Nobody Will Miss You When You’re Gone, NFL Pro Bowl

Written by Brandon Stroud / 04.26.12

NFL Pro Bowl is gone, maybe

An election year is the perfect time to point out that the people of the United States can’t agree about anything. We can’t agree on whether or not people should have human rights, we can’t agree on what constitutes conception or murder and we let ‘The King Of Queens’ run for 9 seasons and keep shows like ‘Parks And Recreation’ on the cancelation bubble. We’re emotionally and socially f**ked, but the one thing I think we can all agree on is that the NFL Pro Bowl is the most worthless thing we do annually and nobody would be sad if they kicked it in the ribs and tossed it in the garbage.

It looks like garbage day has finally arrived.

Here’s what ESPN’s Chris Mortensen said to Mike and Mike this morning on ‘Mike and Mike in the Morning’:

“The league is moving toward suspending the Pro Bowl, possibly this year. As one person told me last night, it is DOA, Dead on Arrival. At the same time, the league, I believe, will instruct teams to continue to put Pro Bowl incentives in contracts; if players have Pro Bowl incentives, to go ahead and pay them so they don’t have a problem with the union.

“Right now, the Pro Bowl is on the calendar for the week before the Super Bowl, but there’s no game site that is listed, if you look at it closely. The reason why is, after a lot of discussion, I think this commissioner Roger Goodell and other league people, and even some of the players, are basically saying, as Aaron Rodgers criticized last year’s performance, that there’s no reason to play in the Pro Bowl.”

Everyone’s so okay with this that even the commenters at Shutdown Corner have taken a break from demanding the firing of everyone with blogging privileges to post “yeah the pro bowl sucks get rid of it”.

And Aaron Rodgers is totally right — there is no reason to play in the Pro Bowl, unless you want to add a tiny amount of additional money to your Football Guy moneybin. If they’re going to keep doing it, they need to fun it up a little and make it like an episode of ‘GUTS’. Give everybody flags and nerf balls and maybe kayaks and see who can score the most points before Mo blows the whistle. At least then you’d have the aging ironic viewership, and SOMEBODY would be watching.

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Please Don’t Mess This Up, Saturday Night Live

Written by Ashley Burns / 02.09.12

Fran Tarkenton. Joe Montana. Peyton Manning. Tom Brady. Three of these quarterbacks have won Super Bowls, but they’re all considered elite. Much much less importantly, they are also the only NFL quarterbacks to ever host Saturday Night Live. Now, though, they may open the doors to one more, as Aaron Rodgers is rumored to be under heavy consideration.

Rodgers apparently met some of the current cast members during the week of festivities for Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize true charisma, whether it’s offering valuable pre-game analysis or waking up next to Miss March. Rodgers has got it, I tells ya.

Rodgers has mentioned that possibility several times on his ESPN 540 radio show in Milwaukee, and Tuesday he said he met a couple cast members last weekend in Indianapolis, where he worked as part of NBC’s pregame show. “I’m hopeful that we can figure something out there,” Rodgers said. (Via ESPN)

Of course, charisma means nothing if it’s not used properly, so that of course puts pressure on the show’s writers. And anyone who has seen the show as of late knows that they’re not exactly channeling Tolstoy.

Also, those QBs I mentioned before may be legends, but they all also sucked on SNL. In fact, the lone bright moment is still Manning’s United Way commercial.

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The NFL Honors Ceremony Was Pretty Good

Written by Ashley Burns / 02.06.12

When the NFL first announced that it was going to host an Oscars-like awards ceremony for the league’s season awards, my first thought was, “Great news for people who like the ESPYs but have ADHD.” But Alec Baldwin was hosting and I like football, so I figured I’d at least be able to watch it for the sake of making fun of it. Yet as I watched it Sunday morning on my DVR, I couldn’t help but admit to my dog that it wasn’t terrible.

The NFL Honors were far from perfect, though, and if they’re going to make this event a tradition, league officials are going to need to make a few tweaks to the overall process. For starters, as much as I love Baldwin, he didn’t exactly hit home runs with his jokes. I mean, I laughed, but they showed more blank faces in the audience, and I really don’t know if Clay Matthews appreciated being called Madonna.

As for the actual award process, I know that they need to make it seem like each category was so close and it was so difficult and arduous to determine which players were going to win, but we’re not stupid. Offensive Rookie of the Year couldn’t have been more obvious, so clearly we didn’t need two minutes of intro footage that included Mark Ingram and Julio Jones. If anything, it felt like some guys were being teased.

