Pros of the Pro Bowl

Along with college bowl games, the NHL Winter Classic and the Super Bowl, bashing the Pro Bowl has become an annual winter sports tradition.  By now, every sports fan is familiar with the many, many reasons the NFL's All Star game isn't really worth watching.  I tuned in to some of Sunday's game and it was, unsurprisingly, pretty terrible.  If I wanted to see a bunch of severely underthrown deep balls get intercepted, I could have watched archived footage of David Carr playing for Houston.  I witnessed more contact at my middle school prom than I did in the game yesterday.  I actually think they should start calling it the "Con Bowl," both because the game features more negatives than positives, and because about half of the participants have been cited for at least a misdemeanor.  See, it works on multiple levels!  OK, I'm done now.

That being said, the Pro Bowl isn't all bad.  In fact, there are a few distinct things that the Pro Bowl offers which I enjoy, and which I can't find in other regular- or post-season action.  Rather than continue to rail on Hawaii's biggest sporting event not called the Maui Invitational, here are my "Pro Bowl Pros":

• I like the way the players are all wearing the same uniforms, except they each sport their own team's helmet.  While MLB has each player wear his own uniform in the All Star Game, and the NBA dresses everyone alike (other than a minor team logo patch here or there), I enjoy this Pro Bowl wrinkle.  It's a bit weird when the colors clash (the Cleveland Browns orange lids looked a bit odd atop bright red jerseys), but for most guys its a pretty cool look.
• I like how Tony Siragusa looks in a Hawaiian shirt.  As one of my favorite all-time Simpsons quotes goes, "The only guys who wear Hawaiian shirts are gay guys and big fat party animals," and Siragusa is most definitely the latter.  Rather than looking wildly underdressed (as he does on the sideline of virtually every other NFL game on FOX that he covers), Siragusa just looks right at the Pro Bowl.  Keep it up, Tony!
• I like how the refs allow the players to celebrate more freely than in "real" NFL games.  I don't like when players are overly unsportsmanlike or taunt their opponents, but guys rarely do that in the Pro Bowl.  Instead, we get a lot of dancing, jumping, running and smiling, all in good fun.  I don't want it during a heated Giants game, but it's a nice change of pace once a season.
• I like seeing how a mediocre combination of teammates (such as Matt Ryan throwing to an aging Tony Gonzalez) can rip apart an All-Pro defense, while what would appear to be a dream QB-WR tandem (like Phillip Rivers throwing to Reggie Wayne) can't get on the same page.  It just shows how much practice and chemistry go into completing passes in the NFL.  While this is also a key reason why the game kind of blows (the teams combined for 6 interceptions, 5 for the AFC), it makes me appreciate actual NFL games even more.

It's not much, but the different helmets look pretty cool.

Are these enough to encourage you to give the Pro Bowl a shot in January 2012?  Probably not.  But, if you're looking some some football on the Sunday before the Super Bowl, you could do worse.  After all, there might he an old Texans game featuring David Carr airing on NFL Network.