Arian Foster, running the ball during last year's Pro Bowl, says he sees both sides of the argument for making the annual game more competitive. (Reuters)
The National Football League’s much-villified version of an all-star game goes Sunday in Hawaii.
Unlike much of the season, when Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league are telling players to tone it down, when kickoff comes Sunday they want to hear helmets popping and bodies getting crunched.
Goodell has threatened to cancel the game in future if players don’t start playing harder, tougher. In other words, he wants them to stop treating it like just a Hawaiian vacation.
It isn’t going to be easy. Because that is exactly how many of them look at it.
Many of them bring families and friends along. Redskins linebacker Ryan Kerrigan bought tickets for a dozen relations and friends. That’s typical.
Goodell wants a good show for the TV networks, which is understandable.
But it is unreasonable to expect players to treat this as a regular game because it simply is not that.
