24 Hours 'Til Sunday — Andy Richardson

I thought I'd do a column with 10 reasons to watch tomorrow's Pro Bowl. Unfortunately, I could only come up with 5 reasons, and even they're a stretch. But what the hey, it's football, and there's nothing else good on, so....

1. Root for players to stay healthy. Re-draft owners don't have to care, but in my dynasty league I've got Chris Johnson, Ray Rice, and Maurice Jones-Drew on the same team, and all three of them are playing for the AFC. So basically rather than root for your guys to pile up stats, as you do in every other week, I'm rooting for every one of them to simply get on and off the field without blowing out their knee. The same is true for anyone holding the likes of Adrian Peterson and whichever other star actually deigned to show up for this lame exhibition game that no one cares about. There's no blitzing, but Aaron Rodgers holds the ball long enough that he might reasonably get clobbered anyway. Perhaps one of the NFC linemen will "accidentally" miss a block that gets one of the conference's top rival quarterbacks injured. Although that would be wrong, of course.

2. Watch sideline interviews with pending free agents. Guaranteed the most interesting part of the proceedings will be the quotes from players facing free agency or possibly on the trade block. Does it sound like they want to return, or they're already gone? Should trade rumors regarding such and such player be believed? Donovan McNabb is one of many such players on hand who will be sure to be asked the question (as he was this past week), but there are others.

3. Marvel at the useless discussion/gripe fest about blown calls in last week's championship games. "So, the league came out this week and admitted the Saints should have been penalized for a hit on Brett Favre that resulted in his first interception." "That's right, and fines were handed out to the players who committed the hits, $10,000 apiece." "Great of the league to recognize those mistakes, even though it really doesn't matter at this point. I'm sure those fines will have teams rethinking such defensive approaches next season...." And Vikings fans -- or NFL fans who simply would have liked the NFC's best team in the Super Bowl rather than a Saints team that faltered down the stretch and is going to get rolled in the Super Bowl by the Colts -- can either a) take solace from the league admitting it blew calls, or b) and far more likely, feel infinitely worse that things might have gone differently had those penalties been called, you know, during the game, when it actually mattered. There will also of course be a lengthy debate over whether overtime rules should be changed so both teams get possession in overtime. Great fun for all.

4. Root for Ochocinco to get a shot at a field goal attempt. What the heck; he probably wouldn't be much worse than a lot of the kickers we saw this postseason.

5. Try and enjoy the football. No defense will be played, and special teams coverage will be horrible, so there will probably be a lot of big offensive moments. Theoretically you could even get a few people together and draft fantasy teams from the AFC and NFC rosters. I'll go with Aaron Rodgers as a top pick, I guess, and Adrian Peterson would be up there, too. Miles Austin is another good choice. Starters will be pulled early for both teams, so maybe your best bet is to go with some backup types who might play a lot. DeSean Jackson is a candidate to score on both a reception and a return. And...

But who am I kidding. In the words of Bill Polian, who admittedly was referring to the league's desire that representatives from the Super Bowl teams attend the festivities even though they're not playing, "It's stupid." Eventually some big name will get badly hurt in this thing and they'll scrap it altogether.

Just hope it's not an AFC running back.

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