I complain about big market teams, or specifically Northeast of the United States teams, getting all of the press in Peter King's columns and I find this to be true. I think he should cover other teams. Normally, I have no problem with how teams are shown on television because I know the system and how it works. Dallas is going to get a lot of primetime games and so are other teams who are popular, and I am fine with that. I don't actually care if my favorite team makes it to Monday Night Football every year and I don't care how many of my favorite team's players make the Pro Bowl. Doesn't matter to me. It matters to Jemele Hill, which is ironic because she works for a sports organization that is predominantly responsible for how players and teams are covered and portrayed in the media. ESPN tells us who is a good player, and who is not, all year long, but Jemele blames the fans for Pro Bowl snubs. Let's find out why.
Pro Bowl voting ends Tuesday, and I'm prepared for another year in which popularity and reputation trump actual production and impact.
It's a popularity contest. How did you just figure this out? The fans are the ones who watch the Pro Bowl, so the fans choose who they want to see play in the Pro Bowl. It is actually a fairly simple process the NFL has going here.
Fan votes account for a third of the Pro Bowl selection process, with coaches' and players' ballots accounting for the rest.
I am not going to do the math for all of you right now but suffice to say the fans are the ones who get all the blame for the selections and they only account for 1/3 of the vote. Just like ESPN ignores the lack of coherency and logic in Jemele Hill's columns because only 1/3 of her brain actually works, the fans should be excused for their fan voting because they don't even make up the majority of the votes accounted for.
(I don't really know how this works honestly and I should look into it. I don't think there are as many coaches and players voting as there are fans, so there must be a formula that equally weighs all the votes.)
That doesn't sound like a harmful equation, but I'm advocating that the paying customers be left out. No disrespect.
I am advocating you be fired and go to work at Burger King working the fry machine because you are stupid. No disrespect.
But according to the most recent Pro Bowl numbers, Warner was third in the voting and Ryan ranked fifth. Naturally, the fan support is strongly behind Eli Manning and Drew Brees, who have hogged the nationally televised games. Both are having solid seasons, but Warner and Ryan have been better.
I don't watch the Pro Bowl and I don't give a shit about the Pro Bowl. It doesn't count so it doesn't matter to me. The fans are able to vote for who they want to see play and I see no problem with that.
I would also like to say I think Matt Ryan does not deserve to make the Pro Bowl and I think Drew Brees most definitely deserves it. I have no idea in what world Jemele Hill lives or if she has actually looked at an NFL game this year but Drew Brees is an awesome quarterback who early in the year did a whole lot with nothing.
Poor ex-Super Bowl and regular season MVP Kurt Warner, no one seems to give him any attention for his accomplishments though. Matt Ryan is only fifth in the Pro Bowl voting his rookie year? What a snub!
Meanwhile Ryan, whom I think also deserves MVP consideration, improbably rejuvenated a franchise that appeared dead a year ago.
That is her reasoning for Matt Ryan making the Pro Bowl. Not based on numbers but the fact Atlanta sucked last year and now they don't. It has nothing to do with Roddy White or Michael Turner, just Matty Iccccccccce 2 Ryan.
And speaking of New York, Brett Favre is the leading AFC vote-getter for quarterbacks -- even though Chad Pennington has outplayed Favre, and Kerry Collins has arguably meant more to his team than any quarterback in the NFL.
The fans are idiots. It's proven every single year when it comes to fan balloting for anything. The problem is these All Star games are for the fans, not the scouts or anyone else. That was the entire purpose of an All Star Game originally, to honor the great players and to let the fans see their favorite players all in one game. To not allow the fans a vote would defeat part of the purpose and less people would watch the game at that point then currently watch the game.
Jemele is advocating Kerry Collins makes the Pro Bowl. You ready for the next sentence?
Fans love football because it's a team sport, but when it comes to the Pro Bowl, they're suckered by the big names, no matter whether their performance justifies their selection or not.
I know Jemele Hill would not get suckered by Chad Pennington and Kerry Collins would she? Kerry Collins does not deserve to make the Pro Bowl. How can Jemele Hill be any dumber? There is no possible way she can be. She writes a sentence saying Kerry Collins should be considered and then in the next sentence says everyone gets suckered by names, not performance.
