The NFL finally did it. Beginning with the 2026 season, there will no longer be an AFC vs. NFC Pro Bowl game, and honestly.. GOOD. The NFL third-place game has never had a better opportunity to make the dumbest comeback imaginable.
I actually like part of what the NFL is doing here. Keep naming 88 Pro Bowlers, get rid of the endless list of alternates and make being selected actually mean something again. That makes sense. What made no sense was watching the NFL spend years trying to Frankenstein the actual event back to life with skills competitions and flag football, because I’m sorry, that flag football game was HORRIBLE. The league changed formats because nobody wanted to get hurt playing meaningless tackle football, which I completely understand, but eventually you reach the point where the replacement is so meaningless that you have to ask why the hell are we still doing this?
An NFL Third-Place Game Would Actually Give Us Something to Watch
So instead of inventing another skills competition or having offensive linemen catch punts while somebody fires water balloons at them, I have a much better solution. And technically, I don’t even have to invent it because the NFL already did.
BRING BACK THE TOILET BOWL.
Starting in 1960, the NFL held the Playoff Bowl, which was essentially a third-place game between teams that fell short of playing for the league championship. It became known as the Losers’ Bowl and the Toilet Bowl, and Vince Lombardi reportedly hated the thing so much that he called it a “hinky-dink game.” Players didn’t exactly love it either, which somehow makes the entire thing even funnier. Imagine losing the NFC Championship Game in devastating fashion, spending the entire week thinking about how you were one win away from the Super Bowl, and then the NFL calls like, “Hey.. don’t go home yet. We still need to figure out who finished THIRD.”
Obviously there is one enormous problem with bringing that back today: why would players risk getting hurt for third place? That’s the exact problem that eventually destroyed the traditional Pro Bowl. NFL players have absolutely nothing to prove by playing another meaningless football game after an entire season of getting their bodies destroyed, and the two teams coming out of conference championship losses might be the LAST people interested in playing again.
So make the game mean something. Put a ridiculous amount of money behind it. Give the winning organization some kind of offseason benefit. Maybe there’s a draft-related reward the league could create without completely screwing up competitive balance. I don’t know what the exact prize is, and I’m not going to pretend I have the NFL rulebook solution sitting in my attic, but there has to be SOMETHING you can attach to this thing that makes winning matter. You’re the NFL. You’ve figured out how to turn basically every available day on the calendar into football content. Figure it out.
Because once there is an actual reason to care, tell me you wouldn’t watch this. The two teams that just lost the AFC and NFC Championship Games are almost always legitimate Super Bowl-caliber teams. Now you’re getting two pissed-off fanbases, two teams convinced they should still be playing, and a completely unnecessary bronze-medal grudge match before the Super Bowl. Is it stupid? Absolutely. But stupid with stakes is infinitely more interesting than watching quarterbacks casually play flag football.
And if NFL players look at the third-place game and say there is absolutely no amount of money that will make them do it? Fine. I have an even more irresponsible idea.
Make the two worst teams in football play for the No. 1 pick.
I KNOW how stupid that is. That is half the reason I love it. You could have a quarterback playing the most important game of his season because if he wins, his reward is giving the franchise the first pick so they can draft the guy replacing him. A coach could be fighting for a draft pick he might never get to use. Half the roster could be free agents a few months later. From an incentive standpoint this thing would be an absolute DISASTER, and there are probably 400 legitimate reasons the NFL should never approve it.
But would you watch?
Of course you would. Imagine two 3-14 teams getting a standalone national game with the No. 1 pick sitting there as the prize. Suddenly every fan of those teams cares, every fan of the projected top quarterback cares, and every fan of a team hoping to trade up is watching two horrible football teams like it’s the damn Super Bowl. We spend the final month of every NFL season talking about draft position and whether terrible teams should tank anyway. Fine.. stop making losing valuable and make them win the pick.
That version is probably too insane to ever happen, but THAT is what I want the NFL thinking about now that the Pro Bowl event is finally gone. Give me something with an actual consequence. Third place, draft position, money, some ridiculous trophy everyone pretends not to care about until their team wins it.. whatever. The problem with the Pro Bowl wasn’t that people suddenly stopped liking star NFL players. The game itself stopped giving anyone a reason to care who won.
Keep the Pro Bowl honor. Celebrate the players who actually earned it. Make that selection matter again. But if the NFL decides it still wants another football game somewhere around Super Bowl week, please don’t give us another watered-down exhibition and pretend the answer is a slightly different version of the same thing.
Third-place game. Last-place game. Toilet Bowl. No. 1 Pick Bowl.
I do not care what you call it.. just give me something I’d be mad about losing.
