Pro Bowl History :

Since the Pro Bowl has no effect upon players' or teams' statistics and records, and is played at the very end of the season, the players generally take the contest much less seriously than the average regular season games. Conventional wisdom holds that they tend to "play soft" to avoid serious injuries which could impede or end their football careers, although there have been some notable exceptions (see below). Players commonly make weak blocks and tackles. Defensive linemen will usually simply stand up when the ball is snapped during field goal attempts and punts instead of trying to block them. This injury minimalizing attitude generally manifests in a strongly offensively weighted game, along with the willingness of players and coaches to go for big offensive plays.

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With a large portion of the competitive nature of the game removed, players and the media tend to treat the game as more of a fun get-together than a hard-fought battle. The rotation of players into and out of the game also presents an opportunity for TV interviews of personalities who are only ever seen during the game from afar, or afterwards in press conferences.

However, contrary to popular opinion this "soft" Pro Bowl attitude is a recent change. The vast majority of early Pro Bowls beginning with the merger were relatively low scoring, 20 of 26 games from the 1970 season through 1995 featuring less than 45 points. During the decade of NFC dominance of the Super Bowl from the mid-'80s through mid-'90s, the Pro Bowl became a type of grudge match for the AFC and produced some of the most brutally physical games of the entire season, with scores like 10-6, 15-6 and 17-3. Once the AFC re-established conference parity the Pro Bowl became much looser and offensive-minded, with eight of the nine games between the 1996 and 2004 seasons producing at least 49 points, and an average of 64.1. To demonstrate how dramatic the change has been, in the late '80s through mid '90s the Pro Bowl over/under betting line was always in the 39-41 range, and generally bet toward the under by Las Vegas wise guys. The 2007 Pro Bowl had an over/under of 65.

Even now there are certain players who treat it just like a regular game and will go for big hits and go the length of the field to make a play. These tend to be younger players but even some veterans are known. Examples from the 2004 Pro Bowl are Roy Williams' hit on Todd Heap and Ed Reed blocking a punt and returning it for a touchdown, the only blocked punt returned in Pro Bowl history. Also in the 2007 Pro Bowl Sean Taylor laid a crushing blow on Brian Moorman during an attempted fake punt. Drew Brees dislocated his left (non-throwing) elbow in the 2007 game, after being tripped up by Terrell Suggs.

Because the teams are made of players from different NFL teams, using their own uniforms would be too confusing. The players all wear the helmet of their team, but the home jerseys and pants are either a solid blue for the NFC or solid red for the AFC, while white jerseys with blue or red accents, respectively, for the away team. While it has been speculated that the color of Pro Bowl jerseys is determined by the winner of the Super Bowl, this is untrue. The design of Pro Bowl uniforms is changed every two years, and the color and white jerseys are rotated along with the design change. This has been Pro Bowl tradition since the switch to team specific helmets in the early '90s. The two-year switch was originally created as a marketing ploy by Nike, and has been continued by Reebok, who won the merchandising contract in 2002. The early Pro Bowl, contested by the National Football League's Eastern and Western Division stars and played at the Los Angeles Coliseum, featured the same uniforms from the 1950s to mid-1960s; the Eastern team wore scarlet jerseys with white numerals and a white crescent shoulder stripe, white pants with red stripe, red socks, and a plain red helmet. The Western team wore white jerseys with royal-blue numerals and a "Northwestern University"-style triple stripe on the sleeves, white pants with blue stripe and socks and a plain blue helmet. Perhaps oddly, the Eastern team, wore "home" dark jerseys, although the host-city team, the Los Angeles Rams, were members of the Western Conference. From January 1967 to January 1970 both teams wore gold helmets with the NFL logo on the sides; the Eastern helmets featured a red-white-red tri-stripe and the Western a similar blue-white-blue tri-stripe. In fact the players brought their own game helmets to Los Angeles, which were then spray-painted and decorated for the contest. (For the 1970 game the helmets featured the "50 NFL" logo, commemorating the league's half-century anniversary.) In the earliest years of the AFC-NFC Pro Bowl, the players did not wear their unique helmets, as they do now. The AFC All-Stars wore a solid red helmet with a white "A" on it, while the NFC players wore a solid white helmet with a blue "N" on it. The AFC's red helmets were paired with white jerseys and red pants, while the NFC's white helmets were paired with blue jerseys and white pants.
Two players with the same number who are elected to the Pro Bowl can wear the same number for that game. Prior to a few years ago, all players were required to wear different numbers, regardless of what jersey number they wore on their regular team. This changed a few years ago, when players wore the jersey number on their regular team jersey, thus initially resulting in virtually every wide receiver on the field being numbered 80 or 81, a situation that, predictably, created significant confusion. Thus, it is recommended—although not required—that players use different jersey numbers, and generally when two players share a number, the less experienced one will wear a different number for the game. The 2008 Pro Bowl included a unique example of several players from the same team wearing the same number in a Pro Bowl. For the game, Washington Redskins players T Chris Samuels, TE Chris Cooley, and LS Ethan Albright all wore the number 21 (a number normally inappropriate for their positions) in memory of Sean Taylor who had been murdered during the 2007 season.

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