Does Anyone Want to Play in the Pro Bowl?

The NFL has announced a new set of criteria for the 2010 Pro Bowl, taking place this coming Sunday in Miami. You just have to be a pro. That's it – the Pro Bowl is just a bowl full of pros. That's the only qualifying factor the NFL seems to need to fill out two squads for Sunday's exhibition celebration.

Obviously no player from the Colts or Saints will be playing in the game, so you won't see Drew Brees, Peyton Manning or the other ten players from those two teams there. Add in the fact that there are four Jets and 10 Vikings who have been selected, and you wonder how many of them will beg-off with injuries following the conference championship games.

Think about it: you worked the entire season since June – heck, since last season ended – to play for the chance to win a Super Bowl. You scratch and claw your way through a 16-game regular season, plus the playoffs, to come up just short, and the NFL expects you to pack your bags and fly to the same city that will host the players who just beat you and will fly in a few days later to be treated like kings for a week. You'll be playing in the same stadium with all the same signage and nobody is going to care.

Yeah, that sounds like a fun time. I wouldn't be surprised if half those 14 players decide to stay home. And, if you saw Brett Favre's mangled body after the game on Sunday, you'll know that some of those player will have legitimate injuries and aren't pulling out of the game because of the "injured: pride" ailment that use to always preclude guys like John Elway from making the trip to Hawaii after getting shellacked in the Super Bowl.

Vince Young is a Pro Bowl player, and he didn't even start his team's first six games. He's joined in the AFC by Matt Schaub and David Garrard, because Tom Brady, Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger are either hurt or have something better to do with their time. Donovan McNabb was just named to the Pro Bowl to replace Drew Brees and Tony Romo was selected, too. It seemed like Kurt Warner would be the obvious pick, but does he want to put himself through that? Do any of the players?

Greg Aiello in the NFL PR office boasted on Twitter last week that the game was sold out. Trey Wingo of ESPN – the network broadcasting the game – got into a back and forth about whether or not people care to watch the Pro Bowl. Wingo's point (sort of) won the debate:

@JimmyTraina here's why. Last year? The pro bowl was the highest rated sports event the weekend they played. Beating Kobe vs Lebron by 30%

Sure the game will have a few million viewers, as flag football featuring NFL players would outdraw any other sport at this point – the NFC title game had 52 million people watching on Sunday, a number that could nearly double for the Super Bowl – but with the exodus of star players from the Pro Bowl, it remains to be seen if the league is happy with this decision to try the game the week before in the Super Bowl city.

While the logistics of having the game in the same city as the Super Bowl are undoubtedly less taxing on the league than having it a week after the Super Bowl more than 5,000 miles away, having the exhibition a week before the Super Bowl already takes every good player from your two best teams out of your All-Star game. The league had to anticipate some attrition from the rest of the league, but could they have imagined so much that they run the risk of devaluing their product to the point of going from somewhat to completely irrelevant. They're all pros, but they're hardly All-Stars at this point.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.