NFL Announcing Multi-Year Deal With Orlando To Host Pro Bowl

The NFL has scheduled a press conference for Wednesday afternoon to announce a multi-year deal with the city of Orlando to host the Pro Bowl, according to Ian Rapoport.

• Peter Schrager reports that the NFL plans to return to the AFC vs. NFC format and do away with “captains.”

This doesn’t come as a complete surprising, considering that Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg News reported a few weeks ago that the NFL would be relocating the Pro Bowl from Honolulu to Orlando.

The NFL initially denied that an official decision had been made regarding the Pro Bowl, but it looks like they managed to get an agreement in place. The other cities in the running to host the event were: Honolulu, Houston, and Sydney, Australia.

The Pro Bowl has come under criticism in recent years from fans, the media and even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

A few months ago, Goodell said he was “disappointed” in the Pro Bowl, as it didn’t meet their standards.

“I’m not gonna speculate on where the Pro Bowl is going but I was disappointed in what I saw on Sunday,” Goodell said. “I had raised this issue three or four years ago. We worked with a number of players to make changes in the game. They had a positive impact, at least in the short term. But I didn’t see that this past week.

“I think our biggest standard has to be what we expect from the NFL and what our fans expect from the NFL. If it’s not quality, it’s not a real competition that we can be proud of, we have to do something different. That’s my number one priority right now. I’m open to new ideas, I’m open to how we do it, but it’s not the kind of game that I think we want to continue to have in its current format, based on what we saw last week.“

The NFL has tried to change up the format for the Pro Bowl by adding a fantasy draft selection, but it has done little in terms of the rating, which have been down for the past three years in a row.