How Disappointing!

I was a little apprehensive about waking up this past Sunday. You see, for the past few months my plan for every single Sunday has been to cook a good breakfast, settle in to do a day of school work, and watch three football games while I am at it. However, I knew this Sunday would be different because the Superbowl was last week. With the arena league shut down for a year due to bad economic times, the CFL pre-season months away, and the NFL pre-season even further off, my football fix has been limited to Madden 2009 for WII. All in all, the video game is pretty cool and it does help cure the football blues, but it ain't the real thing. Sulking and procrastinating from doing my home work made me turn on an early morning Sunday hockey game. It was while I was watching hockey that I saw an add for the Pro Bowl, or the NFL equivalent of an all star game. My Sunday was saved! (or so I though?) I had forgotten about the Pro Bowl mainly because I never really watch the thing anyway as most years the big name players that I would like to see forgo the game on the grounds that they are tired, and don't want to risk getting injured for the sake of winning a few thousand dollars ($22,00 per person for the losing side, and almost double that for the winners to be exact!) Thus, with both Mannings, Larry Fitzgerald, Ray Lewis, and Kurt Warner slated to play, I figured maybe this years game would be all right. Man was I ever disappointed. After watching an incredible season of hard nosed football, watching this thing was like having seen and been a big fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, and then forcing yourself to try and get involved in episode 1. Sure, it looks, sounds, and seems like the real version, but suffice to say something is definitely lacking. What lacks in the pro bowl is competition; competition and defence! Sure, these dudes are playing for a nice chunk of change if you are a working class Canadian like myself. But to an NFL superstar $40,00 is what you spend on underwear and eye black in a year. The game had no pop whatsoever. Like the lineup of the Toronto Blue Jays, there were no hits, and like an episode of Grey's Anatomy, no real drama! The disappointments were many, the extraordinary plays that I was hoping for were few.