Pointless NFL Pro Bowl Games show there is no way to fix All-Star games

All-Star games in professional sports used to be must-see events. The Major League Baseball All-Star Game was played like it was the World Series as both leagues played for the pride of their league. The NFL's Pro Bowl used to be a real football game involving all of the best players in the league.

Players wanted to be in them. 

They wanted to play in them.

They wanted to do well.

It was typically a measuring stick kind of game with the best-of-the-best squaring off.

Those days are finished, and every sport is now trying to come up with a new gimmick to try to save their game.

The NHL and NBA have done three-on-three tournaments. They have tried North America vs. the World formats. Major League Baseball went through a stretch where it tried to tie home-field advantage in the World Series to its game. 

None of them have worked.

The NFL has gone completely off the deep end with its Pro Bowl games, featuring a flag football game that took place on Tuesday night. According to the scoreboard, the NFC won 66-52. But what does that mean? Or matter? And why even do this anymore?

Pro Bowl Games show sports leagues are out of ways to fix All-Star Games

It is not just the fact that it was a fake football game played in front of nobody, in what looked to be a warehouse, that makes all of this pointless.

It's the simple fact that almost nobody wanted to be there. 

So many players dropped out or were unavailable that Joe Flacco and Shedeur Sanders — two quarterbacks who opened the season on the roster of a five-win Cleveland Browns team — were in the game.

It wasn't only a fake football game; it was a farce in terms of what the game is supposed to be about. 

And it shows again that there is really nothing sports leagues can do to salvage the All-Star games.

Along with changing formats regularly, the NHL put in a rule that any player who missed their All-Star Game had to sit out one regular-season game, either before or after the All-Star Game. 

It really didn't prevent people from bowing out.

The NHL has now reached a point where it is all but phasing out the All-Star Game entirely, and instead replacing it with a series of midseason international tournaments as well as its participation in the Winter Olympics. 

There is going to come a time where they just get rid of it all together. 

The NFL has sort of done that here, but the fact that it is still playing even this game changes the definition of what it means to be a Pro Bowl player. It no longer means anything as an honor given that almost anybody can be invited to the game. 

Given how little interest these games generate for both players and fans, the most practical solution is just to name the best players as All-Stars and Pro Bowlers, and leave it at that. An honor. No need for a game that nobody wants to play or watch.