Are All-Star Games A Thing Of The Past? Listen Up

With the NBA announcing the starters for the upcoming All-Star Game, SportsGrid host Donnie Seymour of The Early Line pondered whether leagues should abolish these exhibitions on this edition of Listen Up.

Seymour reminisced about his experiences growing up watching All-Star games that included more traditional formats such as East vs. West. “In the 1980s, when I was growing up as a youngster, I loved the All-Star games in all four sports and couldn’t wait to see how they played out,” Seymour says.

Nowadays, that’s all a thing of the past when you consider the Elam Ending used in the NBA All-Star Game or that both teams have a captain who picks the players somewhat like a fantasy draft format. We’ve seen different formats like Europe vs. the USA or the World vs. North America in the NHL.

Perhaps the one outlier is Major League Baseball. It has a slight advantage over the other sports in that it’s an individual game played within a team concept so that at least guarantees the players will give maximum effort. However, baseball’s also had its issues after it ended the 2002 All-Star Game in a tie after running out of pitchers. And who can forget the decision they made to grant the winner of the All-Star game home field in the World Series.

But no sport probably has it worse than the NFL, as not long ago, there were calls to cancel the game altogether because players were not even tackling their opponents.

These All-Star games are moneymakers with the leagues, so you can understand why they’d want to hold on to them as long as possible. However, if Seymour had his way as commissioner for a day, his first decision in charge would be to get rid of all of them.

Get more of Donnie’s hot takes every weekday morning in Listen Up on The Early Line, only on SportsGrid.

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