The Upcoming Pro Bowl - Best Ever ?

While this is a no-brainer for any American football fan for those out there that aren't it will probably be interesting to learn what the Pro Bowl is. First some Football History 101, before the 1970s there were two rivaling football leagues in the United States, the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL). In 1970 they merged and the AFL as an independent league ceased to exist but there was one event between the two rivaling leagues that survived the merger (among others) this is the Pro Bowl.

That doesn't necessarily explain much so I'll go into a bit more detail. In the Pro Bowl or the AFC-NFC Pro Bowl how it's officially been called since the merger the best of both leagues meet, meaning the best players from the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference player against each other.

Unlike in other sports where the all-start games are played around half of the season the Pro Bowl takes place after the end of the NFL season. The Pro Bowl, NFL's all-star game doesn't have a very good image in the United States. It is the only all-star game that has lower ratings than the games in the regular season this is probably because the players need to be careful as possible so they don't get injured, they are the star players after all.

The first Pro Bowl with all the all-stars was played in 1939 and then again in 1940, 1941 and 1942 when it was suspended because of World War II. It was left that way until 1951 when the Pro Bowl was revived. The Pro Bowl played in 2010 was the first Pro Bowl that was played before a championship game and so the Pro Bowl contestants didn't include players from the teams that were part of the Super Bowl. So as the NFL Pro Bowl 2012 is coming up the only thing that's left to do is to hope that this one will put all the previous ones to shame.