With the No. 1 pick in the 2014 Pro Bowl “draft” Peyton Manning selects …

Well, of all the 80-plus players available to choose from, exactly who would Manning pick to start filling out his all-star team?

The NFL thinks that kind of intrigue and how his choices play out over four quarters would bring renewed interest to its lagging Pro Bowl, a format league owners could come closer to adopting this week during their annual spring meeting in Boston.

While the headline item on the agenda is choosing the host cities for the 2015 and ’16 Super Bowls, a league official said Monday there may be additional discussion about what shape the new-look Pro Bowl will take for 2014 here.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the site (Aloha Stadium) and date (a week before the Super Bowl) of the 2014 game are set; what remains to be ironed out is the game’s concept. And the “pick-up team” idea stands as the most promising one yet proposed and something worthy of a shot as the NFL attempts to prop up the 75-year-old all-star contest.

Let’s face it, the Pro Bowl is at a crossroads, and how much longer it continues figures to be determined by how well this game goes over with crucial constituencies — the fans, TV partners and the players — this time. After the debacle of 2012, the game won a one-year reprieve when players put more effort into the 2013 edition.

But while the level improved, TV ratings declined from a 7.9 rating to 7.7, though the audience size still remained ahead of the other pro sports’ all-star games.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has already said he is interested in getting away from the traditional AFC vs. NFC format, and having team captains “draft” rosters for the game has captured his imagination.

As proposed, fans and coaches would still determine which players would be in the pool, but captains — Goodell has cited the Manning brothers, Peyton and Eli, as examples — would then make the picks, choosing up sides, playground style.

The idea was pushed along by a cross-over moment in the 2013 game in which Green Bay center Jeff Saturday switched sides for a play to snap the ball to the AFC’s Peyton Manning, his former quarterback with the Colts for 13 years. Never mind that the NHL happened on it first, it has wider possibilities with the NFL.

The thought being: What if players from the NFC and AFC could be thrown together and sides chosen up as you would in a playground setting? Instead of playing strictly by conference alignment, why not let some of the game’s premier players do the picking so we could see what real value they attach to the guys they play against?

That’s something fantasy league participants or, indeed, anyone who ever chose up sides in a park, could relate to. Which figures to be a lot more people than have an interest in the Pro Bowl lately.

Now, how about jan ken po for that first pick?

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.