Poor Shedeur Sanders.
The guy gets picked to be on a fake team, one that’s even less important than the Cleveland Browns, and all of a sudden, he becomes the symbol for the death of an All-Star game that was already on life support.
Sanders, who earned media firebrand status because of his name and his dramatic fall in last year’s NFL Draft, was a Rorschach test of a quarterback in his rookie season. Some saw a potential star held back by his coach and teammates. Others saw a rookie who was more flash than substance and wasn’t destined to be a real starting QB in the NFL.
Thanks to injuries and incompetence, Sanders wound up starting seven games for the Browns, completing 56.6 percent of his passes for 1,400 yards with seven touchdowns and 10 interceptions. Cleveland went 3-4 in his starts. He wasn’t great, but he wasn’t the worst rookie QB on his own roster. He is, however, a name. Someone who might get some of his superfans to tune in.
He might never start another meaningful game in the NFL, but he can always say he was a Pro Bowl quarterback. As a rookie, no less.
Shedeur Sanders, Pro Bowl quarterback. What are you going to tell me next, Bill Belichick didn’t make the Hall of Fame?
What exactly is the Pro Bowl these days? Is it still a football game?
Shedeur Sanders making the Pro Bowl pic.twitter.com/B84yZ4usu6
— Simpsons NFL (@TheSimpsonsNFL) January 26, 2026
I did some investigating and found out the Pro Bowl Games comprise a flag football game and some skills competitions. There might be a swimsuit competition and a pie-eating contest. It apparently takes place during the week at the location of the Super Bowl.
So, in summation, after a middling rookie season, Sanders was given the privilege of being a flag-football QB and to compete in a skills competition in the Bay Area in January.
Who or what is this for?
I’m starting to think the point of All-Star games in the modern era is just to get people to argue about them. They’re an engagement play, like someone tweeting out they think Bronny James should be an NBA All-Star (more on that later).
Of all the things that are wrong with the world and our country right now, the state of our All-Star games is not one of them.
Growing up in the stone ages, before you could watch any team anywhere for a cost, these games were an annual treat for sports nerds. They reminded me of comic book annuals where different teams would fight each other before battling a common enemy. In fact, The Avengers’ annual always included its own All-Star baseball game.
The East Coast and West Coast Avengers are having a private cross-team baseball game, just for fun. So what’s the rule when you hit a home run, but someone catches it outside of the stadium and throws it back to herself?? Apparently it’s a ground-rule double! #marvel #avengers pic.twitter.com/E6R266lJxq
— Marvel Daily Art (@MarvelDailyArt) October 26, 2022
In the real world, there’s still some appeal to watching the best of the best in one place, even if the actual games are lacking.
I wouldn’t say I have particular fond memories of the Pro Bowl, but I do remember being interested in the idea of it, of watching Steve Young throw passes to Michael Irvin and everyone wearing colorful uniforms in the sun.
The issue with the Pro Bowl is two-fold: Football isn’t meant to be played at half-speed, and it has to take place after the season.
The attraction for the players in the past was the honor of being called a Pro Bowler (which helps at contract time) … and that it included a free trip to Hawaii. You might think athletes are so rich now that they don’t really need that carrot, but I’d argue that everyone loves free stuff.
If I were Roger Goodell, I would bring back the old-school Pro Bowl, even if players are going half-bore, and put it in Hawaii in the week before the Super Bowl. To get enough players to participate, you’d have to jack up the participation fee, but in case you haven’t heard, the NFL has plenty of money. And, yes, fans will still watch.
And if they don’t want to do that, then just mercifully cancel it and send the Pro Bowl to the dustbin of history, along with the Chicago preseason game between the NFL champion and the college all-stars (1934-76) and the third-place game (The Bert Bell Benefit Bowl) from the 1960s.
On second thought, bring back the game between NFL players vs. a team of college all-stars and make one of the conference title game losers (flip it every year) play a team of college players in Hawaii on the Sunday before the Super Bowl.
Tell me that wouldn’t draw eyeballs. Of course, the college players would need to be airlifted out of the stadium to Honolulu General, but still.
While you marinate on that million-dollar idea, let’s fix another game too.
Twelve days after the Pro Bowl Games comes everyone’s favorite exhibition to complain about, the NBA All-Star Game.
The weekend still has some buzz thanks to the slam-dunk and 3-point contests, but the game itself used to be really fun before it became tiresome to watch over the complete lack of defensive effort. The players were completely at fault here, but lately the NBA has looked desperate in trying to fiddle its way back to relevance.
First, there was the elimination of East vs. West in favor of a player draft. The idea was that fans would get invested in a draft for … some reason? The NHL and NFL had already done this, and the NBA, once a paragon for culture, was going to follow them. Voting for starters was still done by conference.
Then two years later came the Elam Ending, which set a target score (24 points more than the leading score at the beginning of the fourth quarter) and eliminated the clock at the end of games. This was kind of cool and lasted for four years.
Then the league went back to East vs. West and got rid of the Elam Ending in 2024. Last year, they scrapped that and made it a tournament. There were four games, two semifinals and a championship game. The teams were drafted by the TNT crew and included a team of “Rising Stars” players.
This year, it will be a round-robin tournament of three teams, two made up of U.S.-born players and one international squad. The voting for starters remains the same.
Here’s my solution: Stay with East vs. West, which the public is comfortable with. Go back to regional uniforms with fun designs. Make sure that Common does the player announcements, which were a viral hit in 2020 in Chicago. Appeal to the stars that they need to set the tone by playing hard. How hard is it to tell guys to actually pretend to care?
But if that doesn’t work, jack up the prize money. Last year, players on the winning team got $125,000, while the losing ones got $50,000. Make it a half-million each for the winners.
We’re not done, though. Here’s the twist. The losing team has to pay the winning team. And the players have to do it on the court in front of everyone.
With that public shaming, I guarantee you’ll have a more competitive All-Star Game.
If you need me, I’m buying my ticket for the NHL’s game. What’s that? It’s in Italy and it’s called the Olympics? Now that’s a good way to get people to watch.