After winning Super Bowl XL, Steelers offensive lineman Max Starks embarked on a victory tour, and there were many memorable stops along the way.
“All of them were special,” Starks said on The DA Show. “That’s how it goes, right? You just sit there, you appreciate the moment. Obviously Hawaii is Hawaii. Now that was the old Pro Bowl. That was when the Pro Bowl was the week after the Super Bowl – like the natural order of things.”
Since 2010, however, the Pro Bowl has been played the week before the Super Bowl. Starks doesn’t like that.
“If you believe in evolution, you go from the Big Bang up to a primate and then man walks. That’s how it feels like it should be,” he said. “Or you go through the natural progression: hey, listen, you start at the salad part of the buffet and then the dessert is at the end with food in the middle. It depends on what your view it. But that’s the way the natural order should be. Do you want dessert coming right in between your salad and your steak? No, you don’t want that.
“That’s where I feel like the Pro Bowl is now,” Starks continued. “So that’s the way it was. The Super Bowl champion has got to be celebrated at the Pro Bowl, as opposed to pretty much written off and put as a footnote. Pat Mahomes made the Pro Bowl, but he’s getting ready for the Super Bowl so this is not as important to him right now.”
Starks liked when Super Bowl champions were honored at the Pro Bowl.
“It was a cool feeling to see my teammates get honored,” he said. “They got to be announced as Super Bowl champions at the Pro Bowl. That was a really cool thing to witness in that process. It’s a pretty cool thing, and I think it makes the Pro Bowl a little more special when the Super Bowl-participating teams – usually your highest amount of guys come from those teams, instead of having to put replacements in for them, it would be cool. It would be cool to have that dual honor.”