Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: MARKETING & ADVERTISING AGENCIES (90%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); SELF EMPLOYMENT (76%); VOTERS & VOTING (75%); SMALL BUSINESS (75%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (75%); MARKETING & ADVERTISING (73%); STARTUPS (73%); LEGISLATION (73%); WORK WEEK (67%); COMPUTER MAKERS (50%); FREELANCE EMPLOYMENT (73%)
PERSON: NICOLAS SARKOZY (93%); ANN LIVERMORE (57%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (96%); PARIS, FRANCE (88%) ENGLAND (90%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); FRANCE (96%); UNITED STATES (79%); GERMANY (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: ''Change may come, but France is not a country of evolution, but of revolution,'' said Jean-Claude Cothias, who left France 10 years ago to found a consulting company in Ashford, England. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN PLAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. C4)

Caroline Sivilia left Paris for London to start a magazine. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN PLAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. C1)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

993 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 11, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Hostility Has Its Rewards
BYLINE: By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEALBOOK; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 783 words
DATELINE: MENLO PARK, Calif.
''It's crazy to say you will only grow through innovation,'' Larry Ellison, the hard-charging chief executive of Oracle, was telling me last week. ''It's bizarre that there's a stigma to buying something rather than building it yourself.''

Here in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurialism is a religion, people have long taken a dim view of acquisitions. A big purchase was, as Mr. Ellison put it, ''a confession that there's a failure to innovate.''

That is until Mr. Ellison decided about four years ago to go Rambo on this high-tech province of button-downs and khakis with a hostile $10.3 billion bid for PeopleSoft. At first, the bid was considered barbaric. Everyone said Mr. Ellison was bound to fail. After all, as they love to say here, a technology company's most valuable assets -- its engineers -- walk out the door every evening. And with a hostile bidder circling, PeopleSoft's engineers were bound to run.

Only they didn't.

I had sought out Mr. Ellison, in part, because if there's one person responsible for the current run of hostile takeovers in Silicon Valley -- Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo and Electronic Arts' $2 billion offer for Take-Two Interactive -- it may be him. He not only made it acceptable to pursue hostile deals, he proved they could work -- more than once. He just sealed a hostile $8.5 billion acquisition of rival BEA Systems in January.

And before executives at Microsoft and E.A. ever went hostile, they spent countless hours studying Mr. Ellison's successes, debating whether a public bid would destroy the prizes they so coveted.

Never known for modesty, Mr. Ellison suggested, ''They are copying us.'' He added, ''Others would be foolish not to try.''

Nevertheless, a pervasive and illogical fear of consolidation is still very much alive here. Over egg-white omelets at Buck's in Woodside or Vietnamese at Tamarine in Palo Alto, conversation invariably turns to Yahoo or Take-Two.

Yahoo is ''under attack from Darth Vader'' one venture capitalist told me. ''It's a game developer's nightmare,'' a banker said of E.A.'s bid for Take-Two.

The act of merging has always been an emotionally tortured process for corporate America. But at most Fortune 500 companies -- where hired hands, not founders, run the business -- economics usually wins out over hearts and minds (except in the airline industry recently, where Northwest's pilot's union has so far managed to hijack a deal with Delta).

But in Silicon Valley, unlike elsewhere in the country, even some of the biggest companies like Yahoo are ''are still run by founders who are unwilling to sell for emotional reasons,'' Mr. Ellison said, perhaps taking a swipe at Jerry Yang, Yahoo's chief executive and co-founder, who has been frantically searching for an alternative to Microsoft's bid.

''Sometimes,'' he said, ''they have a hard time separating their emotions from what's best for shareholders.'' Mr. Ellison even allowed that he would have a hard time selling his own business. ''I'm very emotionally involved,'' he said.

Mr. Ellison, whose distaste for Microsoft is legendary, hinted that he's actually rooting for his longtime nemesis over his neighbor, Yahoo. ''I've certainly watched Bill for years,'' he said, referring to Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and co-founder. ''MSN is modestly successful. It would be a formidable portal combined with Yahoo.''

So far, neither Microsoft nor Electronic Arts has yet to become overtly hostile by starting a proxy contest, still hoping that by handling their targets with care they can win them over. But Mr. Ellison suggested that kid gloves aren't necessary.

