All-star games are a waste; it’s time to ban them
This is the fifth installment in our Things We’d Change in Sports series.
The changes have come in waves over the past decade or so — one after another, sport after sport.
The NFL has moved the Pro Bowl from Hawaii to Orlando, Florida, and from after the Super Bowl to before the Super Bowl. MLB gave its all-star game a purpose, then changed its mind. The NBA now lets its superstars pick their all-star rosters, playground-style. And the NHL has completely blown up its all-star “game,” transforming it into more of an all-star tournament with three-on-three action.
All told, professional sports leagues have wasted hours of brainpower trying to fix an event that doesn’t need fixing. It simply doesn’t need to exist at all. The all-star game has become a relic of American sports in recent years, a sort of half-speed exhibition that has become an afterthought even on its own weekend. Television ratings for all-star games are down across sports, and the apathy among players is pervasive. So why bother?
Why not craft and publicize all-star rosters and still host an all-star weekend, but with expanded skills competitions as the main attraction?
It’s hardly a foreign idea. There have been All-American rosters in college sports for nearly a century without subsequent All-American games.
The players still deserve recognition. And the leagues still deserve a few days to celebrate their sports. But all of that can be done without playing a traditional game.
“I would (still) name All-Stars, I would have All-Star weekend ... have all these things, introduce them,” ESPN commentator Jeff Van Gundy, a former NBA coach, told the Associated Press last month when asked about the NBA’s most recent All-Star game in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“The players are great. They should be applauded . ... But to take this game and shoot 160 threes, it’s an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment.”
It’s hard to blame the players for something like the 2019 NBA All-Star Game, which featured 342 points on 275 shot attempts.
They’re put in an impossible situation, tasked with playing hard enough that the game isn’t a complete farce but not so hard that injuries could occur. It makes sense why some players just choose to skip the event altogether.
“It’s just not worth it, in my opinion,” said Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert, who vowed to skip future Pro Bowls after tearing a ligament during his only allstar game appearance in 2016.
“It was a lot of fun. It was a good reward for the guys that made it. Then it comes to Sunday and you are on the bus, like, ‘We have to go play a game? Holy.’ ”
That 2016 Pro Bowl, by the way, drew 8 million viewers, fewer than all but five regular-season television windows that season, according to Sports Media Watch. Pro Bowl viewership has hovered between 7.45 million and 8.55 million in the three years since.
Revamped skills competitions might not draw better viewership right away, but the potential is there. MLB’s home run derby drew 5.5 million viewers last summer.
The NHL’s skills competition drew more headlines than its all-star game. And the slam-dunk contest, with an infusion of stars (LeBron vs. Giannis, anyone?), could easily become the most popular of them all.
It will take some time, and creativity, to be sure. But it’s time for sports leagues to stop attempting to fix something that has long been beyond repair and start putting the spotlight on something else.