Jan. 28, 2010

Free this weekend? Maybe you'll be named to Pro Bowl, too

By Clark Judge | CBSSports.com Senior Writer
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The Pro Bowl is sold out, with more than 70,000 expected for Sunday's game, and that's good news for the NFL. But this is not: While the game is long on ticket sales, it's short on stars -- and I mean Verne Troyer short.

Many top players are missing, but top corners Nnamdi Asomugha and Darrelle Revis are getting ready in Miami. (AP)

The NFL shouldn't be, either. When it moved the all-star game to Florida and scheduled it for the weekend before Super Bowl XLIV it knew what it was getting into, and that's an event with a lot of supporting actors and few box-office draws.

Brett Favre? Nope. Gone home. Peyton Manning? Nope. Getting ready for his second Super Bowl. Philip Rivers? Sorry. His wife is expecting the family's fifth child. Tom Brady? You must be kidding. Tell me the last Pro Bowl he made.

Start counting and you find five of the top six quarterbacks missing, with only Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers present and accounted for. Yeah, I know the Pro Bowl isn't that big a deal and all that except ... well, except that it is because when we talk about someone's accomplishments, one of the first items we cover is Pro-Bowl appearances.

Now, unless your name is JaMarcus Russell. you can attach your name to an all-star game that, well, is not all stars.

Which is why this year's Pro Bowl deserves an asterisk, and if you don't believe me, I guess you didn't see David Garrard's name on the roster. The Jacksonville quarterback whose Q rating is right up there with Charlie Frye and Kyle Orton was chosen to the AFC squad this week after all three quarterbacks bailed out, and alternates Ben Roethlisberger and Carson Palmer said thanks but no thanks. Which means ...

Yep, David Garrard was the eighth choice.

Now think about that for a moment. A guy who lost more than he won this season, has never thrown for more than 18 touchdowns in a year and was the 17th-ranked quarterback on the board can add "Pro Bowl" to his resume because the NFL made the game one that most marquee quarterbacks would rather -- pardon the expression -- pass on.

I'm not knocking Garrard. I'm knocking the system that put him where he doesn't belong. Hey, Vince Young is there, too, and the Tennessee Titans didn't start him their first six games. Yet he can add Pro Bowl to his resume, too? I have a problem with that, and you should, too.

Look, I'm not against trying something different, and taking the Pro Bowl out of Hawaii and moving it up to the weekend in between conference championship games and the Super Bowl is different. But it's also misguided, and, yeah, I know the game is sold out. So what? As H.L. Mencken once said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

The problem here is that the Pro Bowl is supposed to mean something, and it doesn't. Not anymore. Once upon a time, putting "Pro Bowl" next to your name counted for extra credit, but not in a year where nearly 130 guys can attach it to their biographies.

So when you give me Yeremiah Bell instead of Brian Dawkins, I start losing interest. And when Young and Garrard take over for Manning and Rivers, I'm reaching for the remote and dialing Center Ice.

The Pro Bowl always was one of the season's least significant events, but at least there was the cachet of getting named to a game that signified a celebration of the best and brightest. Now it's a celebration of anyone who's home and doesn't have weekend golf plans.

I'm sorry, but what little luster the game once had disappeared when it eliminated the two Super Bowl teams -- and everyone, including Manning, on them.

I guess if there's an upside to this year's experiment, it is only this: Because starters are disappearing faster than support for health care, Washington linebacker London Fletcher finally discovers what it's like to play in the game. Fletcher should've been voted to this year's Pro Bowl but wasn't. He should've been voted last year, too. And the year before that.

But if you can't move London to the mountain, then you move the mountain to London. When the NFL changed its plans and shifted the game from Hawaii, what followed was a chain of events that allowed Fletcher to make his first -- and, possibly, only -- appearance at an all-star game, and that is nothing but good, good, good. London Fletcher should be a Pro Bowl player, and now he is.

The league took a chance with this year's Pro Bowl, and it didn't work for a lot of people -- including me. But it worked for London Fletcher, and hallelujah. Maybe there is something there worth celebrating after all.