''What makes you think that engineers are happier, for example, working at PeopleSoft rather than at Oracle?'' he asked. ''Who says it's unfriendly?''

The people who are most likely to scream and moan about an acquisition are the marketing people and salespeople -- who, by the way, are the most dispensable, he said. Granted, Mr. Ellison may not deserve all the credit -- or blame -- for the recent outbreak of hostility in the Valley. Some here say Mr. Ellison bought PeopleSoft for its long-term service contracts with big corporations, rather than for its ability to innovate.

So if the engineers left, it didn't matter. PeopleSoft had a defensible business model, at least in the short term.

Whatever the case, Silicon Valley needs to wake up to the fact it is soon going to be a consolidating place, if it isn't already. As Mr. Ellison said, ''Our industry is maturing.'' Like child stars, many of its companies have to grow up fast -- not act like spoiled kids.

The latest news on mergers and acquisitions can be found at nytimes.com/dealbook
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: TAKEOVERS (90%); ELECTRONIC HUMAN RESOURCES (88%); MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); VENTURE CAPITAL (71%); HIJACKING (64%); AIRLINES (61%); ACQUISITIONS (77%)
COMPANY: MICROSOFT CORP (55%); TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE INC (54%); YAHOO INC (86%); ELECTRONIC ARTS INC (54%)
TICKER: MSFT (NASDAQ) (55%); TTWO (NASDAQ) (54%); YHOO (NASDAQ) (86%); YAH (LSE) (85%); ERTS (NASDAQ) (54%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (55%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (55%); NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (86%); NAICS518111 INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS (86%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (86%); SIC7373 COMPUTER INTEGRATED SYSTEMS DESIGN (86%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (86%); NAICS517110 WIRED TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS (86%)
PERSON: LAWRENCE J ELLISON (94%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CA, USA (90%) CALIFORNIA, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Larry Ellison, head of Oracle, argues that there should be no ''stigma to buying something rather than building it yourself.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES) (pg. C7)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

994 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 11, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

Paid Notice: Deaths GERARD, KAREN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Classified; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 377 words
GERARD--Karen, died March 10, 2008. Born on April 11, 1932. Karen grew up in Hewlett, Long Island. She attended the public high school and then Radcliffe College where she graduated magna cum laude in 1953. She then obtained a masters degree in economics from Columbia University in 1955. Her first job was as an economic researcher with The Bank of The Manhattan Company which soon after merged with Chase Bank. She became one of the first female vice presidents at Chase and the first who attained such a title while working 31/2 to 4 days a week while her children were infants.

She, as an expert on New York City economics, advised the management of the Bank during the City's financial crisis in the 1970s. She then served as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development of New York City in 1981 and 1982 in the Koch Administration. In 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanice published ''American Survivors, Cities and Other Scenes'', her book of essays on urban economics and social problems. In 1985, she joined Moran Stahl & Boyer an economic consulting firm and in 1989 she and two younger colleagues formed their own consulting firm, Kelly Legan & Gerard. She retired in 1993. During 1981 and 1982, she was the president of the Woman's Forum. She was a one time president and long time director of The Foundation for Child Development and for many years was associated with the Trickle Up organization which makes small grants to further entrepreneurship all over the world. She was an enthusiastic supporter of the Radcliffe Institute and the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. In her retirement, she was a docent at the New York Historical Society and for many years until her death she was a docent of the Morgan Library and Museum. She and her husband maintained a weekend house in Sherman, CT since 1966. She is survived by Egon, her husband for 53 years; her daughter Deborah and her husband Seth; her son Daniel and his wife Jani and four grandchildren, Jesse, Taylor, Cody and Lucy. She is also survived by a brother, Bruce Silberblatt. The date and time of a memorial will be announced. Instead of flowers, she has requested that people consider making a contribution to The Foundation for Child Development, 145 E. 32nd St, New York, NY 10016-6055. Funeral private.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: DEATHS & OBITUARIES (93%); CHILDREN (89%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (77%); ECONOMIC NEWS (77%); HISTORY (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); CONSULTING SERVICES (74%); PUBLIC SCHOOLS (73%); LIBRARIES (72%); MUSEUMS & GALLERIES (69%); GRANTS & GIFTS (64%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (78%); ECONOMIC CRISIS (72%)
ORGANIZATION: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (58%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Paid Death Notice
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

995 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

BYLINE: By BRAD STONE
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; BITS; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 332 words
A Patent Ruling

May Be Revisited

There's not much love in legal circles for the so-called business method patent, an exclusive intellectual property right over a novel way of doing business. Critics of such patents -- like Amazon's ''One Click'' or Priceline's ''name your own price'' patents -- say that they clog the United States Patent and Trademark Office, lead to excessive litigation and have little connection to real, physical invention.

