Pro Bowl time!

 Today the NFL's greatest players, or rather their stand-ins, congregate in Orlando, Fla., for four days of running and throwing and whatever else passes for the Pro Bowl these days. The stand-ins will have a great time avoiding groin pulls and the like. The rest of us ...

Well. It's less than two weeks before pitchers and catchers report, is all I have to say about that.

The Pro Bowl, after all, has long outlived whatever usefulness it had, and in fact has so long outlived it no one can actually remember said usefulness. It's not even in Hawaii anymore, so we don't get to see snarly old football coaches wearing leis and Hawaiian shirts -- which was the highlight of the event, because it was like seeing George Patton in a tutu. Or Napoleon in a Speedo.

And here's the thing: It's not even a football game anymore.

Instead, the weekend culminates Sunday with a flag football game between the AFC stand-ins and the NFC stand-ins. This is just a sissified step above touch football, which is what half of America thinks the NFL is anyway when Patrick Mahomes is playing. It turns the Pro Bowl into the powderpuff game high school cheerleaders used to play the week of homecoming. 

Or perhaps more accurately: It turns the weekend into Field Day.

Remember Field Day? It happened the last week (or the last day) of classes in elementary school, when teachers were out of ideas for how to keep their amped-for-summer pupils from literally climbing the walls. So they took the little terrors outside and had them run races and throw balls and I don't know what-all in hopes of wearing them out.

Seems to me that's what the Pro Bowl is now. 

It's Field Day, except for multi-millionaires who want to keep their market value up. Risk their next contract in a football game no one cares about? Please. Talk to my attorney, Coach.

Anyway, since the Pro Bowl is now Field Day or something like it, the Blob has some ideas along that line. Activities, if you will, that fit the motif:

* Beanbag Toss

Contestants try to throw as many beanbags as possible through a clown's mouth. Just for laughs they can paint the clown so he looks like NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

*  Fat Kid Race

For offensive linemen only.

* Freeze Tag

In which anyone who's tagged must freeze until no one is left. For extra fun, contestants may take a Magic Marker and draw Snidey Whiplash 'staches, big-ass eyebrows and "I Suck" on the frozen.

* Hide-and-Seek

Pro Bowl stand-ins try to find where the players actually chosen for the Pro Bowl are hiding. Best guess: Not in Orlando.

*  Pin The Tail On The Donkey

Loses some of its appeal when Goodell refuses to be the donkey.

And last but not least ...

* Dunk Tank

 Mahomes and Travis Kelce take turns insulting the contestants ("Look who's in the Super Bowl again, losers!"; "Taylor Swift is hot as hell! Too bad you'll never know!") until someone hits the bull's eye and dumps them in a vat of icy water.

(Postscript: Mahomes catches pneumonia and can't play in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs lose. Their attorneys pin a lawsuit on the donkey, er, Roger Goodell.)