Las Vegas’ task: Make Pro Bowl fun again
If the Rose Bowl is the granddaddy of the bowl games, the Pro Bowl is probably the weird uncle. It is now headed for Las Vegas, where it probably will be reinvented in a way that will make Madonna blush.
In the run-up to this year’s glorified game of touch football, Sports Illustrated interviewed former Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes, who remembered being miffed about being left off the Pro Bowl roster and Tom Brady offering empathy.
“I’d been playing off the charts and I didn’t get picked,” Spikes recalled. “I was moping around, actually in tears. Then The Pharaoh (his nickname for Brady) himself walks up and says, ‘Hey B, you think I play this (expletive) to go to Pro Bowls? Get it together. We’re trying to win rings.’ ”
That was in 2012, eight years before a storm blitz disguised as a pandemic with edge pressure and a minimum of six feet of social distance shut down Las Vegas in the manner of the Dallas Cowboys’ Doomsday Defense.
Brady is older now. Perhaps a little wiser. He’s a Buccaneer rather than a Patriot.
He may still detest the Pro Bowl.
It’s not why he plays this (expletive), although tourism officials probably won’t be using that as a slogan.
Nerf football
In the Pro Bowl, intentional grounding is legal. The blitz is not. Neither are blocks from the blind side or below the waist. There is no rushing on punts, extra points or field goals. No kickoffs. Not even the onside variety. Receivers may flinch or raise either foot before the snap without being penalized.
The Pro Bowl isn’t real football, because somebody might get hurt in real football. The Pro Bowl is Nerf football. But after all of this social distancing, Las Vegas is delighted to have it.
The game isn’t scheduled to take place until Jan. 31, 2021. By then we may be in Phase 32 of COVID-19 reopening, the phase during which Jim Brown and Dr. Fauci say it’s OK to play football in front of football fans. Plural.
Even if the deep safety must line up within the hash marks.
This is another chance for Las Vegas to use that floating stage built for the NFL draft and had to mothball under the lockdown.
This is another chance for Las Vegas to turn a meaningless football game into a New Year’s Eve party.
This is another chance for Las Vegas to put its best foot forward, as only Las Vegas, New Orleans during Mardi Gras and Miley Cyrus on days that end in ‘Y’ can.
Unlike the Pro Bowl receivers, do not expect Las Vegas to flinch or raise that foot.
Bigger things to come
“Pro Bowl week is a celebration of the best the NFL has to offer, and there is no better place than Las Vegas to celebrate and honor the league’s biggest stars,” Raiders president Marc Badain said in a statement. “The NFL, the LVCVA and the Raiders look forward to a world-class event that will set the standard for future NFL events in Las Vegas.”
These would be NFL events such as the 2022 draft and the 2024 Super Bowl, 2024 being the first year it could be played here owing to a potential conflict with New Orleans and Mardi Gras. And events of like magnitude in other sports, such as the NCAA’s Final Four or College Football Playoff National Championship game.
The players probably are going to like it, too.
For 30 years, the Pro Bowl was played at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. Many of the participating behemoths enjoyed their week in paradise but soon discovered that one can only row an outrigger canoe so far. A run on a craps table is much more enjoyable. And when it inevitably ends, seldom do one’s muscles ache.
With all respect for predictable statements issued by club presidents, colleague Ed Graney may have had the most perceptive view on the Pro Bowl coming to town when he texted on vacation that everything that happens outside Allegiant Stadium will be better than what happens inside.
Unless, of course, center Alex Mack receives a lateral on the last play of the game as he did in 2011, rumbles 40 yards, stiff-arms the last would-be tackler and dives into the end zone, only to have his football pants slip.
The few still watching at home had roughly the same view as those who have witnessed a TV repairman replace the picture tube on an old Zenith back in the day when Jim Brown ran over guys in the Pro Bowl at full speed, just because it seemed like fun.
Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.