Most of the awards were dead on – I only really disagreed with one – so we can debate them and some of the evening’s finer moments after the jump.

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Darren Rovell Is A Gentleman And The Best Of The Playboy Super Bowl Party

Written by Ashley Burns / 02.06.12

Ugh, look away! They're heinous!

Back when I was the editor of my student newspaper in college, I drew the ire and attention of the local chapter of the National Organization of Women after I wrote a harmless entertainment editorial about how the James Bond franchise should be celebrated for creating empowering characters in the Bond girls. Of course, the male president of this NOW chapter (*rolls eyes*) argued that Bond girls were objectified sluts, but it taught me an important lesson that if you take a stance regarding women and their looks, you’re going to piss people off.

And the point of this edition of “Cool Story, Bro” is that nobody ever taught CNBC reporter Darren Rovell that lesson, because on Saturday night, the self-proclaimed “Twitter police” had the balls to Tweet the following from the Playboy Super Bowl party:

Obviously, if you’re familiar with Rovell’s work, he likes to play with numbers, throw around statistics about money and impose his will on anyone who listens. He needs us all to know that he’s in charge and we’re just the pooper scoopers of his Twitter elephant. There isn’t really a big problem with that Tweet, as there just weren’t enough ladies for his liking, so he vented a little. Then he vented a lot.

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These Kids At The NFL Experience Are The Most Adorable Thing You’ll See Today

Written by Ashley Burns / 02.02.12

I don’t normally like to post pictures of children, not because it’s creepy, but because they’re not Kate Upton. But I decided to change that today since there were a bunch of kids at the Super Bowl’s NFL Experience yesterday and they were absolutely adorable. And yes, this is my strange way of admitting that I had a sheltered childhood as a shogun assassin, and I’m quite jealous that these kids get to dive into pits of foam squares while pretending to catch a game-winning pass. All I had was a stupid Pogo Ball and Miami Dolphins tickets.

But childhood inadequacies aside, I’m just an absolute sucker for the images of little kids standing behind the gigantic NFL player bodies. Also, in a macabre sort of way, I started wondering, “What could Aaron Rodgers do to get his head chopped off?” I’m not saying I want him dead, because as I’ve already stated multiple times I have a huge hetero man crush on him, but seeing that giant No. 12 jersey with no head just got me thinking that a girl would have to be pretty pissed at him to chop his head off.

Dammit, I think I just made another federal watch list.

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Believe It Or Not, The Pro Bowl Wasn’t Terrible: The Game In Pictures

Written by Ashley Burns / 01.30.12

Just like the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Pro Bowl had to tarp sections to avoid a blackout.

The 2012 Pro Bowl took place yesterday, in case you were glued to TNT’s broadcast of the Celebrity Drinking Contest annual SAG Awards, and it was basically everything you would expect, as the AFC defeated the NFC 59-41. The defenses played down, allowing the offensive players to do their things, and that’s why Philip Rivers only had one interception, instead of the standard 7. But I also commend rookie Can Newton for selflessly getting the defense involved by throwing 3 picks as well.

The star of the game, though, was Miami Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Marshall, who had 6 receptions for 176 yards and a Pro Bowl record 4 touchdowns, as he scored once in each quarter. Of course, the controversial wide receiver’s moment in the figurative sun didn’t last long as he eventually opened his mouth.

“Since Jay Cutler I’ve had a few different quarterbacks and being in the Pro Bowl you have these elite quarterbacks and it’s all them,” he said. “They put [the ball] in the right spots and make it easy for me to make the catch. It’s all the quarterbacks.” (Via the Miami Herald)

While he’s right – in the last two seasons, he’s had four QBs in Matt Moore, Chad Henne, Chad Pennington and Tyler Thigpen – some have misconstrued Marshall’s words as an attack on Moore. That would be true if the Dolphins hadn’t already made it clear that they’re looking to upgrade at QB. But I digress. At least the Pro Bowl gave us something to talk about.

In the meantime, people will continue to question the need for the Pro Bowl, and those people need to shush. The Pro Bowl is great for what it is – a chance for guys who get their asses kicked for 18 weeks to f*ck around and have some fun. The NFL just needs to move it back to after the Super Bowl so the players from the eventual championship team can attend and remind all of the other players how much worse they are. That’s the true NFL spirit.

Now enjoy some of the game’s best moments before everyone goes back to airing David Tyree’s catch over and over for the next 6 days.

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