Pro Bowl will return next year, maybe not every year

A new-look Pro Bowl will return to Aloha Stadium for 2014, but the state’s nearly exclusive hold on the NFL all-star game over four decades may be loosening.

In announcing the game would return here for 2014, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said at the owners meetings Wednesday in Phoenix, "Our agreement with Hawaii is just for the coming year, but I would expect that we will continue to be in Hawaii on some kind of a rotational basis."

With the exception of 2010, when the game was experimentally packaged with the Super Bowl in South Florida, Hawaii has hosted the Pro Bowl every year since 1980. The NFL has said that it will consider similar packages in the future.

"We know the players and their guests enjoy coming out to Hawaii, we just haven’t finalized plans moving forward beyond next season," said Brian McCarthy, NFL spokesman.

An NFL official said the league and the state have long been in talks about the 2014 game. Weather is a factor since the Super Bowl will be held in East Rutherford, N.J., on Feb. 2, 2014. The Pro Bowl is expected to be played Jan. 26.

But the 2015, ’16 and ’17 Super Bowls will be in warmer climates. The 2015 Super Bowl game will be held in Arizona and the 50th anniversary 2016 Super Bowl will be in either South Florida or San Francisco. The ’17 game will be hosted by either Houston or the ’16 runner-up, an NFL spokesman said.

The state has paid the NFL approximately $4 million annually to play the game here.

The future of the game had been in doubt after a lackluster 2012 showing with Goodell having challenged players to give it more effort or face the loss of the game.

But Goodell said Wednesday, "They (the players) clearly made a very positive effort the way they played the game this year."

The league has sought player suggestions on how to make the game more attractive, and Goodell said, They have come up with some very creative ideas."

For example, Goodell said, "One was the idea of the players being selected as they have been in the past, but the teams would be (divided) by a draft that could be done with a captain. To use an example from this past year, we talked about Peyton Manning picking one team and Eli Manning picks the other. We think some of that is going to create greater interest."

McCarthy said, "This past year’s game, when we allowed (center) Jeff Saturday of Green Bay to snap the ball to Peyton Manning of Denver was a neat moment, so you could have that throughout the game. That type of camaraderie, we think, would add another element."

Hawaii Tourism Authority president and chief executive Mike McCartney said in a statement, "We are grateful to the NFL for bringing the Pro Bowl back to Hawaii next year and we look forward to building upon our long-standing partnership well into the future."