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Pro Bowl is football
at its best -- it’s fun

THERE are cynics among us who might say there is nothing in the world less thrilling than the sight of 11 guys pretending to get down into a stance, on extra points, then immediately, halfheartedly, standing straight up as soon as the ball is snapped.

No, the Pro Bowl isn't a real NFL football game; it stopped even pretending that long ago. But for a day, for just one day, an afternoon in February, for 60 minutes a season, it's something every sporting event should aspire to be.

It's fun.

We can have one of these. One. One day where winning isn't life and death for these guys. One day without pressure. One day of easy, happy and free.

One day where they can just go out and play. Just play.

One day without John Facenda frozen tundra overtones.

Did you see the look on Hines Ward's face after the Steelers receiver scored his first touchdown?

Joy. Pure joy.

For one afternoon a year we can look at these guys and not see them as gladiators.

But as football players.

As kids.

For one week a year they can hang out and make new friends and then go out and play a game.

Just a game, pick guys and go, just for the joy of playing, just to see who's better. The kind we all used to play.

There should be a day like this, just one. A day in which Bills linebacker Takeo Spikes can intercept a pass and then -- in the face of all that's holy, against the grain of all that is Lombardi -- look to pitch it in the open field. So that then, just as improbably, Steelers defender Joey Porter is running and faking and juking and the crowd is loving it all.

There should be a day in which Ward can score on an onside kick gone wrong -- approaching pay dirt on a 360 loop-de-loop, crossing the goal line with a somersault. A kid's move in the world's greatest pickup game.

"I just tried to jump and somebody hit me," he said.

It's only right that just once world champ Larry Izzo -- a man known as much for his resemblance to Barney Rubble as for anything he's done in the NFL -- should be running with the ball on a trick play.

"We worked on that about 2 minutes," the Patriots special teams ace said. "Maybe a minute."

And there he was -- surprise! -- bouncing off a tackler.

If Izzo in the open field is wrong, I don't want to be right.

"It's a lot of fun to carry the ball in the Pro Bowl," he would say. "It's something I never thought I'd do."

There should be a day of Stanford band pitches. Just a day. There should be a time for balls bouncing, for flea flickers. For goodness sake, one day where flags on delay-of-game calls are an option, not the rule.

Football is good at taking itself too seriously. Coaches. Players, too.

But it's good to see this other side of the game, just for a moment, just to remember it's there.

Just to remember how we all fell in love.

Those other six months of football are pretty good, too. But for one day each February, this works.

Hitting without rancor.

Football without anger.

Just once. Just for fun.

Just for a day.