Short pitch: Fixing the Pro Bowl

With the popularity of the Pro Bowl waning dramatically, it's time for the NFL to either put the game out to pasture or to expand the weekend's festivities to include more than American Football's least important annual encounter.

The NFL could take a lesson from their younger antipodean brother, the Australian AFL.

The AFL Grand Final pre-game and half-time entertainment probably peaked in 1979 with KISS's half-time spectacular.  Since then, acts have been as varied as Angry Anderson and the Batmobile to last year's abominable Meatloaf performance.  But the one thing that entertains most between the Grand Final's halves is the sprint, where one player from each club races to earn the title of league's fastest.
Even though it's handicap nature means that usually resting ruckmen or even Brendan Fevola win the title; "Crackers" Keenan tells a wonderful story about drinking all morning and then having to run the event fueled only by beer.  The race captivates 10 million barbecue-bound Australians in culture where any self-promotion is automatically dismissed as self-aggrandisation.  Just imagine what it could do in the largest market in America.

NFL athletes are those best suited to run entertaining sprints: they've got the speed, they want the attention and finally - and to put it mildly - they're not afraid of self-promotion.  Since Usain Bolt destroyed his rivals in the London Olympics, no end of challenges have been issued to the Jamaican blur by likely types.  Chris Johnson, of the Tennessee Titans, says Bolt's slow starts could cost him in a head-to-head matchup, while Heisman Trophy candidate Denard Robinson thinks he could beat the Olympic champion.  Terrell Owens recently earned a contract with the Seattle Seahawks based largely upon his sub-4.5 second 40 yard sprint.

Rhys Stanley wins the 2011 Grand Final sprint

If the event is lucrative enough, enough stars - possibly Bolt himself - could probably be enticed to run.  It's possible that just the title itself would be enough.  As well as fascinating a nation, the sprints could be interactive, with fans voting on participants in concert with players and coaches.  Distance?  Who cares about distance?  Have individual events like a 40 yard sprint and a 100 meter dash.

Of course, installing a sprint doesn't increase waning interest in the Pro Bowl itself, but it would certainly attract a major television audience and generate the pub debate that the Pro Bowl just doesn't.  The Slam Dunk and 3-point contests revitalised the NBA's All-star game but have suffered with time; the simple and elegant beauty of a sprint is that it never loses it's appeal.  The event is wholesome, injuries are rare: a win-win for a league where anything controversial just runs and runs.

The Pro Bowl seems destined for ignominy unless major changes occur: it's time for the NFL to think outside the box.

photocredit: hardballget.wordpress.com

Finally the AFL season can start

This offseason has probably been the most dramatic in recent AFL history. And, not a moment too soon, the break ends tonight as Carlton take on Richmond at the MCG. Thank goodness - because as car-crashingly enthralling as reading about the "St Kilda Schoolgirl" and her ... err ... exploits has been, it will be blessed and welcome relief to jam match coverage in amongst the tabloid-style back pages to which we've become so accustomed.

The offseason of 2010-11 for the AFL really started over twelve months ago when it became apparent that "Little Gary" would not sign a contract extension with Geelong, meaning he would effectively become a restricted free agent at the end of season 2010. Since then, AFL off-field shenanigans have included (in no particular order) Mark Thompson's lie-induced burnout; Ablett's inevitable re-enactment of the LeBron James masterpiece "Leaving Cleveland"; Brendan Fevola's self-destruction; Nick Riewoldt's wang; Zac Dawson's disco biscuits; the creation of a new franchise; a Collingwood premiership and subsequent uprising of the Magpie army; the gutting of the National Rugby League as Israel Folau and Greg Inglis changed (or threatened to change) codes; James Hird's Second Coming as Essendon coach; further rumours about stars leaving their clubs for what amounts to GWS slush-funds; Ricky Nixon's precipitous fall from grace and finally, thankfully, nothing at all about Port Adelaide or Fremantle.

Andrew Demetriou must surely be relieved that Melbourne, a town notorious for it's blanket coverage of AFL-related issues, will finally have actual deliverable content to space out the negative headlines. Aside from the form of Ricky Ponting - and how many words can you print daily on that? - the scarcity of sport worth speaking about has left Melbourne newspapers with little else on which to speculate throughout the Summer. Had the ignoble misadventures of Ricky Nixon, Sam Gilbert, Fevola and the horribly overpromoted Melbourne schoolgirl occurred in the Summer of 2007 amidst a 5 - 0 Ashes victory, the Melbourne Victory's phenomenal second season and the retirements of Warne, Langer, Martyn and McGrath, the AFL's offseason of new frontiers may well have garnered only a fraction of the attention it did this year.

