Never mind the Pro Bowl game itself, the moment we would have paid the $45 to see was when one of the NFL minions reported to commissioner Roger Goodell that Hawai'i had the temerity to reject the league's renewal offer last week.

Betcha that raised an eyebrow or two high atop 280 Park Ave. in New York.

For sure it did here after word of the Hawai'i Tourism Authority's vote was reported in yesterday's Advertiser.

The NFL is the 900-pound gorilla of pro sports and is used to having its way. In most things the league doesn't negotiate as much as it dictates. It brooks little argument and expects supplication if not genuflection.

So, we applaud the HTA's boldness in, however politely, telling the NFL to, well, "go fish" with its offer. Because if you've dealt with NFL headquarters, you know it can be like working with the former East Germany.

The NFL's proposal was to return its all-star game to Aloha Stadium for two more years sometime after 2010, which it has promised to Miami, ending a string of 30 consecutive appearances here.

Precisely which two years the NFL would deign to return, it wasn't saying. Reading between the lines, you are stuck with the perception that the NFL was saying you'll take what we give you when we give it to you and like it.

But the HTA, to its credit, didn't. For some reason, perhaps because it made sense for planning and marketing purposes, the HTA wanted to nail down the exact years. And it hoped to make them sooner, say 2011 and '12, rather than later.

Since the state has been forking over $4.5 million annually along with turning over the stadium, you'd think it should at least be allowed to know what the dates are. Whether the NFL was asking for additional money in these austere times, nobody will say.

What the NFL likes to forget is the Pro Bowl was getting last rites when Hawai'i gave the itinerant game a home in 1980. Prior to that, the Pro Bowl had seven sites in as many years and none of them begging it back. But here the Pro Bowl found not only a string of welcoming sellouts but a place its players actually wanted to go.

You suspect the HTA and NFL will find a solution, possibly at next month's scheduled meeting, because it is in both their interests. Hawai'i needs the tourist draw the game provides and the NFL can sure use what Hawai'i brings to the game.

But for what might turn out to be one brief moment we are left to cheer the HTA for standing its ground like the Pittsburgh Steelers' defense.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.