Now the patent law community is closely watching one case in particular and speculating that federal judges could invalidate business method patents sometime this year. The case, generally known as Re Bilski, involves a method for managing the risk of bad weather to crops by making hedged trades in the commodities markets. The 12 judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have agreed to hear the case en banc, or in a single joint session, in May. They have suggested that they might reconsider the ruling on State Street Bank & Trust Company v. Signature Financial Group Inc., which helped to inaugurate the age of business method patents a decade ago.

''This case has the potential to end business method patents as we know them today,'' says a patent litigator, Alan Fisch of Kaye Scholer, a law firm in Washington.

Another patent expert, Kevin Rivette, the former vice president for intellectual property strategy at I.B.M., thinks Bilski could wind up before the Supreme Court, which has recently shown a willingness to correct the excesses of an overburdened patent office.

The death of business method patents could be felt strongest in Silicon Valley, where a first step of many entrepreneurs is to retreat with lawyers to start patenting defensible business ideas. It could also affect patent acquisition firms like Intellectual Ventures, a firm financed by major technology companies like Microsoft, Google, Intel, Apple and Nokia that is aggressively accumulating patent portfolios.

BRAD STONE

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: PATENT LAW (93%); INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW (92%); PATENTS (91%); MAJOR US LAW FIRMS (78%); APPELLATE DECISIONS (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); LAWYERS (78%); JUDGES (75%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (75%); WEATHER (74%); RISK MANAGEMENT (74%); COMMODITIES TRADING (71%); APPEALS COURTS (68%); SUPREME COURTS (78%); LEGAL SERVICES (78%)
COMPANY: STATE STREET BANK & TRUST CO (69%); SIGNATURE FINANCIAL GROUP (55%); GOOGLE INC (53%); MICROSOFT CORP (53%); KAYE SCHOLER LLP (58%); INTEL CORP (53%)
ORGANIZATION: PATENT & TRADEMARK OFFICE (57%); UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT (56%)
TICKER: GOOG (NASDAQ) (53%); GGEA (LSE) (50%); MSFT (NASDAQ) (53%); INTC (NASDAQ) (53%); INTC (SWX) (53%)
INDUSTRY: SIC6022 STATE COMMERCIAL BANKS (69%); NAICS518112 WEB SEARCH PORTALS (50%); SIC8999 SERVICES, NEC (50%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (50%); NAICS511210 SOFTWARE PUBLISHERS (53%); SIC7372 PREPACKAGED SOFTWARE (53%); NAICS334413 SEMICONDUCTOR & RELATED DEVICE MANUFACTURING (53%); NAICS519130 INTERNET PUBLISHING & BROADCASTING & WEB SEARCH PORTALS (53%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: March 12, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

996 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

The Amazing Adventures of the Midcentury Comic Book Trade
BYLINE: By JANET MASLIN
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1069 words
THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE

The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

By David Hajdu

434 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.

''The Ten-Cent Plague'' is the third book by David Hajdu to take a subject suitable for fans' hagiography and turn it into something of much wider interest. After his oddball, revelatory forays into the worlds of jazz (''Lush Life'') and folk music (''Positively 4th Street''), Mr. Hajdu has delved into the lurid, untethered world of early comic books. A representative story cited here is ''The Wild Spree of the Laughing Sadist,'' from the mockingly titled magazine ''Crime Does Not Pay.'' It depicts a boy so murderous that his victims included the family goldfish and parakeet.

