team is awarded possession first. The ball will be placed on the 25-yard line at the start of each quarter and after scoring plays.
Rosters: The rosters will continue to consist of 43 players per squad. The kick return specialist will be replaced by an additional defensive back.
Cover Two and Press Coverage: The defense will be permitted to play “cover two” and “press” coverage. In previous years, only “man” coverage was permitted, except for goal line situations.
Stopping of the Game Clock: Beginning at the two-minute mark of every quarter, if the offense does not gain at least one yard, the clock will stop as if the play were an incomplete pass. This rule will make the team with the ball attempt to gain yardage toward the end of each quarter.
Game Timing: The game clock will start after an incomplete pass on the signal of the referee, except inside the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second half.
Play Clock: A 35-second/25-second play clock will be adopted instead of the typical 40-second/25-second clock. Sacks: The game clock will not stop on quarterback sacks outside of the final two minutes of the game.
Currently, the game clock stops in these situations outside of two minutes of the second and fourth quarters.
Making a waste of time game even wastier.
^That. Plus my hatred for the All-Star Game determining the home team advantage for the World Series.
Call me a purist.
The NFL is becoming a rule-bound, unwatchable mess.
As awful as it is it gets really good ratings. One of the radio guys was talking about it earlier this week. Better ratings than the entire Stanley Cup, better ratings than any NBA game not in the finals, better than the World Series, it’s kind of scary really. And Goodell has repeatedly complained about the quality of the game. It’s good that he’s trying to make a game that will be watched actually watchable. But I’m not convinced it actually will.
The only memory I have from the Pro Bowl is that of Barry Switzer eating hotdogs on the sideline during the game.
I used to watch the pregame for it because that’s when the HOF inductees were announced. Never watched more than a couple minutes of the game, it’s just too horrible. IMHO they should replace the HOF game with it, makes that game stop punishing two teams that play there with a 5th pre-season game, let’s retired players take a bow, might actually get fewer players avoiding it. And it reduces the number of completely unwatchable games by 1.
Very tired of paying taxes to build a playground for a bunch of felons or felons in making, to be paid way above their ability. It would be nice to be paid millions and only be successful less than 50% of the time.
If a team owner builds his own stadium, without taxpayer money and then has enough fans and TV revenue to pay someone millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, fine, great, good for them. But Nooooooooooooooooo, we are forced to pay for their playground. Then if we are dumb enough to want to see the game in person, we of course have to pay the ticket price, parking, extortion rate prices for food.
The NFL, NBA are a hangout for criminal human debris. You can take the player out of the human cesspool, pay them a ton of money and way too many return to the cesspool. Too bad for those few good people who actually are role models for society.
I gave up on the Pro Bowl when they started playing before the Super Bowl. Waste of time anyway.
As long as they keep The Puppy Bowl during the Superbowl, I don’t care what they do. :)
No kickoff? WTF?
Four 2 minute drills per game...WTF?
These changes are really going to suck
I don’t watch as much football as I used to, now it will probably be even less.
Funny, I don't hear hockey fans complain all that much about the All-Star weekend.
Hockey keeps getting better (more outdoor games this year) and football gets more boring (actual time spent playing out of 4 quarters - about 17 minutes)
A rule change I’d like to see: In a tie during regulation time, the team with the more touchdowns is the winner.
The NFL went full retard
Not worth watching now.
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