Send all-star games to hell

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Scott has changed teams so many times that we couldn’t even find his current jersey./ Resolute

Scott has changed teams so many times that we couldn’t even find his current jersey./ Resolute

Why the events aren’t worth the mid-season pageantry

All-Star games of all shapes, sizes, and complexions are, without exception, huge wastes of time. There, I said it, come at me. Let’s take, for example, the debacle that the NHL recently presided over.

John Scott, whether the head honchos of the league like it or not, deserved to be at the festivities. That much people understand. However, a three-on-three tournament screams shinny tournament with some buddies more than it highlights the greatness of the league.

Don’t even get me started on fan voting. Did it work out semi-magically for the NHL, even as they made buffoons of themselves? Yes. Is Kobe “If I jump too high my knees might break apart” Bryant starting an All-Star game this year? Sadly, such a travesty is also true.

The NFL’s Pro Bowl – also known as “The Game the NFL Shoddily Pastes Together Every Year with the Above Average Players who Bothered to Show Up… Bowl” – can now be seen, whether it be by actual statistics or the eyeball test which we armchair sporting administrators are prone to, as an utter failure. To be fair, I can understand wanting to sustain the momentum of the football season in the off week between the championships and the Super Bowl, but come on, the best players duck out, and the rest of them lollygag just hoping not to get injured. Don’t you just love non-guaranteed contracts? Welcome to the No Fun League, everybody.

Major League Baseball does not escape my wrath. Whichever league wins the game gets home-field advantage in the World Series. I cannot fathom how Bud Selig thought this was a good idea. Let’s reward the team who wins a pointless game with a tangible advantage during the most important games of the season.

The only redeeming qualities of the various All-Star festivities lie in the multiple skills competitions. I’d rather have to watch seven dunk contests consecutively than one boring NBA All-Star Game. Bring on the hardest shot contest except, instead of the usual targets, put copies of Gary Bettman’s face, it would make watching grown men shooting hardened rubber at a rate of 100 miles per hour so much more inviting.

Cheers to the NBA celebrity game. I hope the coaches – Drake and comedian Kevin Hart – brawl at centre court. With Michael B. Jordan dishing sweet dimes to Nick Cannon as WNBA players on both teams cry over the horrific standard of play.

Point being, we should stop treating the All-Star games as if they are representative of the best of the sport. The All-NBA listings at the conclusion of every basketball season, for example, are far more useful when considering who the best players that year were.

And yet, the CFL, the only professional league that shirks All-Star festivities, seems to be missing an element. Can’t we just have the best players play? No, apparently that is far too much to ask.

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