Before the comics were beset by the prolonged crackdown that is described here, they were created in a spirit best summarized by Mickey Spillane, one of Mr. Hajdu's many colorful interviewees. (That prolific pulp-fiction king, who died in 2006, wrote a few cops-and-robbers comics stories beginning in 1940.) ''If it's any good, somebody will pay for it,'' Mr. Spillane said, ''and a kid's dime buys the same cup of coffee.''

Those kids' dimes became greatly controversial in the 1940s, when parent-baiting comics prefigured what would become a thriving and defiant youth-oriented culture. ''They instilled a pride of ownership rooted not in adult conceptions of value, but in their absence,'' Mr. Hajdu observes in a style that is incisive and entertaining. As for crime, it ''permeated the tales of heroism in nearly all comic books, since it was the thing crime fighters fought.''

So the comics cranked out the gangsters, monsters and mutants that would galvanize crusaders defending young readers' virtue. ''The time has come to legislate these books off the newsstands and out of the candy stores'' went the rallying cry by formidable figures like Frederic Wertham, whose 1954 tract ''Seduction of the Innocent'' helped focus the attack. This kind of condemnation led to the book burnings and McCarthy-esque hearings of the mid-1950s that are at the heart of Mr. Hajdu's investigation. His book includes a long list of comics contributors whose livelihoods were destroyed by the purge.

''The Ten-Cent Plague'' proceeds chronologically. Its early sections explain how the comic book began as an experiment, then made its way into the cultural mainstream. ''The ghetto of comics was becoming a boomtown,'' Mr. Hajdu writes as he looks at the ethnic roots of the early comics' creators, the subtexts of their imaginings and the Wild West business atmosphere in which they found themselves.

This part of the book, with its thumbnail biographies of the pioneers, is heavily geared to aficionados. But the creators were anything but dull. Will Eisner, who became a comic book entrepreneur in his teenage years and went on to become one of the field's legendary artists, says of his partner, Jerry Iger: ''Monday morning there was always some babe that would show up in net stockings, and she'd say: 'I met your partner. He gave me a job.' ''

The book goes on to revel in the creative effusions that followed. Graphics are analyzed with acuity and gusto. (''The main cover image was a fever dream of bedlam.'') So is the blossoming of subcategories like the ''narratives of young women assaulted by 'weird menaces' (that is, those with otherworldly methods of removing their victims' garments)'' or category-melding titles like ''Cowboy Love.'' Even the Sunday-school comics meant to counteract the sordid ones are examined for their over-the-top exuberance. ''David defeats the Philistines by slaying and beheading Goliath!'' went an early, insufficiently tame Bible comic headline.

As the comics' most defensible and durable creations, the superheroes generated mimicry in unlikely quarters. Those who began noticing the comics' gleeful licentiousness acquired their own version of superpowers. Of one schoolboy who led a book-burning, anti-comics protest, Mr. Hajdu writes, ''Hawley and his fellow crusaders so embraced superhero comics' ethos of eradicating evil that they employed it against other comics.'' And it worked, partly because the comics' creators were too giddy with success to realize what trouble they were inciting.

''It was a bad time to be weird,'' one artist says of 1953. By then, governmental witch hunting was on the rise, and public fears of juvenile delinquency were easily fanned. While Mr. Hajdu does not defend the comics' reckless extremes, he regards some of them as more worthy of psychiatric examination than punishment. And he positions the drive to clean up comics as a response to larger fears. ''There was no mistaking the commonality of what was starting to happen in comic books and what was going on in the rest of the world,'' he quotes the comic book editor Frank Bourgholtzer as saying. But on a scale of postwar public panic attacks, he places this one somewhere below the Red scare and above U.F.O.s.

''The Ten-Cent Plague'' examines the early power of television to fan these flames as Senate subcommittee hearings, led by Senator Estes Kefauver, were conflated in the public consciousness with the Kefauver hearings on organized crime. At the center of this crisis was Bill Gaines, the publisher whose EC empire was crushed by the specter of censorship after his testimony about a drawing of a woman's severed head helped crystallize the debate.

Yet he went on to have the last laugh. Horror and terror had been among Mr. Gaines's staples, but the use of those words in titles was banned outright in 1954; New York State added ''crime'' to the list in 1955. However, Mr. Gaines had a humor comic book, and to escape regulation he decided to call it a magazine. That magazine, Mad, went on to skewer any target it chose with happy impunity.

