What could be more entertaining than watching the best players in the world team up in an all-star game?
Anything.
Every year, professional sports leagues hold all-star games to entertain the fans with what should be the best competition possible. What the fans actually get is the opportunity to watch the leagues pat themselves on the back and the players play slowed-down and boring versions of the sports they dominate.
The problem with these games is that they don't matter. It is not the league's fault, however, because by the nature of the games, they can't matter, and, as such, the effort is never high enough to warrant interest from the fans.
The point of sports is competition. If that is absent, then why should anyone care?
You also can't blame the players for this. When they compete in all-star contests, there is no real incentive to win. They may receive a larger paycheck if their random grouping of teammates has a higher score than their opponents at the end of the game, but these are the best of the best; they already make more money than we can comprehend.
Putting forth a full effort runs the risk of an injury that may harm one's future career. No player would gamble on his health in an irrelevant game.
The leagues understand this problem but they are mostly powerless to stop it. They can't force the players to play harder, nor would they want to. If the star players get hurt, the league will suffer as well.
It is also difficult to implement rewards for the winners. How can you reward a team that is made up of members of multiple teams?
Major League Baseball made a change to its rules in 2003 that stated that the winning league would have home-field advantage in the World Series, meaning that if the championship series went to the seventh and final game, the home team would be the representative of the winning league.
This is close to a solution, but it is still pretty weak seeing as no World Series has gone to a game seven since the rule was introduced.
So, the games are probably a lost cause. That does not mean that there isn't a way to keep fans interested in all-star competition. The solution is skills competitions.
Every league, except for the NFL, holds some sort of skills competition at the time of its all-star game. The MLB has the home-run derby, the NBA has, among a few less interesting events, the dunk competition, and the NHL holds a variety of different events the night before its game. These events showcase some of the more entertaining skills that professional players possess and fans love to see.
While dunking is not an essential skill to play basketball, it is one of the most impressive to watch. As a player, these competitions provide an opportunity to showcase some of one's more stylized skills. As a fan, it is great to see the best players in the league having fun and doing things that they would not normally be able to do in a game.
This year, the NHL decided to try something entirely unique. Instead of the normal conference-versus-conference game, the league brought together the best players it possesses, neglecting what conference they were from, and staged a good old-fashioned pickup game in the middle of Raleigh, N.C.'s RBC Center.
The players selected to the game voted on two captains, the Carolina Hurricanes' Eric Staal and the Detroit Red Wings' Nicklas Lidstrom, and the two then chose their teams out of the player pool.
The idea behind this change was to boost interest by appealing to hockey fans' schoolyard nostalgia. The game even opened with children skating to center ice and picking sticks.
While this innovation helped to increase interest in the game during the week leading up to it, once the puck dropped, it was the same boring contest that it always is.
There isn't really anything that the leagues can do to fix the problems with all-star competition. The games will always be over-hyped and boring. My suggestion is to tune in and make your own fun. Every time you reach for the remote to change the channel to something more interesting, grab a shot instead. It will make the whole experience far less painful.
E-mail: carey.beyer@ubspectrum.com
