“Have you heard of the Beach Boys?” he asked, hoping to lure us in like a fisherman stalking an Ono offshore of Waikiki Beach, which happened to be the majestic setting in our field of vision. Duh, the looks on our faces said, but our uninvited table guest wasn’t waiting for the answer. His long, disjointed tale ended with him revealing that he was, in fact, the hidden “sixth — or actually seventh” member of the storied band.
And then, with a flourish, he burped so loudly that it almost spoiled a perfect sunset.
It had been a whirlwind: Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after leading the Denver Broncos to an upset of the Green Bay Packers in San Diego; going up the coast to Disneyland as part of the obligatory promotional campaign; returning to Denver for a parade; hopping on a flight to paradise. Upon landing in Honolulu, Elway and his head coach, Mike Shanahan, had come straight here, to the Barefoot Bar at Duke’s Waikiki, where the celebration would continue long past golden hour.
“I Get Around” might as well have blared from the beachfront speakers. Come to think of it, that probably happened, too.
When I think about the heyday of the Pro Bowl, which was officially eliminated Wednesday after a long, dubious decline, I marvel at the multitude of casual, unguarded moments that football’s biggest names routinely experienced upon leaving the continent. Getting swept up in poolside chess drama between the late, great San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau and future Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh is one of many examples near and dear to my heart.
Though Elway didn’t play for the AFC in that 1998 Pro Bowl — he withdrew with an ankle “injury” and was replaced by another future first-ballot Hall of Famer, Warren Moon — there was a reason he bothered to show up. In Hawaii, even on Oahu’s most storied and crowded beach, a superstar could blend in while being chatted up by the Seventh Beach Boy. And for one week each year, even a culture as regimented and hyper-serious as the NFL’s could channel some fun in the sun.
For the league’s standout performers and their families, the week in Hawaii that immediately followed the Super Bowl was a reward for a job well done. And as word spread of Pro Bowl week’s breezy vibe, plenty of non-stars started paying their own way to join the party, too.
The late Russ Francis, a native Hawaiian who became an All-Pro tight end and Super Bowl champion during a standout career with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers in the 1970s and ’80s, put it this way when I interviewed him for a “Sports Illustrated” feature in 1996: “The Pro Bowl is a celebration of football. It’s the one time when players can let down their guard, enjoy their status and revel in the joys of their profession. It’s camaraderie and adventure — the way football used to be.”
Even when those adventures bordered on the farcical, nobody seemed to mind all that much. [...]
On the field, the action was typically far from idyllic, but the games got reasonably good ratings and served as a gentle bedtime tuck-in for the sport after a long, draining season. The league started messing with the Pro Bowl, however — beginning in 2010, when the powers that be moved it over to the mainland (Miami) and shifted it into the Sunday slot between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl — and the vibe quickly degenerated.
Though the game returned to Hawaii in 2011 and stayed there through 2016 (aside from a 2015 interlude in Arizona), the Pro Bowl quickly lost its luster and any sense of legitimacy. It essentially jumped the shark in 2012, when the action looked so bogus that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell publicly threatened to cancel the event if players didn’t start trying.
Two years later the league scrapped the AFC vs. NFC format in favor of a silly draft between Hall of Fame honorary captains (beginning with Rice and Sanders), creating a sense of confusion among consumers. In 2019, former Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, as part of ESPN’s broadcast crew, unwittingly broke the trophy in half while congratulating AFC stars Patrick Mahomes and Jamal Adams, providing a fitting metaphor for the state of the event.
By 2023 the NFL gave up any pretense of staging an actual game, replacing the Pro Bowl with a skills competition that culminated with a flag football. On Wednesday, the league officially pulled the plug, and few (if any) tears were shed.
I’m not shedding any, either. Change is part of life. The Pro Bowl had its blessed run in the island sun but was not destined to last forever.
by Michael Silver, The Athletic | Read more:
Image: Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images
[ed. Glad this debacle has finally been killed off. Still, there were moments. Teams would sometimes practice at my old high school football field (McKinley HS) in Honolulu. Got to see big Jim Plunkett throwing bullets, and Lynn Swann running routes and making catches. After one game I almost got OJ Simpson's chin strap but at the last moment he gave it to the kid next to me, saying he'd promised it to him. Chris Collinsworth was there one year and had a good game. But it was always just a play show, an embarassment with coaches wearing outrageous Aloha shirts, bedecked in leis, and more often than not just joking around between plays, barely paying attention. So yeah, don't think anyone will miss it. See also: The NFL finally put the Pro Bowl out of its misery. It was time (Athletic):]
***
The National Football League finally cried uncle on the Pro Bowl, and, of all things, the petrified remains of LIV Golf quickly came to mind.Just more evidence that no matter how much money and power are behind it, you cannot sell a meaningless, watered-down product to consumers even as insatiable as sports fans. The mighty NFL proved over the years it can sell just about anything to just about anyone, except the Pro Bowl, which should have been eulogized a long time ago. [...]
It’s stunning the Pro Bowl actually survived for more than 70 years in a sport defined by violence, the long-term toll taken on players’ bodies and brains, and this unassailable fact:
You can play worthwhile football at only one speed — full. [...]
And in the dead of winter, it used to be pretty cool to absorb those televised scenes from Hawaii and to see Bill Belichick huddling with his strange AFC bedfellow, Peyton Manning.
But whatever redeeming qualities remained were sacrificed when the Pro Bowl became the Pro Bowl Games, and when the main event became a flag football contest that ultimately included a sixth alternate at quarterback.
