The National Football League has decided to give the Pro Bowl another year on life support. Plagued with low interests due to the lack of competition and constant threats of being cancelled all together, the NFL is considering drastic changes to the annual all-star game to increase its popularity.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced at the annual league meeting Wednesday that the 2014 NFL Pro Bowl is a go and will be held in Hawaii a week before the Super Bowl.
Next year’s Pro Bowl may not be the same annual game fans are accustomed to. Rather, a plethora of new rules may be implemented to change the game all together in the hopes of increasing its popularity.
NFL Network’s Albert Breeer spoke with a high-ranking league official about some of the possible changes to the game. Those changes include:
- Moving the game from Hawaii to rotate annually to different locations
- Restructuring how players are paid for the game. Dividing compensation into halves, or possibly quarters, to increase competitiveness.
- Adding two minute warnings to the end of the first and third quarters to produce mini-games within the game to make each play more important. Players could be compensated more for big plays.
- “Draft concept” – Replacing traditional AFC/NFC rosters with team captains on each side who select their own players. Draft could be televised and include custom uniforms, team names and rules. The NHL has used this concept before during their All Star Game.
“The answer going forward will be, again, if some of these changes are effective, positive and lead to a better event, we will find a way to make this game better and hopefully more popular with our fans,” Roger Goodell said at the annual league meeting. “We talked about Peyton Manning picks one team and Eli Manning picks the other. We think some of that is going to create greater interest.”
At the moment there are no new changes to next year’s Pro Bowl. There is a very good possibility some changes will be implemented after the NFL’s Spring meeting in May.
Hopefully some of these new ideas will change the public’s poor perception of the Pro Bowl.
