How to Truly Save The Pro Bowl

The NFL knows that the Pro Bowl is broken and they are trying to fix it. I personally like that the NFL is trying to do something about their annual all-star game, but this is not enough incentive for the players or for the owners to care about the game. Relying on the "camaraderie" between current and former players to ignite a competitive flame in the participants is not going to solve the issues regarding the game, but I do know what will... MONEY AND EGO!

Right now, the players are getting contract incentives for their appearances in the Pro Bowl and the owners are not making as much money on the venture as they could be. The television rights for the game are lumped into a pre-existing contract for other NFL programming. But wouldn't the NFL be able to charge even more for their television rights if they offered an all-star game that would guarantee a large audience? The easiest way to do this is for the owners to put up the initial investment into this game and create an egocentric spectacle by putting up their own money in a winner-takes-all football game.

Admittedly, I don't have exact figures, so the rest of this blog post will require an open mind to the hypothetical money being flaunted around. So, let's say that the NFL Owners agree to a AFC-NFC format for the Pro Bowl and each owner agrees to put up $10 Million to create a pool of $320 Million that will go to the winning side. The losing side will get nothing from this pool of money. Now that seems like a raw deal for the losing side, so why would the owners take that risk? Because ads for football games with large audiences will draw huge money! Granted, the article that I linked to is for the Super Bowl and it is a forecast as to what a 30-second ad could cost in the future, but don't you think that an all-star football game where the players are actually trying will garner a solid percentage of the total Super Bowl audience (35-40%)? Using that same hypothetical percentage, that would still bring in around $1.5 Million for a 30 second ad that could plausibly be charged for this game. Depending on the increase in the cost of television rights, the owners could pay for their bets with the increase in revenue.

We now see why the owners would consider this, but why would the players finally decide not to skip the game? Well, the contract incentives will not go away, but how about adding 20% of the Owners' winning share on top of those incentives? If you stick with the 43 players scenario that is being proposed for the 2014 Pro Bowl, then the winning side will pay out $1.488 Million to each player. That is a huge upgrade in Pro Bowl salary than that of 2010. The losing players will still get their contract incentives and a free trip to Hawaii, but they will not see a dime of the winners' share. If there is one thing that will cause the players to get very competitive on the field, it is money. If there is another thing that will get the players to play hard, it is their ego. By offering a chance at that large sum of money and throwing in the bragging rights that this game would provide, the quality of the Pro Bowl will prosper.

Pro Football is the ultimate display of ego and greed. It can be an ugly display at times, but it could also be beneficial in creating a better viewing experience for the fans when it comes to the Pro Bowl. All I know is that nobody cares about the Pro Bowl now and the NFL has nothing to lose... well, except for their hypothetical money.