Courtesy of 1127sg from Webshots.com

The Pro Bowl played its final game in Hawaii for the foreseeable future and so, I decided to catch the game on TV to see “history”.  If it wasn’t for the rain (yes, in SoCal we have rain sometimes in the winter time), I’d miss this “monumental” event.  Unlike the Super Bowl which has a rich family tradition, one of which I have not missed since the beginning of time (a.k.a when I first discovered football in 1994), the Pro Bowl seems like a leap year experience.  The game is normally sub-par in comparison to a regular season game and this year did not “disappoint.”  The defenses are hampered for safety’s sake and the players seem to “chill out”.  I don’t blame them because they are in on vacation in Hawaii for “allstar” efforts this past season .

Okay, so I actually found the game somewhat edible. Larry Fitzgerald proved again why he was a beast of a receiver and so fittingly deserved the Pro Bowl MVP.  (Hey did you know that the award is called the MacGuire?)  Every quarterback and their dad was trying to lob it to Fitzgerald to test him out.    I’m sure he’d rather be hoisting a different type of hardware right now, but having a Pro Bowl MVP will come in handy come salary renegotiation time.  The NFC won for the second straight year, but unlike the Mid Summer Classic, the game has no meaning (of which I fully support).  Other then these obvious points that you can find at other news media outlets, I’d like to show you some interesting points worth noting:

• The rallying cry for 45:  What is that you say?  45 means the $45,000 given to each individual player on the winning side.  I guess that is one way to inject excitement in the players to play a “competitive” game.  However, I think the NFL undermined itself in this respect by giving the loser half that much ($22,500).  The disparity between winner and loser is such that it is easy to call it a day and take the loser’s share.  Why even give the losing team any money.  Don’t they already have their trip and tab picked up by the NFL for being their anyway?
• Penalties:  Unless you’re blatantly offsides or moving really early on the offense, Offside and False Start Penalties were at a minimum.  There were some obvious infractions, but they let the players play for the most part.  This made the game much smoother, except near the end of the 4th quarter where an illegal defense was called.  It came up from on top of the “video booth.”  Now, it is quite funny that the NFL allows officials to correctly add a penalty after a play has ended in a Pro Bowl game after review from “up top” on a obvious penalty, but in a “real” game, such as the final play of the Super Bowl or the Ed Hochuli incident, they do not review the play.  Why such a discrepancy?
• Fumblerooski:  The original play is illegal, but this newer revised edition for the 2009 should definitely be tried in a regular season match.  Then again, the play took too long to develop and most likely, the running back or quarterback would’ve been creamed in a real game.  I guess the play is limited in its usefulness, unless you’re playing against the Oakland Raiders.

So the Pro Bowl was not a total snoozer, but it was not up to par on quality either.  I guess maybe I’ll you next year in Miami?  And a week before the Super Bowl?  A fumble by the NFL?

If you have been following our Sick’ems then you will know the record stands at Jadamusss 1-1 and Quackster 0-2. It appears that I was right that Lucky isn’t so lucky and Quackster will need to do some real analysis if he hopes to pick the Super Bowl winner.

Jadamusss’s Super Bowl Sick’em

On paper, the Pittsburgh Steelers are the clear favorite even without Hines Ward. They have a superior defense that crushes opponent’s will. Their offense can move the ball through the air and on the ground. The Arizona Cardinals supposedly can’t defend against anyone and they have a 37-year-old quarterback named Kurt Warner. Even with the odds against them, I like the Arizona Cardinals and they will win by 4 points. The Cardinals will execute a similar game plan that they used against the Eagles. Edgerrin James will bust out for 115 rushing yards and two touchdowns. Kurt Warner will be consistent and throw for 250 yards and two touchdowns. At the end, their offense will have done just enough to pull out a win. Kurt Warner will have a fourth quarter scoring drive that will win the game and he will be name the Super Bowl MVP.

Quackster’s Super Bowl Sick’em

First of all, you can’t kick a dog when he’s down yo!  So Lucky was run over by a car in an accident, but somehow he survived with some relatively minor gashes.  Nevertheless, he was able to stay upright and still yearned to play catch right after the accident as if nothing happened.  This reminds me of the Jeff Garcia game at then end of the regular season where he got clocked by Quentin Jammer resulting in a bloody face.  So you’ve got to give the dog a break since he may have envisioned an alternate reality when he got clocked by the hit and run car.  At the very least, he’s alive and getting better.  With this improved health, he has viewed the future and his tail wag toward the west indicates that Arizona will win the Super Bowl, but only by a tail wag.  Why?  Kurt Warner plays in only close Super Bowl games.  This revitalization of The Greatest Show on Dirt (formerly Turf of St. Louis) sports three 1000-yd receivers (Larry Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin and Steve Breaston).  This triple threat will be hard to defend.  As for the Steelers being the favorite, you’d think they’d knock this game out of the ballpark against a 9-7 Cardinal Team, but injuries in the past few games to Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu affecting their movement will hurt the team.  Without a true go-to receiver and a devastating safety at full health, dropped balls on both sides of the ball will spell doom for the Steelers.  To add to this, the flavor of the season is the underdog winning (Barack Obama coming from relatively no where to lead the free world).  I guess both of jadamusss and I agree on this pick.  Enjoy this barn burner of a game!  Finally the end of a championship drought for the once-lowly Cardinals.