I think that All-Star contests are one of the dumbest parts of sports. I find them so boring that they're nearly unwatchable, and this is coming from a guy who has read the NBA collective bargaining agreement to better understand the mid-level salary cap exception.
Without fail, the Pro Bowl of the NFL, the NBA's All-Star Game And Assorted Other Quasi-Basketball Activities Weekend (ASGAAOQBAW), and MLB's All-Star festivities are the least entertaining representations of what the sports have to offer. Baseball gets a pass because of space limitations and because I think that it's the least silly of the aforementioned. I can hear Mr. Selig's sigh of relief from here.
For starters, let's look at the Pro Bowl, by far the goofiest contest of the Big Three. I conducted a highly scientific poll, extrapolating my results to the general population, and found that nobody in America knows when the Pro Bowl is played. There's a reason for that - it's not played until February, or in other words, six weeks after the end of the regular season. Out of the players whose teams didn't make the playoffs, how many, might one guess, have done a single football-related activity in those six weeks? Playing Madden doesn't count. Ten percent tops?
So the NFL's all-stars are playing out of season, fifteen or thirty pounds over their in-season weight, in a game that's played in Honolulu to boot. They're probably drinking Mai Thais on the beach all weekend, living the high life and chasing hula skirts. I don't blame them. If I had just spent four months pounding the living hell out of my body, I wouldn't take an all-star game six weeks into my off-season recuperation very seriously either. And nobody wants to get hurt in a nonsense game. Players barely block or tackle, nobody even bothers rushing to try to block extra points or field goals, and blitzing is actually against the rules.
Now, it's not like the NBA or MLB's finest are killing themselves to win their games either, but a large part of football's attraction - larger than that of basketball or baseball's - is its physical nature, and with that dampened, it's a significantly less watchable product.
I really don't think that there's a way to improve it. Putting the Pro Bowl in the middle of the season to mimic the timing of the NBA and MLB's games just isn't feasible, because it'll unfairly fatigue the participants compared to those who don't play. And if the effort is lackadaisical after the season, it'd be nonexistent during the season. Yet the NFL expands its market share year after year, so I'm not expecting the league to change things to humor me anytime soon.
I'm an unabashed supporter of the NBA and I'll defend virtually every aspect of the product, with the ASGAAOQBAW being one of the few exceptions. In the league's defense, not all of the activities are terrible. I'm a sucker for the three-point shootout: I feel like there's no better example of the global nature and tremendous skill of the players than watching a seven-foot German with picture-perfect rotation on his jumper rain threes. And I really enjoyed the one Rookie-Sophomore game that I saw.
But in the last four or five years, the dunk contest has lost more luster than Britney Spears. It's honestly like a carnival sideshow now. Nate Robinson, 5'7" dunker extraordinaire, needed something like seventeen attempts to make his final dunk once - and he won. Basically every dunk that can be attempted has been, so it's rare to see something unique nowadays, and the NBA can't compel its stars to participate, so there's an abject lack of name power in the event. I'd tune in to see Kobe throw down ... not so much for Tyrus Thomas.
But the league can make its stars compete in the Skills Contest. So this year, I'll have the pleasure of watching Steve Nash, LeBron, Kobe and a couple of others dribble through cones, throw a crisp chest pass, make a free throw, and make a three. Fastest time wins. Oh boy! Make sure you empty your bladder beforehand; you don't want to go anywhere! Thankfully, the NBA scrapped its "Shooting Stars" idea after a couple of years, which consisted of a three-on-three tournament with each team composed of an NBA player, a WNBA player from the same city (i.e. a Laker and a Spark), and an old NBA player from the same team. The fact that I had to look up "Los Angeles WNBA" on Google to double-check that one, LA has a WNBA team, and two, find out what its name is, is indicative of the reasons why the experiment may have fizzled.
The game itself isn't that much fun to watch. Everybody shoots crazy threes, tries outlandish alley-oops that fail four times out of five, and plays matador defense. If you really like And1 Mix Tapes, it'll be right down your alley, but I'd really rather see a sound game of basketball played.
And I'm fully aware that I'm a grumpy old codger at 19 years old. Also, the All-Star rosters are more about name recognition and team success than personal accomplishments. It's for this reason that an individual who is the leader of a wildly underachieving squad, who was suspended for 15 games for his immature actions, and who is a one-dimensional player, gets named to the All-Star team over the only player in the league averaging at least 23 and 10 (it's Zach Randolph) and single-handedly dragging his team towards respectability. Not that I'm bitter.
I'd improve the All-Star Game by adding a horse competition (nod to Bill Simmons) and possibly changing the format to be US vs. World. A starting lineup of Nash, Manu Ginobili, Andrei Kirilenko, Dirk Nowitzki, and Yao Ming with Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Pau Gasol, and Leandro Barbosa coming off the bench would make for an interesting contest against America's best. It's an idea that needs a little fleshing out, but hockey did it for a while and had some success.
Now, I'll await the inevitable phone call from David Stern. Happy to help, Dave.
-Matthew Mertens is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major.