Here are their rankings respectively:
QB Rating: 2nd, 9th
Yards: 4th and 11th
Completion %: 3rd and 13th
YPA: 3rd and 12th
TD: 9th and 11th
INT: 1st (tied)
Chad Pennington actually could deserve a Pro Bowl selection but there is no way in hell Kerry Collins deserves to be named. Jemele Hill is an idiot.
Brett Favre's rankings:
QB Rating: 6th
Yards: 7th
Completion %: 1st
YPA: 10th
TD: 4th
INT: 16th (dead last...meaning he has the most in the AFC)
Favre doesn't deserve the Pro Bowl either, especially since I kept seeing the names Jay Cutler, Peyton Manning and Phillip Rivers (yes, him) ranked above him. If you want to base it on the numbers only Chad Pennington borderline deserves to be in the Pro Bowl, but it is the fans who watch the game, so they deserve a choice.
There have been several years when the best teams in the NFL have had very few Pro Bowl players. The Patriots and Eagles each had the best record in 2003, but just four Pro Bowl players between them.
What happened to Jemele's "any team who hogs the spotlight and plays in a big market gets more Pro Bowl votes" theory? The Patriots and the Eagles appeared on Monday Night Football a total of 4 times together that year and considering the Eagles were in the middle of going to four straight NFC championship games and the Patriots had won a Super Bowl recently they were not exactly small market, shitty teams. Jemele has no point. None. ESPN has to fire her immediately. Even when she has a point, she destroys it with bad facts and even worse logic.
As long as the fans are a factor, NFL teams will blitz them with marketing campaigns that invite them to forget about making objective, common-sense picks.
As will ESPN, the company you are currently working for. The same company that currently has the rights to Monday Night Football and gets to at least have a say in which teams are going to be featured in the spotlight every week.
Players and coaches aren't perfect, but if it were just left up to them there would at least be some semblance of order and the process couldn't be so easily hijacked. It also would make a Pro Bowl honor mean more.
They do have 2/3 say in the voting right now. The majority of the weight is directed towards the players and coaches. Why the hell would the coaches and players give the voting some semblance of order and process? What do they know that the normal fans do not know? Again, the whole point is that the Pro Bowl is a game for the fans to see their favorite players play against each other and also for the players to have a chance to be honored. Every year, players don't play in the Pro Bowl for various reasons, so those who get "snubbed" would get an opportunity to play anyway when other players back out.
If the players and coaches were the only ones who voted then the Pro Bowl would actually mean less to the fans, which means less people would watch the game, which means the game is less of an exhibition for the fans and the game becomes less relevant. Why is the answer to always cut the fans out of the process? Last time I checked they were the ones who paid money to watch the players play and allowed the players to make millions of dollars in endorsements and contracts.
The flaw in the current system wouldn't be such a big deal if the Pro Bowl didn't matter so much. No doubt, the game itself has turned into a sham. There's no real tackling or blitzing. Guys put forth maybe 20 percent effort on a given play. When Barry Switzer coached the NFC in February 1995, he ate a hot dog on the sidelines.
Exactly! It is an exhibition game. It is supposed to be that way.
But a lot of players have financial incentives tied to Pro Bowl appearances,
It's not like the best players in the league are getting snubbed every single year. I am also sure in a contract worth millions, an extra 200K for a Pro Bowl appearance is not that big of a deal to a player. Maybe it is, if so, then that player should put up numbers making him worth being voted into the Pro Bowl. Seriously, the fans are not the only problem here.
and that accolade is often used to determine how good a player or team might be.
You are retarded if you tie how good a player or a team is in with Pro Bowl appearances. Jemele has already acknowledged the Pro Bowl is worthless and the fans get the voting all wrong, so why in the hell would you base your perception of a team's ability on Pro Bowl selections? Who gives a shit whether anyone is able to determine how good a team or player might be? The fans are not supposed to vote so ESPN's talking heads can be more accurate with their preseason projected standings and not be blinded by Pro Bowl appearances? I hope no serious "expert" bases his/her projection of how good a team will be on Pro Bowl appearances. If so, that person should be fired immediately.
The most-repeated statistic about the Cowboys heading into this season was that they had an NFL-record 13 Pro Bowl players last season -- which only fueled the belief the Cowboys were the most talented team (on paper) in the NFC. Well, they aren't. The Giants had one Pro Bowl player and won the Super Bowl.
Exactly. Shut the hell up about not being able to accurately predict how a team is going to do. Who was fooled by this belief the Cowboys were the best team? The experts? If so, they are complete and utter morons. Are these ex-players who are blinded by Pro Bowl selections the same ones Jemele wants voting for the Pro Bowl? Yes. There is a problem there.
