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I fixed the Pro Bowl

So I was on the phone with my friend Joe Posnanski today, and we were talking about how the Home Run Derby the night before the All-Star Game is now way more popular than the All-Star Game itself.

Joe and the great Michael Schur take it upon themselves to fix the All-Star Game in an upcoming episode of The Poscast, a podcast you should most definitely listen to if you want to listen to two of America’s smartest and funniest people talk about baseball and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, sometimes in that order.

Anyway, in the 10 seconds that it took Joe to explain how he and Mike fixed the All-Star Game — you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out — I figured out how to fix the Pro Bowl.

Look, nobody cares about the Pro Bowl. NFL players care about MAKING the Pro Bowl — it’s a huge honor, and most players have Pro Bowl bonuses written into their contracts. But nobody cares about the game itself. Players come up with random injuries to get out of playing (“Tom Brady announced today that he will miss the Pro Bowl with a Grade 3 paper cut”). Coaches treat it like a charity flag-football game (except for Bill Belichick, of course — read down to the Tony Gonzalez story). TV ratings have declined for six years in a row. The game still gets decent ratings, but anybody who watches the Pro Bowl all the way to the end is by definition way too interested in football. Or has money on the game, which is its own problem.

They have started a skills competition before the Pro Bowl, maybe in hopes of getting some of the shine of the Home Run Derby or the NBA’s dunk contest. But the Skills Showdown features stuff like a dodgeball game and a relay race. Nobody cares about those, either. And the NFL has the perfect skills competition sitting right in front of them.

Here’s how to fix the Pro Bowl:

Turn it into Punt, Pass and Kick.

You’ve seen Punt, Pass and Kick. They’ve been doing it since 1961 as a showcase for young people to show off their football skills. It couldn’t be simpler: You punt, you pass, you kick, they add up the distances, the highest score wins. Sometimes they’ll do it at halftime of an NFL game, and often it’s better than the game. It’s so cool to see some 60-pound third-grader fire a spiral halfway down the field. It’s also a great illustration of how kids get their growth spurts at different times, as you know if you’ve seen Andy Reid doing Punt, Pass and Kick at 13.

So bring all the Pro Bowlers together and let them have at it. Group them by position, and have the positional winners meet in the finals. Tell me you wouldn’t watch J.J. Watt try to throw a spiral down that little tape they string down the middle of the field. Tell me you wouldn’t watch Drew Brees get ticked off after shanking a punt. No injuries. Immense trash-talking potential. TV gold.

The Pro Bowl itself? Cancel it. Have a nice dinner, hand out the bonus checks and send everybody home. Except for the Punt, Pass and Kick winner. He goes to Disney World.

 

–TT

 

 

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Richard Sherman Day

Yeah, Monday was a wild day.

Well, let’s start with Sunday night. After Seattle beat San Francisco in a fantastic NFC title game, Seattle’s Richard Sherman gave an … interesting postgame interview to Erin Andrews. I enjoyed it but didn’t think a whole lot about it as I went back to my Sunday night chores, folding laundry and such. I checked Twitter at some point and saw people were ripping Sherman for a lack of class in the interview. I thought, it’s hard to be classy when you’ve just played a game that violent and they put a microphone in your face on live TV. The idea started itching in my head. That’s usually a good sign. So I quit the laundry, sat down at the laptop and wrote. There wasn’t much of a narrative thread to it, just some scattered thoughts, so I numbered the paragraphs and made it sort of a list. I figured it might make a nice little piece for Forbes.com, where I’ve been doing some sportswriting lately.

It was nearly midnight when I was done. I almost waited until Monday morning to post it — the Forbes editors say it’s best to publish between 10 and 2 on weekdays, when people are surfing the Internet at work. (I had forgotten that Monday was the MLK holiday.) But after a few minutes of hemming and hawing I said screw it and posted the thing.

A little later, I checked back and noticed that a lot of people had mentioned it on Twitter. Like, a LOT.

Later on I clicked over to the Forbes site. Forbes puts their traffic stats next to every story so anybody can see them. The most popular story I’d ever written for them ended up with about 46,000 page views. This story already had 50,000. Then 100,000. When Alix came home from her night shift, I checked one last time and it was more than 200,000. We stared at each other like, What is happening? Then we went to bed.

When I woke up, it was more than a million.

And now, at 11:30 Tuesday morning:

Picture 4Holy hell.

Over on Forbes there are more than 600 comments, probably 90 percent critical, including one guy who substituted my name in the classic scene from “Billy Madison”:

The debate’s still going on today over there, and on Twitter, and on Facebook, where I found a full rebuttal piece that’s really good. There’s a lot to chew on in this story — our notions of sportsmanship, our changing culture, honesty vs. clichés, the whole mythology of football being this brutal sport played by noble warriors. (If you’re not Richard Sherman-ed out at this point, read the great pieces by my friends Gwen Knapp and Joe Posnanski.)

