Before I get into my disdain for the Pro Bowl, I’d like to take this opportunity, as I so often do, to take advantage of the fact that my column comes out on Mondays.

As some of you may know, this is the first column of a new volume, which means, among many other things, I have brand new editors!

Since this is the only opinionated sports article in today’s paper, I wanted to take a bit of time to recognize the outgoing managing editor, Zach Zimmerman, and my own outgoing desk editor, Haley Murphy.

Haley, a senior, is done desk editing and has done a great job not only making funny taglines at the end of my columns, but also putting up with my (and other writers’) late articles, figuring out how to make all of us writers sound smarter and more concise, and generally being awesome (despite her anger over all the football columns)!

Zach (who is a desk editor in news this volume, and will be seen again in sports, I am sure) essentially sacrificed more than a quarter’s worth of sleep in order to ensure that the most popular section (sports) of The Daily came out looking sharp and read cleanly everyday.

So with a last thank you to Zach and Haley, I will now move on to that pathetic excuse for a football game known as the Pro Bowl. (One last football column in your honor, Haley).

I will watch almost any sporting event on TV, mostly out of interest and sometimes as a blatant procrastination technique. That said, the Pro Bowl is being played as I write this, and I am about as inclined to turn the game on as I am to take a voluntary trip to the dentist.

While I believe all All-Star games are essentially a waste of time, the Pro Bowl is the worst — and this year it is worse than ever.

The Pro Bowl’s shortcomings have been well documented publicly. Players are banged up at the end of a football season and don’t want to play an extra game, there is a high risk of injury so the rules of the game get altered and, this year, players from the two best teams in the league can’t play in it because it is a week before the Super Bowl.

Ideas have been tossed around about playing the Pro Bowl in the preseason or midseason, but those will never happen because of the injury risk. Other pundits believe it should be moved back to Hawaii after the Super Bowl.

I have another idea instead. How about it is moved to never?

Would anyone really miss it? Sure it brings in some revenue, but Miami struggled to sell the game out and, with the Super Bowl in the same city the following week, I’ll bet that the profits from tourism and merchandise are negligible.

While the MLB and NBA All-Star games aren’t much better, they at least have some things going for them. Baseball’s midsummer classic at least determines which league gets home-field advantage in the World Series while the NBA’s All Star weekend provides what Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has called the greatest partying weekend ever. (He actually said that the partying associated with the upcoming NBA All-Star game in Dallas will make the Super Bowl look like a Bar Mitzvah party — though, he made no mention of whether Pacman Jones planned on attending this year).

The NFL has none of that.

Forty percent of players selected to the Pro Bowl this year aren’t playing in the game. Some have real injuries, others have fake injuries and some, like Vikings’ offensive tackle Bryant McKinnie, just don’t show up to practice and get kicked off the team.

David Garrard is one of the AFC’s quarterbacks. (That fact is pathetic enough to make my argument by itself).

Furthermore, Colts and Saints players selected are being forced to travel to the game to stand on the sidelines, fly back to their respective cities that night, then fly back to Miami with their teams the next morning.

While all of this is ridiculous, I have yet to mention how boring the actual game is! Football is a nuanced, physical game — and all of that is removed in the Pro Bowl.

Defenses must play a 4-3 base, they cannot blitz or play press coverage, nor can they come out in nickel or dime packages.

Offensively, there are no motion or trips receiver sets allowed.

Basically it’s a vanilla brand of the game that no one wants to be at and few people watch.

I guess this all makes sense coming from the No Fun League, but unless someone comes up with a drastically different approach to the Pro Bowl, I say scrap it.

Daniel Bohm had his Bar Mitzvah at the Super Bowl, but it wasn’t that great. Ask him how it was at bohmd “at” stanford.edu.