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Pssst. Nobody tell Jordan Howard the NFL Pro Bowl is in Orlando, Fla.

I’ve been to Orlando. Just got back, in fact. And let me tell you, Orlando is no Honolulu.

But the NFL, desperate to keep holding an all-star game just like all the other big leagues do, has agreed with the theme park capital of the world that it needed yet another reason to attract more tourists to its clutter in January.

True story. The NFL considered having the Pro Bowl in Sydney, Australia. Yes, Sydney. On the other side of the world. Opera House. Harbor Bridge. That Sydney.

I’ve been to Sydney. Orlando is no Sydney.

Still, it might have been easier to fool the Australians into believing the half-hearted touch and tickle that is the Pro Bowl was the real thing.

What do Australians know? I worked for a miserable Australian once, second-worst boss I ever had, and let me tell you, Orlando can be very Australian.

Honolulu had the Pro Bowl for years and Honolulu knew the game was a fraud. It just didn’t care. And the players loved being humored amid the pineapples and poi. The reward was not the game but the place.

Another true story. This one is about our favorite failure, Jay Cutler. He was once full of promise, just as Howard now is, selected in his third year to the Pro Bowl. It would be Cutler’s only time, but it elevated his opinion of his worth to be in Hawaii with Peyton and Eli Manning and Drew Brees.

Ah, this is where he was meant to be. This is where Cutler would be until, like most of the others, he would get bored and make up some reason not to go.

While Cutler was on Waikiki basking among his peers, lounging and luauing, his new coach in Denver, a soulless protege of the soulless Bill Belichick named Josh McDaniel, was busily figuring out how to get Matt Cassel to be his quarterback.

Cutler was an all-star, had just had his best year, had accolades ringing in his ears, some of them mine, and his new coach wanted someone else.

Now, Cutler had seen how cold a coach can be since he got the starting job with the Broncos at halftime of a Thanksgiving Day game, sent in to succeed Jake Plummer, who soon took his money and went off to live happily in Idaho.

McDaniel barely had talked to Cutler, and not yet in person. They made no plans, this young coach and this young quarterback. That’s because there were no plans.

Cutler was miffed. He demanded a trade. He got one to the Bears, McDaniel got fired the next year, and the rest, as they say, is everybody else’s fault but theirs.

This is not to suggest that any such thing is going to happen to Howard. It is a big deal for him and for the Bears, who have no presence in the NFL other than as sad foot wipes.

The side-door summons of Howard to the Pro Bowl is a nice little resume item. First Bears rookie running back to be picked since Gale Sayers, from fifth-round draft choice to rubbing shoulder pads with big names such as — well, let’s wait and see how many big names appreciate the honor.

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No invitation in sports is less accepted than the Pro Bowl. That’s how Howard got there. He is a replacement for the Cardinals’ David Johnson, who seems to have hurt his knee in the last game of the year.

That happens a lot. Of the original Pro Bowl selections, at least a third will find excuses not to show up. And those that do will try very hard not to bother each other.

Orlando is making a week of it, having a parade and selling tickets and everything. This Pro Bowl is concocting sideshows and skills silliness, the most absurd of which is dodgeball.

Yes, the game you used to hate in gym class. That dodgeball.

I have played dodgeball. It is not football. But then, neither is the Pro Bowl.

Bernie Lincicome is a special contributor to the baiduhai.

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