He was a salty old dog, the wrinkled skin on his bare torso stained and worn like a faded leather wallet. For the price of a Longboard Lager or three, this sketchy surf bum had a story to tell.
“Have you heard of the Beach Boys?” he asked, hoping to lure us in like a fisherman stalking an Ono offshore of Waikiki Beach, which happened to be the majestic setting in our field of vision. Duh, the looks on our faces said, but our uninvited table guest wasn’t waiting for the answer. His long, disjointed tale ended with him revealing that he was, in fact, the hidden “sixth — or actually seventh” member of the storied band.
And then, with a flourish, he burped so loudly that it almost spoiled a perfect sunset.
While understandably dubious of the claim’s legitimacy, John Elway took it all in with a bemused smile — and ordered up another round of sashimi and beers. The legendary quarterback was in the best mood ever as the sun disappeared under the Pacific Ocean on that late-January evening in 1998, about 72 hours removed from finally winning the Super Bowl on his fourth try.
It had been a whirlwind: Hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after leading the Denver Broncos to an upset of the Green Bay Packers in San Diego; going up the coast to Disneyland as part of the obligatory promotional campaign; returning to Denver for a parade; hopping on a flight to paradise. Upon landing in Honolulu, Elway and his head coach, Mike Shanahan, had come straight here, to the Barefoot Bar at Duke’s Waikiki, where the celebration would continue long past golden hour.
“I Get Around” might as well have blared from the beachfront speakers. Come to think of it, that probably happened, too.
When I think about the heyday of the Pro Bowl, which was officially eliminated Wednesday after a long, dubious decline, I marvel at the multitude of casual, unguarded moments that football’s biggest names routinely experienced upon leaving the continent. Getting swept up in poolside chess drama between the late, great San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau and future Los Angeles Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh is one of many examples near and dear to my heart.
Though Elway didn’t play for the AFC in that 1998 Pro Bowl — he withdrew with an ankle “injury” and was replaced by another future first-ballot Hall of Famer, Warren Moon — there was a reason he bothered to show up. In Hawaii, even on Oahu’s most storied and crowded beach, a superstar could blend in while being chatted up by the Seventh Beach Boy. And for one week each year, even a culture as regimented and hyper-serious as the NFL’s could channel some fun in the sun.
From 1980 to 2009, the Pro Bowl enjoyed an uninterrupted, three-decade run at rickety Aloha Stadium as the soothing capstone of the NFL season. Players acclimated to island time, cherished the collective exhale and staged a stripped-down showcase of their sport. Coaches wore flower-print shirts and leis and unfashionable shades. Viewers saw a low-stress spectacle that typically ramped up in the fourth quarter, when players started caring about the difference in checks (sometimes as little as a few thousand dollars) doled out to participants on the winning and losing teams.
For the league’s standout performers and their families, the week in Hawaii that immediately followed the Super Bowl was a reward for a job well done. And as word spread of Pro Bowl week’s breezy vibe, plenty of non-stars started paying their own way to join the party, too.
The late Russ Francis, a native Hawaiian who became an All-Pro tight end and Super Bowl champion during a standout career with the New England Patriots and San Francisco 49ers in the 1970s and ’80s, put it this way when I interviewed him for a “Sports Illustrated” feature in 1996: “The Pro Bowl is a celebration of football. It’s the one time when players can let down their guard, enjoy their status and revel in the joys of their profession. It’s camaraderie and adventure — the way football used to be.”
Even when those adventures bordered on the farcical, nobody seemed to mind all that much.
There was the time in the mid-’80s when a bull escaped from a local zoo and, legend has it, New York Jets sackmeister Mark Gastineau wrestled it on a Honolulu street. Numerous locals I talked to insisted that this was not BS.
Nearly as unruly were some of the NFC team’s offensive huddles in 1993, which future first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young described as “total pandemonium.” The mayhem featured Young’s then-49ers teammate, first-year running back Ricky Watters, screaming “I’m the player they came to see!” while then-Atlanta Falcons two-way star Deion Sanders also demanded the ball. All the while, superstar receivers Jerry Rice (49ers) and Michael Irvin (Cowboys) staged a running argument as to which one of them was the league’s most selfish player.
Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer conspicuously scarfed a hot dog on the sideline of the 1995 game while watching his NFC team get rolled by the AFC. Unbeknownst to fans was the saga of then-rookie running back Marshall Faulk, the game’s MVP. While driving to the game in his rented Ferrari with AFC teammate Natrone Means, Faulk spun out on a rain-slicked freeway and totaled the car. After catching a cab and showing up perilously close to kickoff, he proceeded to run for 180 yards to break O.J. Simpson’s Pro Bowl record.
Oh, and earlier that week, Arizona Cardinals running back Larry Centers — in the midst of a scary mental-health-related episode — was baptized in the Pacific Ocean shortly before midnight by NFC teammates and future Hall of Famers Reggie White, Aeneas Williams and Cris Carter. True story.
As a television viewer, my favorite Pro Bowl moment occurred in 2003. A few days earlier, Indianapolis Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt had given an interview on The Score, a Canadian cable network, in which he criticized coach Tony Dungy and numerous teammates — including Peyton Manning, with Vanderjagt saying the star quarterback needed to show more emotion. Come Pro Bowl Sunday, Manning had yet to respond.
Given ABC’s custom of conducting sideline interviews with players during the game, I waited excitedly for Manning to get his turn on the mic. When sideline reporter Lynn Swann teed him up with a question about Vanderjagt, “The Sheriff” didn’t disappoint, going on a savage rant that depicted his teammate as an “idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off.”
On the field, the action was typically far from idyllic, but the games got reasonably good ratings and served as a gentle bedtime tuck-in for the sport after a long, draining season. The league started messing with the Pro Bowl, however — beginning in 2010, when the powers that be moved it over to the mainland (Miami) and shifted it into the Sunday slot between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl — and the vibe quickly degenerated.
Though the game returned to Hawaii in 2011 and stayed there through 2016 (aside from a 2015 interlude in Arizona), the Pro Bowl quickly lost its luster and any sense of legitimacy. It essentially jumped the shark in 2012, when the action looked so bogus that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell publicly threatened to cancel the event if players didn’t start trying.
Two years later the league scrapped the AFC vs. NFC format in favor of a silly draft between Hall of Fame honorary captains (beginning with Rice and Sanders), creating a sense of confusion among consumers. In 2019, former Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, as part of ESPN’s broadcast crew, unwittingly broke the trophy in half while congratulating AFC stars Patrick Mahomes and Jamal Adams, providing a fitting metaphor for the state of the event.
By 2023 the NFL gave up any pretense of staging an actual game, replacing the Pro Bowl with a skills competition that culminated with a flag football. On Wednesday, the league officially pulled the plug, and few (if any) tears were shed.
I’m not shedding any, either. Change is part of life. The Pro Bowl had its blessed run in the island sun but was not destined to last forever.
The march of time is seldom subtle. Earlier this year, construction crews started tearing down Aloha Stadium. The Beach Boys recently canceled around 30 summer-tour dates so that 85-year-old frontman Mike Love could “recharge.”
The Barefoot Bar at Duke’s lives on, and I’m sure there are salty dogs with stories to tell roaming the sand as we speak. If you go there sometime, consider taking in the trade winds and raising your glass to toast an era of camaraderie and adventure — the way football used to be.
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
The post An ode to the Pro Bowl: Idiot kickers, ocean baptisms and ‘total pandemonium’ appeared first on The Garden Island.
