10 Things I'd Rather Be Doing Than Watching The NFL Pro Bowl

The Pro Bowl is a funny game.  Billed as an all-star contest, players selected regularly drop out citing "injury".  This means that instead of watching Aaron Rodgers, fans get Andy Dalton who's hadly had an All-Star caliber season.  Not to mention that the game is now played before the Super Bowl so any players selected who's team makes it to the big dance, automatically get replaced.

Although to be fair, Rodgers does have a reason not to go to the game.  He's been suffering with a gimpy leg for a few weeks now.  Still there has to be better alternates to call up than Andy bloody Dalton, surely?

And this is before the actual game is played.  A game that seems to center around offense, where you can't blitz and tackling seems to be nin-existent.  This means that the score ends up being something like 76-56.  A lot like playing Madden on rookie difficulty and switching controllers.

All these things combine for a meaningless game that fans don't really care about.  The NFL has attempted to get people back into the game by changing the format and doing away with the conferences and having Hall of Fame "captains" select their own team in a fantasy-style draft.

Here are ten things we'd rather do than watch a Pop Warner game with grown ass men.

Author's Note: At the time of starting the article, the Pro Bowl Draft hadn't taken place.  It appears that Cris Carter and Michael Irvin - the 2015 Pro Bowl Captains - didn't want to watch Andy Dalton either as neother captain took the Bengals' signal caller during the Draft on Wednesday night.  Sorry Andy...

The full Pro Bowl rosters can be foind here.

10. Do the laundry and/or clean the house

You have two choices here.  You can either hold off doing the aundry for a few days just so you can do some dirty stuff.  Or you can just throw any old crap in and wash it, even if it's already clean.  Yoou know, because washing clothes and bed linen again is far more productive than watching the Pro Bowl.

You can also decide to clean the house while the washing machine is gong full blast.  Not only will you have nice fresh clothes and other linen, you'd also have a nice clean house all while wartching exactly zero minutes of the Pro Bowl.  Win-win.

9. Watch a really long movie

The average run time for a football geme is three hours.  Since no calls can be challenged in the Pro Bowl (which saves time) and the fact it's unlikely to go to overtime (in it's various versions, the Pro Bowl has only gone to overtime twice since 1936 - in 1992 and 1996), it's safe to assume that the ro Bowl won't over run by much.

This gives you an oppotunity to watch a nice long movie.  Something like...oh I don't know..'Saving Private Ryan' or 'Titanic' just from the top of my head. Or you could watch a box set and have a marathon, Star Wars for example.  You'd be half way through 'The Empire Strikes Back' at around half time if you start early.

8. Sleep

Self explanatory.  Who doesn't want more sleep?

7. Get a 'Legion of Boom' tattoo

Book an appointent at the local tattoo parlour and get an inking of Seattle Seahawks' defesive bak trio Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas III and Kam hancellor.  Perfect.  The only downside is if you're mot a Seattle Seahawks fan.  That would be probematic.

6. Get a chamionship tattoo

In case you don't happen to be a Seattle Seahawks fan, you can always get the good ol' championship winner tattoo and declare your favorite team Super Bowl Champions 20--.  It might be advisable not to fill in the final two numbers though, nothing looks sillier than a tattoo declaring the Jacksonville Jaguars Super Bowl hampions 2015 when they end up going 5-11 that year. 

5. Go down the pub

Or got to the bar as you Americans would say.  Getting drunk is a whole lot better than watching the Pro Bowl.  Just make sure the pub or bar isn't showing the Pro Bowl or you might have the inclination to atually watch the bloody thing, and that's the last thing we want isn't it.  You'd also wake up with a monster hangover...on a Monday morning which is both good and bad.  Good because you had fun and bad because you'll have to listen to Clive go on about Dez Bryant's one-handed catch from single coverage.

4. Watch paint dry

Over the years, I've heard many fans say they'd rather wath paint dry than see the Pro Bowl.  So here's your chance!  Grab some paint (and no cheating with quick drying stuff), generously distribute it to a surfae and make yourself comfortable.  Job done.

3. Play some Madden NFL 15

We've already established that the Pro Bowl is nothing more than a meaningless game with the feel of playing Madden on rookie difficulty.  So here's a chance to do that.  You can do some crazy stuff like play a linean at quarterbak just for the hell of it. 

2. Get some footballs and deflate them

The run up to the Pro and Super Bowls have been marred with accuations that the New England  Patriots cheated by willinly deflating their stock of gameballs for the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.  The Patriots won 45-7.  It's been dubbed 'DeflateGate' so what's a betrter way to pass the time while you wait for the Pro Bowl to end by inflating and deflating footballs.

1. Watch the Pro Bowl and stop moaning

Yes the Pro Bowl has issues with the selection process, sometimes players who are deserving to go are over looked because they're not "big enough names".  It has issues with the game rules (no blitzing) and players can often forget how to tackle.  There's also the constant gripe that it "doesn't mean anything".

But unless you're into Canadian or Arena League football, it's the second to last game of football for a very long time.  It's not the greatest game ever and is flawed, but the NFL are aware of it's issues and appear willing to make changes. 

There's also the fact that the 2014 game ended being a close 21-20 contest between Team Deion Sanders and Team Jerry Rice which is hardly the basketball score of past matchups between the NFC and AFC.  So at least one of the changes have worked out.

So just stop whining, sit down and enjoy the fun.