The spotlight thrown on this off-field malarkey was only intensified by Australia's performance in The Ashes and waning public interest in cricket. As most sport becomes fully and painfully professional, they lose much of the larrikinism and fun which attracted the mug punter to them in the first place. Faced with the choice between a team full of bullies, pouters and bores or following the World Game (with very little television coverage), Joe Public decided it was best simply to re-invest in the coming Aussie Rules season. The league revelled in the exposure, initially falling victim to the old adage that any publicity is good publicity. This theory was recently discounted somewhat in The Economist; the AFL was only to learn how wrong that statement can be in February as first Brendan Fevola, then Ricky Nixon committed professional seppuku.

The AFL plays the politics of sports much better than any other code in Australia. No other competition in the nation felt obliged to have its say on the bidding process save the AFL, yet Demetriou managed to sound both condescending and patronising to football's governing body all at once. The failed FFA bid for the 2022 football World Cup meant only more airtime and column inches. The League invited - and loved - the attention, yet as the summer wore on it became obvious that those at League headquarters couldn't wait for the season to begin. The stream of life malapropisms committed by AFL brethren had made life in the public eye nigh-on unbearable. What were once a player's endearing foibles now appear glaring character weaknesses. Football's never been played by saints - but now media coverage and the blogosphere mean for better coverage. What was once left uncovered rarely remains so now.

Finally, the season is upon us. Now perhaps we can get around to covering what really matters: the game itself.

Fevola's issues will haunt his future

Even though he's been cleared of wrongdoing in his most recent infraction, Brendan Fevola had tried to walk too fine a line for too long without falling off. And unsurprisingly, for someone so regularly affected by intoxicants, he didn't fall but reel from the straight and narrow to find himself now without a club for 2011 and perhaps approaching the AFL scrapheap for good.

As we said in January, he's far too talented to be thrown for good to the wolves of fortune, but at present he's so fractured that there remains too few recognisable pieces to allow his management to being the process of rebuilding. So often one cannot make lasting change until they hit rock bottom. For a man with as apparently little to his life as Fevola, he probably can't get any lower. There's little coincidence that his longest trouble-free period was during the time he abstained from alcohol during his then-wife's pregnancy and a similar decision would seem to be the first step in rehabilitating both his career and his life. Former NBA star and Original Dream Team member Chris Mullin forswore drinking after his second year in the leage after running into problems once too often and turned an potential also-ran career into a one possibly destined for the Hall of Fame. The troubled forward should take heed.

Where next, though? The VFL would melt down should one of the second-tier clubs manage to land Fev; the chances of his succeeding in the WAFL or SANFL is unlikely - a bagful of goals perhaps not worth the headache. The NFL, perhaps? Australia's greatest-ever NFL player, Darren Bennett recently said that the North American league would have no interest in such a wild chile as Fevola - it only bears imagining what Fevola would do in a party city like New York or San Francisco if his celebratory style was too much for Brisbane to handle. As is always the case with him, it's not his talent questioned but his application. Unable to cope with the solitary lifestyle in Queensland, fears exist that he would self-destruct, supernova-style, if allowed free reign and a salary in excess of seven figures. With a lockout looming in the NFL as well, any chances of him securing a career as a punter are unlikely.

A few years ago there was the much-publicised case of Carlton's Lawrence Angwin and Karl Norman turning up to training still affected by disco biscuits from the night before. Popular opinion had one, the other or both suffering from either ADD or ADHD. All the signs point to Fevola suffering the same condition - be it very difficult to diagnose from such a great distance and without personal interaction. His lifestyle will no doubt change - it will have to - as match payments turn from five-figure to low four-figure sums at best. With his alleged gambling debts, Fev his not backed himself into a corner but walked either willingly or been unable to control his direction of travel.

We can only hope for Brendan Fevola's sake that his AFL career is not over - there's every chance that Kevin Sheedy will be his saviour at Greater Western Sydney - but his tale is ending as Carlton expected. His days of clowning now won't be met with resignation but with sadness.

