by Phillip Torres

GLENDALE AZ–The decision by the NFL last season to have the Pro Bowl to be chosen up by different team captains was an excellent idea and some of the previous years before the Pro Bowl in 2014 it wasn’t really competitive. I would like to see the Pro Bowl like the Major League Baseball All-Star game mean something like the winner having home field advantage.

It would be nice that the NFL would incorporate the idea of the Pro Bowl meaning something for the winning team, the idea of having the Pro Bowl traveling with the Super Bowl is something that some of the fans like. The game used to be in Hawaii and now their bringing the Pro Bowl to neutral sites such as next year’s Super Bowl will be in Santa Clara but the Pro Bowl will return to Honolulu for 2016.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is headed in the right direction and might give some of the local fans for example the people in Arizona get a chance to see the game whereas they can’t afford to go to Hawaii. The idea is liked by the fans just travelling the Pro Bowl with the Super Bowl but not in just one neutral spot. Player wise they would love for it to stay in Honolulu that’s just a great experience for them.

The happy medium is have the game played in Hawaii every other year, it would keep Commissioner Goodell happy traveling the game with the Super Bowl every other year and it would keep the players happy knowing that they would be able to come back to Hawaii. Looking around downtown Phoenix today there were hardly any banners, signs, or anything provided by either the NFL or unlicensed hawkers for that matter that is promoting this week’s Pro Bowl. It’s almost as if no one cares about the game.

Choosing sides for the Pro Bowl: Team Chris Carter made Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck his first choice while Team Captain Michael Irvin kept his favorite and former team on the top of his list choosing the Dallas Cowboys Tony Romo as his first choice. Luck very well deserves the number one pick he should be used to this by now as he was the number one pick by the Colts coming out of the draft there too. Luck right now is on the road to being an elite quarterback, he’s had some great seasons since joining the Colts and he’s very close to having that same conversation of being in the same inner circle of the Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the Packers quarterback Aaron Rogers.

I miss the NFC-AFC format which was replaced by the team captain pick em thing and it would give you the fan favorite kind of thing and there are a lot of players who would like to get involved in representing the Pro Bowl as team captains. Last season was the first year of picking players by team captains. It was to stay with AFC-NFC it could propel the game into something eventful again. The way it looked in Arizona with there being no Pro Bowl banners or promotions of the Pro Bowl anything around the greater Arizona area it looked like a lack of interest in the game by the promoters and worse the NFL.

Phillip Torres covers the San Francisco 49ers during the regular season and check out his podcast below on the NFL Pro Bowl tonight on http://www.sportsradioservice.com