There is no correlation between Super Bowls and Pro Bowl players on a team. None. If you can't grasp this concept you should not be a sportswriter, you should be shoveling shit out of a horse's stall somewhere in Montana, so you are providing something positive to society.
Here's the real deal on this issue. Every expert, and I am talking about Tiki Barber, Jemele Hill, Ron Jaworski, Tony Kornheiser, Mike Tirico, Chris Collinsworth, Peter King, and every other person affiliated with football, thinks that Pro Bowl selections make a player great. This is why All Star Game appearances is always used when a player is having his Hall of Fame credentials mentioned. This is wrong because it is essentially a popularity contest for an exhibition game and has no bearing on the real football games played.
All these "experts" want the fans to not be able to vote for the Pro Bowl so we can determine who the real great players in the league are. There are three problems with this: players and coaches know about as much as the fans, they have their own biases, and they currently have the majority vote for the Pro Bowl. So nothing would really change. The Pro Bowl means nothing. Quit using it as a reason a player or team is great because it is an exhibition game. Simple as that. Shut up.
I'm openly campaigning for Winfield because he's had a spectacular season. He has a pair of interceptions and has caused three fumbles.
It is very difficult to determine a cornerback's worth because many of the top corners don't have good stats because quarterbacks rarely throw to them. I am just going to base this comment on what I know about Jemele Hill. That comment is that I don't think with two INT's Antoine Winfield deserves to make the Pro Bowl and that is why he has never made it.
"My oldest son said, 'Dad, why don't you get a signature dance?'" Winfield said. "But I'm not the one who is going to get up and dance."
Not when some people seem so satisfied with the same old tune.
So if the fans are cut out of the vote, more deserving players like Antoine Winfield, are going to get recognized and then that is how we know he is a great player. So when the Vikings get three Pro Bowl selections (Peterson, Winfield, Kevin Williams) and the Giants get two (Eli Manning and Justin Tuck) justice has been served and we will know for sure the Vikings are a better team than the Giants and the experts can finally have their preseason projections be more accurate. Wait, that still doesn't seem to work does it? Exactly. I hate Jemele Hill's writing.
(I swallowed 37 pills of Tylenol writing this column.)
6 comments:
Before tackling another JH column you should send me a round trip ticket to you. Then, I'll come over, punch you in the solar plexus and then go home. It'll be much less painful for you.
Think about it.
I try not to tackle them because I get so angry at what she is saying in her columns. Especially when she contradicts herself. I agree a lot of name players make it to the Pro Bowl, which should be expected since it is a popularity contest. My problem is that you can't base it all on numbers and then put Kerry Collins or even to a lesser extend Antoine Winfield in the game.
This column was a perfect example where words did not justify how much I disagreed with what she was saying. At least she did not start out with a wrong premise, claim everyone thinks this, and then prove her incorrect premise wrong. She was just wrong.
Anyone who deems the Pro Bowl newsworthy should not have a job writing. For any entity. If the Pro Bowl mattered at all, why do players, especially Pro Bowl vets, excuse themselves from the game? It's a joke. Something for the degenerate to do on a cold Sunday afternoon as he waits for March Madness to descend. No one puts any stock in it and it's almost universally ignored. Except, by JH.
I think most of the All Star games and how they are voted upon are jokes. If any sport needs to take the voting out of the fans hands is baseball, simply because they base who league hosts the World Series based on the winner. Of course, I think the fan vote counts for everything in baseball, so I would say the problem with the most popular players being selected would crop up there.
I don't think Pro Bowl selections really prove anything at all on how good a player is or how good that player's team is. It is an exhibition game, so I don't see why this is all a big deal.
Jemele also should be informed that players and coaches suck at voting for things. Not just the NFL, but baseball, where they routinely award Gold gloves to mediocre and piss poor fielders. Derek Jeter, Gold Glove winner...really? Rafael Palmero winning the year he played less then 25 games at firstbase?
The NFL should just get rid of the Pro Bowl and make it some kind of skills competition weekend.
I would actually like to see a skills competition of some type, that would be interesting to see. It is not like players and coaches don't have the very same biases and preferences the fans do.
I wish I had thought of the Gold Glove issue because that is a perfect example of something the players and coaches vote for where they make bad decisions every year. Jemele is horrible.
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