Did they bother to play the Pro Bowl Sunday? Even SuicideGirls devotees who drool over the sweltering, muddy hunks of manhood that pervade football rosters feel repulsion concerning this true Who the Fuck Cares? sporting event. NFL players selected as the league's best get a free Hawaii trip after the season's end to play an exhibition amongst themselves, and they do the same thing you'd do if you were sent to a Honolulu-based job conference, namely slack and lounge for a week before pretending to work for three hours.

That's certainly not to hold a grudge against the sport itself. It may shock those who were turned off by the game on account of having to cope with mindless pricks at high school pep rallies, but football contains surprisingly graceful elements. It's not merely guys smashing into each other, although that's fun on its own: every single player is supposed to head a certain way and do a certain thing upon every snap.

Football is nothing more than energetically aggressive dance steps with collisions at the end, and many anti-jocks could be converted to fans if they focused on the planned ferocity. If it's any incentive, prospective adherents may continue to hate 90 percent of the people in their high school yearbook even upon growing fond of the on-field clash.

But nobody should attempt to embark upon a football love affair by starting with the all-star Pro Bowl. The players can leave the island without showering, since most of the teases never get unkempt. It's why the payoff-free game is utterly skippable: nobody wants to observe a huge assemblage of highly paid superstars loafing.

At the same time, those rare entrants who take the exposition too seriously are guilty of first degree douchebaggery, reminiscent of the small-balled guys who provoke fights in crowded taverns after some poor soul accidentally nudges them. Not picking superfluous battles separates us from horses' asses; similarly, it's also why the only thing worse than not trying hard enough is trying too hard.

In fairness, those players who do hustle excessively may have a legitimate excuse: they might be releasing pent-up sensations caused by getting trapped within the limitations of a thoroughly emasculated brawl. By rule, the defenders aren't even permitted to blitz, which is the equivalent of seeing the Misfits perform an acoustic set. Watching the NFL unplugged is not the way to experience the competition.

It's the same way in every league. Pro all-star games serve as the equivalent of the Miss America pageant -- they are spectacles that have outlived their usefulness. In the case of beauty pageant, in pre-internet ages, enduring empty-skulled contestants with plastic chassis parading across stages was the only access most had to T and/or A. If you wanted to see anything more than a bare calf, you were stuck tuning in and viewing whatever they fed you, which was restricted to sash-and-one-piece-bathing-suit-wearing vapid bores. But today, skin enthusiasts can see what they want when they want, including, ahem, lovely tattooed and pieced women.

Sports fans who double as admirers of hot ladies/genuine personality-laden human beings presently enjoy unlimited options for both: they are no longer programmers' bitches. For football zealots, it used to be the only chance to see some of the league's more skilled athletic brutes came when networks decided to bring a certain market the particular games featuring said gladiators. But content is not chosen at some faceless executive's leisure anymore.

Now, anyone with a television attached to coaxial cable can essentially pay a couple bucks and see any player they fancy on any Sunday. Information traveling through wires has improved everyone's lives, as we look at the photos we want while setting our own broadcasting schedules. Best, nobody must tolerate phony football anymore, as everybody who wants to see the players involved has already experienced the chance to during real action.

The barely-a-game game has therefore seen its basic nature mercifully exposed: it's a sham of a popularity contest where only those participating benefit, specifically with free trips to a state not United with the other States. The sole virtue of the Pro Bowl is that it means the 2009 season is a week closer, as it's now less than seven months until some of our lives are imbued with meaning again.

As for last Sunday, even we hardcore football losers can't stomach an inauthentic insult of a fixture. Football is a sport played by roughnecks who put the old in school, and yet the season's final match may as well be played in grass skirts, leis, and coconut bikinis. Actually, that would be amusing enough to entice me to watch. NFL, are you listening?



Anthony Bialy is SG's no-jocks-required Sweaty Pursuits sports columnist. He follows sports religiously even though he’s quite bad at them. He ran cross country and played rugby in college, and was horrid at both. He schedules his life around his favorite NHL team’s games, and sadly lists his alma mater winning the NCAA basketball championship as his happiest moment. He likes other things besides sports, too, and requests a minute to think of them.