There is no practice more frivolous than fantasy football. There is no event on the sports calendar more irrelevant than the NFL Pro Bowl. So it is to the NFL's credit that it had the balls to combine the two into an evening-long "event" with a running time as long as a football game. The result? A bunch of dudes doodling on pieces of paper and analyzing roster moves for a game in which every player's primary goal is not to blow up their knee or end up clowned on YouTube.
Any event where you stick Steve Mariucci into the wind tunnel of the Pacific Ocean surf for three hours ...
... and do this to his hair ...
... is an event that's too long.
Aside from Sean Taylor (R.I.P.) beheading that punter, no one ever remembers the Pro Bowl. So this year the NFL copied the NHL playbook and had Deion Sanders and Jerry Rice "coach" against each other by reciting insults dated back to the 1990s.
Congratulations, NFL. You've found an event to broadcast that's more boring than the scouting combine.
Fortunately, we have Andrew Luck picked first for #TeamSanders to liven up the day.
Jerry #TeamRice selected Drew Brees as captain and let Brees basically pick all of his teammates on the Saints. Since football is a sport that requires repetition and familiarity among players to win, I'm with #TeamRice.
Good lord, I'm picking the Pro Bowl.
The event's true value: It was basically a three-hour Chris Rose hostage video.
Poor guy scrapped through this broadcast by the skin of his teeth.
Why isn't anybody accusing Mario Williams of bullying?
At least Richard Sherman left Erin Andrews' mic alone.
The lone interesting wrinkle to the day's festivities was how the draft's last two picks were quarterbacks. It was a sick form of karmic payback.
Philip Rivers, who always wears his heart on his face, was not happy. You'd swear he was told he was going to have to pass a kidney stone.
The bolo tie jokes get old after getting clowned in the playoffs.
For Phil's sake, he avoided this updated version of being picked last for gym class. "Alex Smith was the first overall pick of the 2005 NFL Draft and was the last pick of the 2014 Pro Bowl draft." Alex Smith's career in one sentence.
NFL Network attempted to liven up three hours of talking with more talking, this time in the form of a confessional. The least they could have done was have the decency to tell the guys there's a chyron.
The first (and only) glimpse of cheerleaders didn't arrive until TWO hours into the broadcast.
Really? Two hours?
Everyone would have been better served if NFL Network just showed the cheerleaders playing volleyball for three hours.
Now that would be a game people would tune in to.
Well, there's always next year.