BALTIMORE - Every year, the media (and I’m as guilty as the next person) and fans throw their hands up in the air in anger over Pro Bowl snubs.

There’s gnashing of the teeth and righteous indignation galore when guys like Ray Lewis or Bart Scott (who really and truly did get snubbed) are left off the AFC roster for the Feb. 10 game in Honolulu. “How could they leave him off?” and “What more does a guy need to do?” are the common refrains.

When all is said and done, though, it’s meaningless. It’s a waste to muster up the energy to care about a game that even the players don’t want to play in. Starters routinely don’t show up due to injuries, often putting snubbed players in the game anyway. Such is the case with Lewis this year.

Most such players have some sort of lingering injury they don’t want to aggravate, while others simply don’t want to get hurt in the first place. It is the antithesis of what football truly is about — passion and aggression.

As a result, no one is watching the Pro Bowl on TV any longer and the numbers bear that out. Who would really watch the game anyway, other than some desperate, football-starved fan? Hawaii, no doubt, makes a nice penny off fans who travel for the game, but the people who helped make the NFL the juggernaut it is are thousands of miles away, nestled by their heaters in the dead of winter.

What regular fan gets a kick out of seeing obscenely rich people go on vacation in Hawaii and “play” a quarter of action? Yes, yes — there are beautiful beaches and equally beautiful women hula-dancing 24-7 in Hawaii. We get it.

The players, more than anything, care about the status of being a Pro Bowler. It’s a résumé-booster for players at the end of their careers or contracts.

Lewis’ reaction this week to taking Al Wilson’s spot was a humble one. Although he said he wasn’t hurt by being left off the team originally, his statements the day after the roster was announced said otherwise. He still wants to be known as the best and no one is going to tell him otherwise.

In the case of Scott, it probably means more than status. It means validating all of his hard work after going undrafted out of college. He’s exactly the type of person and player for whom the game was designed. He’s got a pure passion and love for the game. Knowing Scott, he would like to leave one last “jacked-up” hit on the field for the 2006 season.

Sadly, we won’t get something that memorable in a game that lost all relevance a long time ago.