Brees Injury Highlights Pro Bowl's Worthlessness

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees dislocated his left elbow Saturday night in the Pro Bowl, bringing a painful end to an inspiring season. The injury shouldn't have much bearing on the right-handed Brees's ability to prepare for the 2007 season, but it should teach the NFL a lesson most fans already know: The Pro Bowl is a useless exercise at best, and downright dangerous at worst.

NFL players consider being selected for the Pro Bowl a great honor, but many of them treat actually participating in the game as a nuisance. Sixteen players who were named to the Pro Bowl roster chose not to play. Several more who had the opportunity to join the team as alternates for those injured players declined to do so. Two players, Indianapolis Colts receiver Marvin Harrison and Washington Redskins tackle Chris Samuels, took the trip to Hawaii for the Pro Bowl but sat out Saturday's game anyway.

So many players sitting out raises the question of why the league continues having the Pro Bowl at all. Few fans would miss it, the media constantly deride it, and the players would likely be just as happy having the league announce an official "all-NFL" team but skipping the game.

In every sport, all-star games have lost their luster. When Pete Rose bowled over Ray Fosse in a famous home-plate collision at the 1970 Major League Baseball allstar game, he epitomized the way players of his day treated such events not as meaningless exhibitions, but as opportunities to showcase their skills on a grand stage. Today the Major League Baseball All-Star Game has a minor league feel. After an infamous tie in 2002, commissioner Bud Selig tried to inject some excitement by giving the league that wins the All-Star game home-field advantage in the World Series, but most fans see that as a gimmick. The NBA All-Star game once seemed like a major cultural event, but now it's mostly an afterthought. And the NHL All-Star game is so irrelevant that the cable channel Versus had fewer than 700,000 viewers nationwide when it showed the game last month.

But the other leagues' all-star games are still superior to the Pro Bowl. In the other sports, the top stars often participate grudgingly, but they almost always show up. And although all-star games in every sport tend to minimize defense, the Pro Bowl goes to absurd lengths to promote offense, prohibiting such fundamental defensive techniques as blitzing. On Saturday the AFC team was called for multiple "illegal defense" penalties, a penalty that doesn't exist in football outside the Pro Bowl.

Brees's injury occurred when Baltimore Ravens defensive end Terrell Suggs hit him in the legs after he threw a pass. As he went to the ground, Brees fell on his left arm, bending his elbow awkwardly. The injury will take about two months to heal, hindering Brees's off-season conditioning, but Brees was lucky: Suggs could easily have given Brees a serious knee injury when he hit him, or Brees could have fallen on his right arm and suffered an injury that would affect his ability to pass.

In 1999, New England Patriots running back Robert Edwards injured his knee so seriously in Hawaii that he needed three full years of rehabilitation before finally making a brief comeback with the Miami Dolphins. Although Edwards's injury was in an NFL-sanctioned game of flag football prior to the Pro Bowl, it illustrates the way players are risking their bodies every time they step on a football field. It's only a matter of time before a star player suffers a Pro Bowl injury that prevents him from playing the following season.

Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor provided the most watched highlight of Saturday's game by drilling Buffalo Bills punter Brian Moorman on a fake punt. Taylor knocked Moorman flat onto his back, and even though Moorman wasn't hurt, much of the talk surrounding the game was critical of Taylor for playing hard in an event that everyone knows isn't supposed to mean anything. But it's unrealistic to ask professional football players not to play hard any time they're on a field in a helmet and shoulder pads. Taylor's hit was legal and clean, and although it was unnecessary, it was no more unnecessary than the game itself.

Much like the meaningless preseason games that the NFL charges its season ticket holders full price to attend, the Pro Bowl continues to exist because it makes the league money. The state of Hawaii, which considers the game a good opportunity to showcase itself as a vacation destination to fans watching from the frigid mainland, pays the NFL $4 million a year to host the Pro Bowl, and the 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium almost always sells out. Ultimately, as long as the NFL can find a city willing to host it, players willing to play in it and a network willing to televise it, the Pro Bowl will be with us. And as long as it's with us, the NFL will be risking serious injuries to its biggest stars.

Mr. Smith is a writer for FootballOutsiders.com.