Capture the flag

 Today is the Pro Bowl, aka the Greatest Spectacle In Ligament Tear Avoidance, which isn't even that anymore because for the first time it won't be tackle football.

"You mean it was before?" you're saying now.

Well, no. But today, for the first time, it will be flag football -- or, in other words, Sophomore Year Gym Class Except Played By Highly Skilled Professional Athletes Who Are Major Investments Team Owners Don't Want Getting Hurt.

I don't know about you, but I find this sort of intriguing.

And, yeah, I know, it's the Pro Bowl, which no one watches except sad cases who'd watch a monkey doing vile things to a football as long as it involved a football. Or, you know, the XFL, USFL or whatever they're calling it now that the XFL and USFL have merged.

But flag football?

I might watch a few minutes of that just to see if someone pulls a hammy or dislocates a finger grabbing a flag. In which case next year they'll be playing either two-hand touch, or a rousing game of Monopoly.

Uh-oh, Dak Prescott just landed on Boardwalk ...

Something like that. 

Anyway, the point is, the Pro Bowl is an idea that outlived its usefulness a long time ago, if in fact it ever had any. This is true of most professional all-star games/weekends, to be honest. The NHL All-Star extravaganza, for instance, wrapped up yesterday and consisted of some actual hockey skills competitions, and then a weird four-team tournament featuring a draft and four teams named after their team captains. 

Team Auston Matthews beat Team Connor McDavid to win it. And don't ask me the score because, hell, I don't know, and who cares anyway?

As for the Pro Bowl, consider the switch to flag football the first step toward doing away with it altogether. There is precedent, after all. The annual preseason exhibition between the NFL champions and a team of College All-Stars eventually went away when it became obvious the College All-Stars were never going to win, and when the All-Star players began hiring agents to look after their interests.

The agents didn't want their clients getting hurt. And the NFL teams which had just shelled a ton of green in the draft for those clients didn't want that, either. So, essentially, the economics of the modern game killed the event.

The Pro Bowl might be next.

Although who doesn't love a good rousing game of Monopoly?