As much of a football fan as I am, even I can't get myself interested to watch the Pro Bowl. After all of the usual talk about the lack of relevance for the game, I think it's time we try to focus on...

MAKING IT BETTER: The Pro Bowl

1. Import some CFL rules. If we're not going to have defense in the Pro Bowl, why not give the offense a chance to put up Arena-style scores? Unlimited motion would open up new possibilities for creative play calling, three downs to make a first would put more pressure on the offense to make yardage, and putting the defensive line a yard off the ball would help to open up the running game. Some would call it a travesty, but I would be happy if the Pro Bowl final score rivaled the NBA All Star Game final score.

2. Replace the game with skills competitions. About the only thing propping up all star games are skills competitions. Of the "Big 4" North American sports leagues, only the NFL doesn't have a skills competition. So let's add one, and instead of having it prop up an actual game, make the competition the actual focus of the weekend, allowing players to showcase what they do best.

Revive the Quarterback Challenge that used to be held in the off season. Have running backs and wideouts run an obstacle-type course to score a touchdown. Rig up a dummy for a hardest tackle contest. Have an open Punt, Pass and Kick competition. There are a number of options, and they'd all be more fun than watching guys go through the motions like they do in the actual game.

3. Combine it with other, non-football sports. I actually had this idea when reading Joe Posnanski's blog post about the game. He led off by talking about ABC's Wide World of Sports, and it got me to thinking that I'd watch the game if, say, Chris Johnson and Adrian Peterson had a best of five log rolling competition between the first and second periods. Or if you had a 10 lap ice motorcycle race at halftime involving all of the offensive linemen. Not sure where we'd get all that ice in Honolulu, but maybe rapid melting would only add to the fun.

4. Drop the conference split and embrace fantasy. It's rare to say that the NHL has trumped other leagues in something other than commissioner idiocy, but they nailed it when they allowed Nicklas Lidstrom and Eric Staal, the team captains, to have a fantasy draft to select teams.

This has obvious applications to the NFL, where fantasy interest is huge. Rather than use players, the two coaches could get together and draft their teams. They could even bring in fantasy experts as draft coaches. Make it even more fun by holding an auction draft so you have the subplots about players who feel snubbed because they were bought for $2. Then allow the coaches to trade players - even during the game.

5. Move the game to the third week in February. After two weeks of nothing but the drone of NBA, NHL and college hoops regular seasons, a football game, any football game, would be a welcome diversion. Moving it this late gives Super Bowl players a chance to play, allows injured players some more time to heal, and generally adds to whatever potential hype the league can muster for this thing.

Book Log 2011 #1: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

A long-ago quizbowl question on this book got me interested in reading it, and I finally followed through (several years later, I should note). It's the story of the first archbishop of the Catholic diocese of Santa Fe, a French missionary priest transferred from Ohio to work in the territory ceded to the US from Mexico. Bishop Latour taps his friend and fellow missionary, Vaillant, to serve as his vicar.

The book then covers their life's work in New Mexico, from rooting out the local priests who are either too incompetent or too crooked to continue serving to gaining the trust of the locals (Hispanic and Native American alike) to adapting to the burdens of a large, thinly-settled diocese. The story is told in episodic fashion, which is kind of useful when you're reading during a commute.

The book is best known for its descriptions of New Mexico, and it does paint some vivid word pictures of the untamed land. The characters suffer for this a bit, I think, and I'd have preferred to have had the relationship between Latour and Vaillant get more depth earlier on rather than being put at the end when Latour is reflecting on his life.

There were some aspects of the book that surprised me, such as the genuine interest both priests had in respecting local culture and beliefs within a Catholic framework. We've been conditioned to think of missionary priests as being fairly severe in getting the natives to toe the line spiritually, so it was refreshing (and perhaps a touch optimistic?) to see the priests approach this problem in a more tolerant way, I think knowing that a slower approach would reap more benefits over the long term.

Overall, I liked the book quite a bit and will likely read more Cather in the future (I should just download O Pioneers already).

This was the second book I read using the Stanza reader for the iPhone. You can pretty much expect that any time I read something older or in the public domain I'm doing it on the phone. It's still a little distracting given how often you have to turn the page, but it's a nice option when I can't get to the library or have limited space to hold something.

Barring a last-minute change, it appears that the coming Super Bowl will be the first one ever to not have cheerleaders, as neither Green Bay nor Pittsburgh have squads.

Really, what's the point of cheerleaders on the NFL level? The crowds are too big to have cheerleaders effectively lead cheers; odds are that most of the stadium can't even see them, much less respond to what they're doing. Really, they're there to look purty and give the TV cameras something else to shoot. Based on usefulness to the game as a whole, cheerleaders are the appendix of NFL football.

I know, the women on the squads are nice people and do stuff in the community and cheerleading is a traditional part of football and blah blah blah. But for me, they will not be missed.

OK, I say I'm going to post more here and then promptly disappear for a little over three weeks. So much for my New Year's cyber-resolution.

So what brings me back, if not to run a bunch of Book Logs by you? It's the news that Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club has tabbed Jay Leon as their man of the year. Jay Leno. Who wheedled his way back into hosting the Tonight Show, ousting Conan O'Brien. Who is a Harvard alumnus.

Maybe Conan pissed off the Hasty Pudding crowd when he was a student. Maybe he doesn't like dressing in drag. Maybe he called them out on having awards shows that are about as funny as Leno's work for NBC. Don't know.

I can't say I care greatly about this "honor" - to my eyes it doesn't do more than get the club some TV time and screw up Cambridge traffic - but the timing of the thing seems suspicious.

So here we are on the first day of 2011, and I have but one resolution to pass along, and it's fitting to announce it in this location. My resolution is to have more posts here that aren't book related. This thing has become about 85 percent book logs, 14 percent Lent stuff, and one percent everything else. I'd like to go back to the way things were when I started this thing almost ten years (!) ago, at least in the breadth of topics if not style.

Not sure why I've become less prone to write stuff here, but I'm going to blame Facebook. It's easy to dash off thoughts as status updates, and looking at past posts the timing seems about right. On the flip side, more people see my Facebook status updates than likely read this, so perhaps I should be more interested in linking this to Facebook. I did try this once, and didn't care for how it dumped a bunch of older posts in, resulting in scores of updates related to "new" entries. So I think I'll just leave this separate for now, which will at least keep it away from the mercies of Mark Zuckerberg.