Week 17 Results Highlight Flaws in NFL Pro Bowl

The Pro Bowl has traditionally been used as a barometer to measure a player's status in the NFL. Making the game for a first time normally signals a breakout year for young players, while repeated trips to Honalulu, the game's venue, is often used to judge who the best players in the league are. In fact, many players have incentives in their contracts which pay them additional money for making the exhibition game.

Unfortunately, the game has turned into more of a popularity contest than a reward for those who most deserve it. Two of the three quarterbacks in the AFC that were chosen, Jay Cutler and Brett Favre, should not be going to Hawaii after the Super Bowl. This was ever clear during pivotal week seventeen match-ups, in which both quarterbacks fell to passers who should have made the game over them.

Philip Rivers, of the San Diego Chargers, is one of those quarterbacks who got left out. Because voting for the Pro Bowl ends in week thirteen, when his team was 5-8 and on life support for making the playoffs, Philip most likely got snubbed because of his team's record at that point. Fast-forward to the final week of the season, however, and the Chargers are 8-8 and in the playoffs as the four seed. Rivers finished the season with the highest quarterback rating in the NFL, with the most touchdown passes of anyone in the league. He single-handedly kept his team afloat as it suffered through injuries, bone-crushing losses, and media bashing. His exclusion from the Pro Bowl is the biggest travesty in recent memory for the game.

And the team he beat in the final week for the last playoff spot? The Denver Broncos, helmed by Jay Cutler, who, again, will be going to Hawaii. Cutler has had a tremendous season, but not one as impressive as Rivers by any means.

On the other coast, Brett Favre and the New York Jets completed a total collapse over the final weeks of the season by losing to Chad Pennington and the Miami Dolphins. The Jets, once 8-3, lost four of their last five games to finish 9-7 and out of the playoffs. During that stretch, Favre played as bad as any other quarterback in the league. Favre finished the 2008 regular season with twenty-two touchdowns and twenty-two interceptions with a quarterback rating in the low eighties. Do those look like Pro Bowl numbers?

One assumes that Favre made the game solely because of his well-known name, the early success of the Jets, and perhaps the New York media attention he received. In any case, his inclusion was a mistake that cannot be rectified. On the other side of the field was Chad Pennington, the quarterback Favre replaced in New York. Pennington may not have spectacular numbers, but he did finish the season with the second-highest quarterback rating in the league, with nineteen touchdowns against seven interceptions. And his team, 1-15 last season, made the playoffs.

The snubs of Rivers and Pennington have exposed obvious flaws with the Pro Bowl system. How can anyone award a player for a season's work after only seeing a portion of the season played? Pro Bowl voting starts as early as midseason. Has anyone really earned the right to be named the season's best by that point? Given that many players have financial incentives riding on making the games, NFL contracts are not guaranteed like other sports so this is important, it seems as if the most logical thing to do would be to have the voting take place after the regular season ends. Or better yet, have the commissioner hand pick both teams, taking the chance of a deserving player being left out because of voters choosing based on names instead of performances out of the process.

In any case, one thing is for sure, the current makeup of the Pro Bowl selection process is not a fair one.