How do you solve a problem like Fevola?

Language warning - this post contains potty-mouth quotes from a TV series.

At the moment, my wife and I are watching "The Wire" on DVD and last night we viewed the episode where the ostensible hero Jimmy McNulty is rescued from the Baltimore Police Department Marine Unit at the request of his colleagues Lester Freamon & Bunk Moreland. Moreland summed it up thus: "Thing is ... that is Jimmy McNulty when he ain't policing: a picture postcard of a drunken, self-destructive fuck-up. And when he is policing, he's pretty much the same motherfucker, but on a good case, right out in front of the pack. And that's as close as the man comes to being right".

And they could just be talking about Brendan Fevola. To say Fevola has issues is like saying Cookie Monster has problems with baked goods. Always an enfant terrible, over the past few years his misdemeanours have gone from bad to worse: from the alcohol-fuelled Brownlow Medal Street Talk where he flapped the unflappable Chris Judd; to his dalliances with Bingle. And it led to this - arrested by Queensland police for being drunk and disorderly in the Valley.

There's a good chance, after all he's been through, that Brendan Fevola is approaching the bottom of the emotional trough. Because his house has crumbled around his ears, he's got nearly nothing left in the tank to stop him doing stupid stuff because alcohol and being a lout is all he has left. It's a horrible statement to make about a guy who only two years ago earned his near-million dollar-per contract but his last year and half hasn't been the stuff of nightmares but of despair. While football afficionados salivated over the prospect of Fevola and Jonathon BROWN! (sorry, force of habit) reproducing the magic of forward tandems past, Fevola was neither healthy or motivated.

Brisbane have investigated voiding his contract in the past and there should be no surprsies that they've done so. Firstly because they're haemmorhaging money - Fev's contract can be directly linked to them losing Michael Rischitelli to the Gold Coast Suns this offseason - and secondly, because they'd really like him to just go away and avoid the controversy and the crowded forward line where neither key guy has space to operate. As much as footy prizes conformity and the intangibles of team play, Fevola now stands out as an individual talent in a game where they aren't valued as highly as in days past.

Fev's pink slip has been signed and sitting in the CEO's drawer for some time now, especially after he was accused of exposing himself to a young Brisbane mother. What's most unfortunate though is that the human cost of firing Fevola is too great to risk. As we've said, Brendan Fevola has issues and as such becomes an even greater risk to himself should he be cut loose.

If Fevola is sacked - and Brisbane has plenty of good reasons to want this to happen, even if it is unlikely - then the train wreck that is Fevola's private life suddenly becomes the only thing in his existence and he becomes less likely and less able to get high-level help which, from the outside, he desperately needs. While he has value on the football field - either trade value, on-field currency or as a forward who draws the opposition's better defenders - then he's going to receive the best treatment and help from the Lions organisation. While he can help the Lions, the Lions will help him. Should he be released, there's the likelihood that he will self-destruct and end up following the path of Ronnie Wearmouth - silly talent, sillier head, tragic story. Without the value that he holds to the Lions and in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars (allegedly), then it's feasible that Brendan Fevola feels the best way to pull himself together is to do what he knows: drink, and be a lout. The vicious circle becomes apparent and suddenly the issue isn't Fevola's life in footy, but his life.

There may well be hope for the boy from Narre Warren though in the unlikely form of another eastern suburbs boy, Travis Tuck. Tuck in early 2009 looked a potential Hawthorn captain and a walk-up start for the Hawks. Long touted as the most talented of the Tucks, he suffered a private struggle with depression, followed by issues with drugs and, unfortunately, a public overdose. Hawks' chairman Jeff Kennett - also heavily involved in the National Depression Iniative Beyond Blue - insisted that the club retain Tuck's services because it would be best for his mental health; not only was it a laudable decision but it was the right one. Whether or not Brisbane feels it owes the same courtesy to Fevola is unclear.

But there's very little disputing that when Brendan Fevola isn't playing footy, to quote directly, he is a picture postcard of a drunken, self-destructive fuck-up. And when he is playing football, he's pretty much the same motherfucker, but an outstanding forward, right out in front of the pack. And -unfortunately at the moment, it seems that's as close as the man comes to being right.

Poster's recommendation: Go out and watch The Wire. It's fantastic.