I have fond memories of watching Jerry Lewis’s annual muscular dystrophy telethon, even though, let’s be frank: The event made for wretched TV, even by the standards of the 1970s. Jerry Lewis, rest his soul, would ramble interminably about the plight of people afflicted with the disease until it became simply tedious, not to mention mawkish. Between his monologues they would cut to Ed McMahon and the national tally board to tell us how much had been raised across the country, and after that our local station would cut in so the weekend weatherman who hosted our local broadcast could report on the latest totals for the Peoria area. Each of these sessions would invariably feature some awkward old white male executive (more often than not a car dealer) presenting a check to the host in a monotone. None of this made for good TV.
Every once in a while a bona fide entertainer would briefly perform—no one wasted their A-material on the telethon, of course, but sometimes Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra would show up and perform a bit before kibbitzing with Lewis. Or, a comedian would reprise the last set they did on The Tonight Show, and it made for a (brief) treat before the show returned to tedium.
But I watched it anyway, because back then TV stations went dark around midnight most nights, and even earlier on Sundays (the day of the event). Having the telethon on was a treat because it was better than the literally nothing it was replacing.
My fondness for the NFL Pro Bowl is of a similar vein. I watch the game for the same reason I watched the telethon back in the day: It is better than the alternative for this Sunday, which would be not watching professional football.
A lot of the television I enjoyed growing up bores me today. My two favorite TV shows in my youth, Hogan’s Heroes and Happy Days, are almost unwatchable today, so utterly unfunny are they. My ardor for college basketball has waned, and I have trouble sitting through most movies these days.
But I like the NFL more than ever. Part of it is that High Definition television seems tailor-made for the game, and the quality of the play and the broadcast continues to improve. And the Red Zone—which shows snippets from every game going on at the time, sans commercials—might be the single greatest innovation in broadcast television in my lifetime.
I appreciate that it is truly incredible how much compelling television is being made these days, but pro football remains far and away my favorite programming. The amount of time I spend watching the NFL exceeds the amount of time I spend watching everything else for the entire year.
But the NFL season is about to end for seven months. I’m not ready for this. It doesn’t have to end now—I’ve written before about why the league should insert more bye weeks into the schedule to extend the season, but to no avail.
I watch the Pro Bowl because it is NFL football—or a reasonable facsimile thereof—and if that’s all I get in the week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, then I’ll take it. I will reiterate my annual plea that they make it resemble a real NFL game a little more—not by trying to entice the players to play harder—fat chance—but by playing in a bona fide NFL stadium, playing the game at night, and dressing the teams in throwback uniforms from some long-forgotten team.
Unfortunately, the teams will play in Orlando, a non-NFL city, during the day, and wear hideous new uniforms that resemble nothing we’ve seen in an NFL game. Apparently no one in at NFL headquarters is paying attention to my Pro Bowl critiques.
It’s lonely being a prophet sometimes.
Ike Brannon is president of Capital Policy Analytics and also edits the Pro Bowl Blog!
