Just as some things are better left unsaid, some games are better left unplayed.
Two such games will, unfortunately, be played this Sunday, vying for your television attention while trying to cloak their utter lack of competition or relevance in gimmickry.
There are no words to describe just how meaningless and fraudulent the NHL All-Star Game and the NFL Pro Bowl have become. They are gross perversions of their respective sports and gross wastes of time.
Both leagues would do well to select the players for status and contract purposes and spare us their confusing formats, worthless drafts, and half-hearted games.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell threatened to kill the Pro Bowl in 2012, after the absence of effort was so striking fans booed. Goodell should have pursued the game’s abolition with the reckless abandon of Deflategate.
The NHL All-Star Game keeps making cosmetic changes and maintaining the same irrelevance. Last year’s 17-12 abomination-on-ice set a record for combined goals and All-Star apathy.
In general, professional sports All-Star games feel like quaint relics of another era, like phone booths or car cigarette lighters.
With ESPN, the Internet, and the player panoply provided by league-pass packages, the mystique of All-Star games is greatly diminished.
Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game is the doyen of All-Star contests. But MLB’s decision to use the game to decide home-field advantage in the World Series has trapped it halfway between entertaining exhibition and serious competitive endeavor.
The NBA All-Star Game has no pretense of being a serious competition. It proudly has a playground vibe, prioritizing entertainment value, until pride takes over in the last five minutes. The truest competition belongs to Major League Soccer. Its All-Stars face off against an international club team with the honor of MLS at stake.
But the NFL’s Pro Bowl and the NHL All-Star Game are by far the two worst All-Star contests.
It’s fitting they fall on the same day this year. The NHL All-Star Game — it’s really games now, more on that later — starts at 5 p.m. on Sunday on NBC. The Pro Bowl kicks off at 7 p.m. on Sunday on ESPN.
The NFL’s slogan is “Together We Make Football.’’ The Pro Bowl’s slogan should be “Together We Make Other Plans.’’
ESPN, citing the Elias Sports Bureau, reported that a record 133 players are Pro Bowlers. Originally, 86 players were selected via voting by fans, players, and coaches.
Part of the addition is attrition due to injuries and the fact that players from the two Super Bowl teams, the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers, can’t participate.
Still, if the players, who fought Goodell to preserve the Pro Bowl, don’t want to play in the game, why should it exist?
Tom Brady was the leading fan vote-getter. He declined to play, as have the other six Patriots selected.
So many players have bailed on a free trip to Hawaii for faux football that the NFL has been forced to dip Mariana Trench deep into the alternate pool.
Of the six quarterbacks originally selected, only Russell Wilson is slated to participate. Wilson and the Giants’ Eli Manning are household names. The other Pro Bowl quarterbacks are Tyrod Taylor, Teddy Bridgewater, Derek Carr, and rookie Jameis Winston. Apparently, Willie Beamen from “Any Given Sunday’’ wasn’t available.
Cornerback became so thin that seventh alternate Adam “Pacman’’ Jones of the Cincinnati Bengals is a Pro Bowler.
Hopefully, he doesn’t push an opposing assistant coach and cost his team the Pro Bowl.
If he did, it would be hard to blame him. He might not know who the coaches on his side are. He might not even know who his teammates are.
Pro Football Hall of Famers Michael Irvin and Jerry Rice drafted the teams in a made-for-television event held Wednesday. So, even if you wanted to watch the Pro Bowl to see Odell Beckham Jr. you have to figure out which fabricated team he’s on first.
The NFL switched to the draft format in 2014.
It borrowed the draft device from the NHL, which instituted the Team Edward vs. Team Jacob teenage girl gimmick in 2011.
You know the NFL’s All-Star showcase is on death’s doorstep when it’s borrowing from the NHL.
After ratings dipped last season, the NHL has adopted a new, even more apostate pucks format for the 2016 All-Star Game in Nashville — the fourth different framework it has employed since 1998.
There will actually be three 20-minute “All-Star games’’ to crown an All-Star Game winner.
Instead of two teams of All-Stars feigning interest, this year the NHL is going to have four teams — one representing each of the league’s divisions — competing in three-on-three action, mirroring the league’s overtime format.
If all of this sounds ridiculous, convoluted, and a distortion of a great sport, it is.
Fans elected four division “captains’’ and the NHL’s Hockey Operations Department chose 40 additional players for the 11-man teams.
This immediately backfired when ruffian John Scott, then of the Arizona Coyotes, was voted in as the captain for the Pacific Division.
Bruins fans remember Scott as the hockey hooligan who concussed former Bruins enforcer Shawn Thornton in a fight and concussed Loui Eriksson with a cheap-shot elbow.
The embarrassment of having Scott selected was exacerbated when he was traded to the Montreal Canadiens and demoted to the American Hockey League.
The NHL has decided Scott will still take part.
The NHL should treat its All-Star Game like a penalty and kill it off, before it invites further ridicule.
Plus, the NHL already has plans for a real All-Star format. It’s called the World Cup of Hockey.
Maybe, the answer for the NHL and NFL is to mimic the College Football Playoff and play their games on New Year’s Eve, when no one is watching.
Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.
