Should Pro Bowl be put out of its misery?

There should be some kind of pill a person can take for the first weekend without real NFL football.
The NFL weakly plugged a gap by scheduling the Pro Bowl a week before the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl is the butt of so many dismissive comments, I won't try to coin an original one here. Let's quote Mike Barnicle who on Monday morning's "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC said: "I'd rather watch ice bowling than the Pro Bowl."
There must be some type of meaningful incentive in players' contracts to show up and play in that exhibition. But it's still not good enough for Bryant McKinnie of the Minnesota Vikings, who got "dismissed" from Pro Bowl doings due to not showing up for practice. Either McKinnie thought the Pro Bowl was a charade or he was still nauseated from the way the Vikings lost to the New Orleans Saints in the NFC championship game.
The Pro Bowl isn't even a true all-star game because it doesn't include players on the two teams set to play for the league title - this year the Saints and the Colts. So it's almost an indignity, by definition, being part of it, right? It's obvious the players don't go full speed in the Pro Bowl, partly if not mainly because they have to be careful to avoid injury, which can be catastrophic to a pro football player.
The Vikings once had a receiver named Gene Washington, not to be confused with a later star of the same name who played for San Francisco, and as I recall the purple-clad G.W. got hurt in the Pro Bowl and had the course of his career affected. In his prime, Washington was a reason why Joe Kapp, Minnesota's first Super Bowl quarterback - there were only two - rose so high in the NFL firmament.
Later, the charismatic Kapp, whose passes could sometimes be mistaken for punts (or wild ducks), signed with New England and quickly faded. His jump pass started looking more like a playground move. And speaking of costly all-star spectacles, my memory informs me that Harman Killebrew of the Minnesota baseball Twins was hurt in a costly way in the 1968 All-Star game, I believe while making a stretch play at first base.
It was kind of a blessing, Harmon, 'cause '68 was the year of the pitcher anyway. Frank Howard of the Washington Senators incredibly hit 44 home runs that year. Had Frank stepped into a time machine and fast-forwarded to 1998, and been given some of the "juice" that we now know propelled Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, my God, he would've buried them in the home run race.
And what could Killebrew have accomplished with a little "juice?" He'd be "The Killer" indeed, even against Sandy Koufax (the Twins' nemesis in the 1965 World Series).
No, the Pro Bowl cannot plug the gap in the NFL's two weeks-long hiatus leading up to the Super Bowl. And I have never really considered the Super Bowl part of the "true" NFL season anyway, partly because of the circus-like atmosphere that pervades. And partly because the NFL simply isn't as much fun when there are only two teams left in the running. The height of NFL interest is when you can tune in to ESPN's Sportscenter on any Monday and have a whole montage of NFL stories, gossip and anecdotes presented for you.
The Super Bowl seems more like a shrine to the excesses of American capitalism, than a true championship event. How many of the participants, do you feel, are relieved when it's all over? Who would want to be under a microscope like that? Oh, if the money is right. . .
But apparently the financial incentives were not enough for McKinnie to stick it out for the Pro Bowl. Now the NFL needs to think of incentives for fans to stay interested in the game through the four quarters.
After the Super Bowl? It seems like a wasteland. Not the kind of wasteland that Newton Minnow famously talked about relative to the medium of television (during the reign of Gilligan's Island and similar vapid stuff) but the kind of wasteland marked by "trashsports" (i.e. contrived sports events), and when I was young, "ABC's Wide World of Sports" with Jim McKay (called "Jim McKook") by Mad Magazine.
I remember trashsports when Archie Manning showed up one year, with some other NFL players, and they did things like trying to throw a football into a net attached to a golf cart.
I remember Manning, patriarch of the famous Manning football family in its prime today, because he casually smarted off to a TV moderator. At one point he said right into the microphone: "The only reason I'm here is that my contract requires it."
Today the players' contracts probably prohibit that kind of smarting off, given how the corporate world governs all of that. Consult your manual.
The World Series of Auto Racing was touted as a post-NFL season attraction in those days. Borrowing that term from baseball was an abomination. Truly there was a "dead zone" in the sports entertainment calendar, and basketball and hockey seemed no antidote.
The NBA was very weak in the 1960s and early '70s for some reason. Hockey? Periodically I'd try to develop an appreciation for the sport but I found it no more engaging than curling.
I felt the need for pills coping with that sudden void.
At age 55 I'm wise enough to see it all coming, but there's still a thud of recognition. And how long is it 'til NFL training camps open?
-Brian Williams - Morris Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com