As they unveiled the banner for ChangeTheMascot.org on the second floor of the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown, amid a standing-room-only crowd of cameras, media and the concerned, everything came into focus Monday.

Before an Oneida Nation leader even called the team name a racial slur for the first time from the podium, before a Manhattan psychologist logically connected the dots — between the burnt siena-pigmented face on a helmet with the line drawn through it in the background to the utter hopelessness on reservations — you just knew:

Even if he remains in Washington for his entire NFL career, Robert Griffin III is not going to retire an R-word.

It’s not a matter of “if” anymore, but rather “when.”

The debate over whether a people are denigrated or honored by the name of the Washington NFL team, like the absurd debate over whether the name is a unifying force, is over.

How many of the more than 5 million American Indians in this country actually want the name gone — how many need to be offended — is approaching irrelevant.

We’re quickly moving past all that.