But for me, it became about the flood of readers. It felt like when you get the Super Mega Bonus on a video game and you see the points spinning on the screen. The whole thing is just … overwhelming. It’s not that the piece is some masterwork — I’ve written a lot of stuff that’s better. Every writer has stories they thought would draw a huge audience and win awards, and NOBODY noticed. This one just happened to touch a nerve on a subject a lot of people were talking about. And I think the key part is, it landed at the right time — not too long after the game, and when all those Seattle and San Francisco fans on the West Coast were still awake. They got the ball rolling. This is where I remind you that I almost waited until the next day to post. Sometimes you get by on dumb luck.

It’s been a blast. But I can feel the rollercoaster slowing to a stop. What do you do when the ride’s over? You get back in the chair and go back to work.

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Refamania!

Hands have been wrung to the nub over the replacement refs in the NFL. Players, fans and media types are steaming with outrage. The refs are clearly not up to the task of officiating a fast-moving, violent sport. They’re robbing the sport of its integrity. Nobody seems to know what to do about it.

Fortunately, another professional sport deals with this sort of thing all the time.

Monday night, World Wrestling Entertainment champion CM Punk started “WWE Raw” by complaining about referees. The week before, Punk had been pinned by WWE hero John Cena in a tag-team match even though Punk’s foot was on the rope – which, as all wrestling fans know, negates the pin. The referee – a new ref working his first main event – missed the call.

Punk called the ref into the ring, chewed him out, demanded his resignation, and sent him away with a gift – a sleep mask (because the ref was asleep at the switch, you see). The mask had the WWE logo over one eye… and the NFL shield over the other.

This was before the Seattle-Green Bay game had even kicked off.

In the NFL world, replacement refs are a nightmare. In pro wrestling, referee trouble is a time-tested angle. I’m sort of stunned Vince McMahon didn’t think of a ref lockout first.

The NFL owners and Roger Goodell still don’t seem in any hurry to end the lockout – it’s possible that, in a show of unity, they’re refusing to watch their own games. In the meantime, if we’re stuck with the replacements, here are some ref angles that wrestling uses all the time to build drama. Simple incompetence is just the beginning.

The Distraction. Why do bad-guy wrestlers (the “heels”) have managers? So the manager can jump up on the ring apron at a key moment and get the ref’s attention. That gives the bad guy a chance to bash the good guy with a chair or kick him in a tender place. NFL teams have a dozen assistant coaches. Designate one to scream, or maybe drop his pants, right before his linebacker holds the tight end coming over the middle. Under current NFL rules, “dropping your pants” is not a reviewable call.

The Restart. A heel often wins the match, only to have the fans start screaming about the lead pipe hidden under the waistband of his trunks. Wrestling refs, unlike NFL owners, often listen to the fans – so it’s common for a ref to throw out the result and start the match over. The problem with Seattle-Green Bay is, the Seahawks were the good guys (at least inside the stadium). It would’ve taken a brave ref to say, “We’re pretty sure Seattle cheated, so let’s run one more play!”

The Ref Bump. In a stunning coincidence as yet unexplained by science, nearly every big pay-per-view match has a moment when the ref is accidentally knocked out and can’t count the pinfall when one wrestler has the other beat. In the NFL, the umpire (the official who stands behind the defensive line in key parts of the game) is ripe for getting plowed over. In fact, a heel quarterback – we’re looking at you, Smokin’ Jay Cutler – would absolutely drill the umpire “Longest Yard”-style. (It’s sorta NSFW, but if you’re curious, search YouTube for “Longest Yard McNuggets.”)

The Guest Referee. Many big matches feature a special referee – usually a wrestler who has heat with one or both of the combatants, even though he swears to call it down the middle. This would be the greatest thing in the NFL since the two-point conversion. Can you imagine the ratings if Mike Ditka was the special referee in a Bears-Packers game? Or Joe Namath in Jets-Pats? I’d even watch Browns-Bengals if Jim Brown was out there in a striped shirt, throwing flags and taking names.

The Evil Ref. Refs are only human; they have needs, they have desires just like you and me. Sometimes they fall prey to somebody with a little money to spread around. “Call it like you see it,” the heel might say. “Just count a little faster when the other guy’s down.” And before you know it, the ref’s cheating the good guys and partying with the heels at the Holiday Inn bar.

In the ‘80s, the WWE ran the best Evil Ref angle ever. In real life, refs Earl and Dave Hebner are identical twins. In the angle, Dave was supposed to ref a world title match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant… but Andre’s manager, Ted “Million Dollar Man” DiBiase, paid an unknown (played by Earl) to get plastic surgery so he looked like Dave.

DiBiase locked Dave in a closet, the Unknown Ref cheated to help Andre win, Andre gave the title to DiBiase, Dave escaped, Dave and Earl started fighting in the ring, and this is way more than you wanted to know, right?

Here’s the point. The NFL isn’t the WWE yet, but it’s a lot closer than it was three weeks ago.

And if you tune in a game Sunday and see a Winklevoss brother handling the coin toss, you’ll know what’s coming.

P.S.: Might as well take the poll.