THE BIZ: BRETT FAVRE

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Only a few athletes embody everything a team's fans love about their franchise — Michael Jordan and Cal Ripken Jr. come to mind — and whenever one of them calls it quits, it sends ripples through the world of sports business. Now that Green Bay icon Brett Favre is hanging up his spikes, what will he and the Packers do without each other?

The answer is simple: They'll both keep making bundles of cash.

Favre has made decent money away from the field for years. Winning Super Bowl XXXI in 1997 catapulted him into a select group of athletes with multimillion-dollar product endorsements. Last year, when he became the NFL's all-time touchdown leader, Favre earned $7 million from endorsements on top of his $11 million salary from the Packers.

But there's been a gap between Favre's potential marketability, rooted in the near-insane adulation virtually every American outside Chicago and Minnesota has for him, and his actual income. Street & Smith's Sports Business Daily ranked Favre the 10th most marketable athlete in the United States last year, and he scored second in the NFL (behind only Peyton Manning) on the Davie-Brown Index, a statistical measure of celebrity attractiveness. Favre's jersey is a perennial top-10 seller among NFL gear. Yet he was the 30th-highest paid athlete in the country in 2007.

In part, this is because Favre has never tried hard to maximize his opportunities. Working with Mississippi-based agent Bus Cook, Favre has chosen to hawk a limited number of products. And a few, such as Prilosec, a heartburn medication, and Sensodyne toothpaste, haven't exactly boosted his cool factor.

But it's also true that corporations like certainty in their endorsement relationships. And every time Favre flirted with retirement, it made companies less likely to want to depend on him. Would he speak as a player, as a retired player or as a new kind of businessman? Product makers never could be sure.

Now that Favre is out of football, he'll have more time to figure out how he wants to sell his image — and presumably a higher incentive to haul in extra cash. Look for new ads along the lines of last year's national campaign for Wrangler jeans. With his appealing image as a tough but fun guy, Brett Favre is in line to follow Jordan and Ripken's lead. In other words, you'll be seeing a lot more of him now that he's retired.

Meanwhile, Green Bay officials won't say so publicly, but they know they couldn't have picked a better time for their field general to walk away. Back in 2000, the Packers rode Favre's popularity to a $295-million renovation of Lambeau Field. And now the team, which plays in the smallest market in big four pro sports, takes in nearly $200 million a year in revenue and generates about $20 million in annual profit.

If Favre had packed it in, say, three seasons ago, after he threw a career-high 29 interceptions at the already-rickety age of 36, it could have put a serious dent in the team's attendance and merchandising, The Pack finished 4-12 that season. But since then, the team has rebuilt. Last year's squad not only finished 13-3 and made it to the NFC championship, it was the youngest in the league. The Packers are now likely to stay competitive on the field and strong in their local market, in contrast to the Bulls after Jordan or the Orioles after Ripken.

Of course, without Favre, Green Bay almost certainly won't be on national television as often. But the team won't suffer financially from that, since all clubs split the league's TV revenues equally.

Favre may have chosen this particular moment to retire because he's annoyed that Green Bay didn't sign Randy Moss. Whatever his reasons, it comes at a good time for both his and the Packers' cash flow.

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