When you are a $10 billion entity like the NFL, you don’t deign to merely move, relocate or transfer your events.

You “re-imagine” them.

And Wednesday that’s what the NFL said it was doing with the Pro Bowl in Orlando, Fla.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said, “We are excited to re-imagine the Pro Bowl experience for both fans and players and to celebrate the game of football at all levels.”

However, if you are in Hawaii, where the annual all-star game has spent 35 of the last 37 years, you shouldn’t “re-imagine” the tide bringing Pro Bowl back to these shores.

This isn’t a dalliance as in 2010, when the game was played in South Florida, or 2015 when it was parked in Glendale, Ariz., each time returning to Aloha Stadium.

This is divide-up-the-dishes and blankets and move on time. And the NFL has, going 4,737 miles as executive jet flies and awarding Orlando a two-year commitment with an option for a third.

“For us, Orlando is the new home of the Pro Bowl,” Peter O’Reilly, NFL senior vice president for events, grandly proclaimed at Wednesday’s press conference.

The NFL invoked the opt-out clause on its contract with the Hawaii Tourism Authority for 2017 and was out of town nearly as fast as Troy Aikman disappeared in the midst of the 1993 Pro Bowl.

The NFL did leave a parting note on the table and $100,000 in grants to Hawaii non-profits in each of the next three years.

Of course, there was a time when the NFL pledged its heart to Hawaii, too. It was 1987 and then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, thrilled at the home the once destitute game had found here, declared the Pro Bowl would remain in Hawaii, “until they kick us out.”

That was after the state had opened its arms to a game that had been bounced around seven NFL cities in as many years, each place locking the door after it.

Instead of giving the wandering event a peaceful place to expire out of sight and out of mind, Hawaii’s passion for pro football actually brought it back to life.

Players and their families found Hawaii preferable to January visits to Kansas City, Irving, Texas, and other previous sites and it looked good on TV.

Some here came to think of Hawaii as the unofficial 33rd NFL franchise and many dared to dream there might be a preseason NFL game in it for the state as a “mahalo.”

But the only NFL preseason game played here was San Diego and San Francisco in 1976, four years before the Pro Bowl’s arrival. It was an occasion also memorable for the worst traffic snarl in Aloha Stadium history — until this year.

Now it is Orlando that seeks to save the anachronism that is the Pro Bowl while basking in a sliver of the NFL spotlight. Orlando announces itself as the largest U.S. TV market without an NFL franchise and has visions and resources of doing something about it. Wednesday the NFL bestowed a preseason game, Miami vs. Atlanta, on it for August.

Between $207 million in renovations to the Citrus Bowl, the backing of Disney and ESPN and aggressive tourism entities, Orlando managed, with reportedly half the cash, to appeal to the NFL’s “re-imagination.”

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