There are many professional sports and, in each sport, many games played, but there is only one game for each sport where the best in the sport come out to play one epic game together: the all-star game.
There’s the Pro Bowl (for the NFL), the MLB All-Star Game, the NBA All-Star Game, the NHL All-Star Game, and the Major League Soccer All-Star Game. Although these are only a few, they are the most commonly-known all-star games throughout sports.
In a poll given to 44 Guilford students, there were five All-Star games listed: Pro Bowl, MLB, NBA, Major League Soccer, and NHL and an ‘Other’ section. For those who answered ‘other,’ two responded with WNBA.
According to this poll, 25 percent of students thought that the NBA All-Star game was the best, while 18.1 percent thought the MLB All-Star game was.
Each all-star game in each sport is unique and has its own way of picking out the most elite players, their coaches, and when they play.
The MLB All-Star game is between the National League and the American League. Fans, coaches, players, and managers pick the two teams, and the game is played in the summer, about halfway through the regular season. Players never have to worry about a game the day before or after the All-Star game.
Conversely, the all-star players themselves pick the players for the NHL All-Star game. The captains for each team are selected by a pool of fan ballots and the Hockey Operations Department in the NHL.
From 1959 to 1962 there were two MLB All-Star games a season. However, in 2010, there was no NHL All-Star game, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Major League Soccer begin to have All-Star games.
In the NBA, the same coach cannot coach an all-star team for consecutive seasons. In the Pro Bowl, head coaches of the teams that lost in the championship games are the Pro Bowl coaches for that season.
With these differences in mind, the audiences of the All-Star games would most likely prefer to watch the games that they themselves have selected the best for.
But, in the end, the game you prefer to watch is your personal favorite sport. This influences the decision to watch the All-star game for that particular sport. Wouldn’t you want to watch a team of all-star players from your favorite sport play against each other in one epic game?
The best game, in my opinion, is the NBA All-Star game. With big-name stars like LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal, just to name a few, it is also one of the only sports that has a women’s division and All-Star game: equal shots for all.
Albeit the WNBA All-Star game is just over 10-years-old, it has happened in July or August every year since 1999. Check their website to find out when you can watch girls kick butt: (http://www.wnba.com/).