If ... no ... when Favre returns, the NFL owes him a heck of a sendoff.(NFL)

The NFL does so many things just right, from marketing to scheduling to maximum exposure of its stars. But it doesn't do retirements right. When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ends his career, the NBA has a seasonlong celebration. In the NFL, heroes seemingly all announce their retirements at season's end. There's a press conference and then, months later, maybe a home-city salute. That is so un-NFL.

We need Brett Favre to change all this. We need him to tell us he is returning for a final season so every team that plays host to the Packers in 2005 can properly show him how much he has meant to the league. Then the final game of his career should be at Lambeau, with a ceremony befitting a player who has given us so much.

Favre will return next season. Even though notions of retirement entered into his thought process with more strength these past months, he still has more football to extract from his being before he returns to Mississippi and spends the rest of his life trying to lower his handicap to scratch. So one more year, and that's it. We just want to relish it along ...