But for many of those described here, the party was abruptly over. In a stroke of needless melodrama, Mr. Hajdu frames the comics' collapse with a prologue glimpse of one artist whose career was extinguished: Janice Valleau Winkleman, who for 50 years never told anyone, even her daughter, that she had once had a career in comics. She warrants Mr. Hajdu's sympathy and admiration. But the events recounted in ''The Ten-Cent Plague'' need no such histrionics. On its own, this book tells an amazing story, with thrills and chills more extreme than the workings of a comic book's imagination.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LAW ENFORCEMENT (74%); ORGANIZED CRIME (69%); CONFECTIONERY & NUT STORES (50%)
COMPANY: FARRAR STRAUS & GIROUX INC (58%)
TITLE: Ten-Cent Plague, The (Book)>; Ten-Cent Plague, The (Book)>
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: David Hajdu (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHELLE HEIMERMAN) (pg. E7)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

997 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2008 Monday

Late Edition - Final

Bledsoe Is Out of Football And in Business for Himself
BYLINE: By GREG BISHOP
SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Sports Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1428 words
DATELINE: BEND, Ore.
On the first day of the first football season after his retirement, Drew Bledsoe actually missed two-a-days. In the morning, he climbed into his boat and floated on Whitefish Lake in Montana and allowed for 30 minutes of reflection.

Then he started training camp.

This was not training camp like the ones Bledsoe reported to during his 14-year N.F.L. career. This was Camp Bledsoe, the beginning of his transition.

He grabbed a camera and asked his wife to snap a shot of him sitting on a deck, feet in the water, beer clutched between his legs. He sent the picture to dozens of friends still playing in the N.F.L., all sweating through training camp in the sun.

''As you can see from this first picture I am maintaining my strict workout regimen,'' he wrote them. ''You can see here I am alternating some 12-ounce curls with some toe swirls. I generally do these until the bottle gets too light to offer enough resistance then I start over with a fresh one.''

The messages continued through the first week of camp -- Bledsoe riding his motorcycle, sipping wine, playing golf. By the end, Bledsoe knew deep down what he already suspected. His N.F.L. career was over.

''When training camp came and went, and I wasn't there, that was when the official break happened,'' said the 36-year-old Bledsoe, who announced his retirement last April. ''I left that phase of my life and moved on to the next one.''

Last week, quarterback Brett Favre joined Bledsoe in the retired quarterbacks club. Next season, Favre will experience what Bledsoe went through this year, a transition from veteran signal caller to real-world rookie.

On a recent two-day tour of his new life in the city of Bend, Ore., Bledsoe conducted a business meeting over wine, coached third graders on the basketball court and closed a business deal on the ski slopes at nearby Mount Bachelor.

Bledsoe began planning his transition six years before his retirement, about the same time his tenure ended with the New England Patriots. They selected him out of Washington State with the first overall pick in the 1993 draft, and Bledsoe's entire family traveled to New York City, their first trip together on an airplane.

''Like the Waltons go to New York'' Bledsoe said.

During his ninth season in New England, against the Jets in late September 2001, Bledsoe took the most vicious of hit of his career. Linebacker Mo Lewis smacked Bledsoe along the sideline as he tried to run for a first down. Four liters of blood flowed into Bledsoe's chest cavity, until his lungs failed to inflate.

Bledsoe went back into the game, but he could not remember plays he spent years practicing. He needed assistance getting dressed after the game.

In Bledsoe's absence, the Patriots turned to a young and unknown quarterback named Tom Brady. Bledsoe threw a touchdown pass in the American Football Conference Championship game that year, but Brady started in the Super Bowl, and the Patriots' dynasty began with Bledsoe on the sideline.

''I don't play the what-if game much,'' Bledsoe said. ''And of course, I believe had I not gotten hit, we would have done the same thing. As an athlete, you have to believe that.''

After that season, Bledsoe felt a strong urge to walk away. Instead, he went to Buffalo, where he made his fourth Pro Bowl, then to Dallas, where he was benched again. His career ended with more than 44,000 passing yards and 251 touchdown passes.

The Cowboys pulled Bledsoe at halftime of a game against the Giants in late October 2006. He said he decided to retire then, but waited until the season ended to make sure he was not simply making an emotional decision.

Bledsoe says he is still bothered by the perception at the end of his career that he was too slow and his skills were declining. He insists his skills ''had not diminished to any measurable degree.''Bledsoe wished he could show up at the scouting combine wearing a disguise, pretending to be from a small school, essentially starting over.

''Perception always bugged me,'' said Adam Bledsoe, his younger brother. ''In the latter half of his career, he became a whipping boy.''

Bledsoe relished standing on the field, the center of attention, 80,000 fans packed in the stands. But after the second benching, after teammates started addressing him by Mister, he decided to fade into the background. He started to decline interview requests and began starting businesses.

He knew the statistics of recently retired players, the marriages that crumbled, the money that disappeared, the friend who refused to watch football for three years after retirement. Gone were the people who made his doctor's appointments, gave him directions and planned nearly every minute of his day.

His biggest fear: finishing football and having no reason to get out of bed in the morning. As a result, Bledsoe said yes to everything. During his career, a winery deal with three other N.F.L. quarterbacks -- Damon Huard, Rick Mirer and Dan Marino -- fell through, so Bledsoe started his own vineyard. He planted the grapes three years ago, and the winery will start producing in 2010.

A coffee business, 11 Roasters, is in full swing. Bledsoe proudly shows off the fire-engine red roaster in his Bend offices and talks about his blends like a Starbucks chairman. (He says the Esmeralda special is a favorite.)

The idea behind all his endeavors, whether wine, coffee, real estate or the Drew Bledsoe Foundation, is to start slow, build small and then expand. Bledsoe said he believed every coffee blend, every bottle of wine, should tell a story.

His advice to Favre? Stay busy. Adam Bledsoe jokes that after his brother retired, he took golf as seriously as he used to take football. He raised $600,000 in four months to put in FieldTurf at the local high school.

Along the way, the strangest thing happened. Bledsoe sometimes awoke at 4:30 in the morning, excited to start the day.

He coached flag football in the fall and basketball in the winter. He and his wife, Maura, will celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary in May. Finger paintings from four children -- Stu, 10, John, 8, Henry, 7, Healy, 4 -- hang from the refrigerator.

Sometimes, Bledsoe's family wonders the same things as everybody else. Like when Healy asked the other day, ''Daddy, when are you going to play football again?''

Arizona, Carolina, Cincinnati and Jacksonville called this past season. Jacksonville's offer intrigued Bledsoe. The Jaguars had a strong running game, a solid offensive line, a coach Bledsoe liked, and they were offering an easy seven-figure paycheck.

Bledsoe seriously considered it, but he decided to turn down the offer. When he woke up the next morning with a giant smile on his face, he knew he made the right decision.

Toward the end of his career, Bledsoe learned he had chronic head trauma migraines. Every time he was hit in the back of the head, he lost his peripheral vision.

''I really don't have any regrets,'' Bledsoe said. ''Most people leave the game angry, at least for a little while. I had that with the Patriots, but I got over it, moved on.''

Humor eases the transition. His e-mail address starts exqb11. The Bledsoes' Christmas card pictured the family dressed in holiday gear, with its recently retired father sitting oblivious in the middle, watching television.

There were times when Bledsoe missed the game. At a restaurant in Montana, the Cowboys' first preseason game was on television, and there were all his teammates, guys he played with only a few months earlier, moving on.During the Super Bowl, the Bledsoes went skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyo. They planned to leave on a Sunday, but snow forced them back inside the cabin, where they watched the Giants' victory on television.

When the game ended, Maura held a glass of wine and toasted her husband on surviving his first season out of football. She noticed tears forming in his eyes.

At the end of the two-day Bend tour, Bledsoe pulled his Mercedes into the lot where the family is building its second dream home. The house will be about 10,000 square feet, with a wine cellar and a theater and an underground basketball court.

The last time Bledsoe built a home like this, he played for the Patriots, his career still in front of him. Scanning the mass of concrete, Bledsoe smiled. New dream house, new dreams, new life. This transition is complete.

''His career didn't end the way we thought,'' Maura said. ''I always wanted it to end in the Super Bowl, ride into the sunset. But this works. He's happy and busier than he's ever been.''