Say what you will about Al Davis. He has a sense of history and a soft spot for history makers.

So he probably knew that at 42, Jerry Rice had lost most of what makes him the best receiver in NFL history. But he wasn’t about to release him, talking to at least five teams about trading for Rice, who was playing out his career with Davis’ Raiders.

“We accepted the trade out of respect for Jerry,” Davis said after he finally got Seattle to take Rice for a conditional seventh-round draft pick. “We wanted to accommodate Jerry. This is best for him and best for this team.”

Allowing a superstar to retire gracefully is difficult in all sports. Babe Ruth, after all, left baseball not as a Yankee but as a Boston Brave. Cal Ripken kept playing day after day, night after night to extend his consecutive game streak even when it seemed to be hurting the Baltimore Orioles.

But it can be especially difficult in the NFL, where roster turnover is constant.

The salary cap is the common reason cited when today’s standouts leave a team with which they’ve spent their entire careers. But that was happening long before the cap came to the NFL.

John Unitas spent his final season in San Diego, and Joe Namath finished as a Ram. Joe Montana went to Kansas City, and teammate Ronnie Lott went from the 49ers to the Raiders and then the Jets. Franco Harris ended his career in Seattle after playing on four Super Bowl winners in Pittsburgh, playing until the pain was so bad he was forced to retire during the 1984 season.

And Deion Sanders is back in the NFL with the Ravens at 37, three years after “retiring.”

“You know you’re in that special category of stars when they start comparing you to yourself,” says Gene Upshaw, a Hall of Fame guard for the Raiders before becoming executive director of the NFL players union.

Receiver Jerry Rice watches from the sidelines. The 42-year-old Rice, shown during Oakland's game against Denver on Sunday in Oakland, Calif., was traded to Seattle this week.

“That’s exactly what they are doing with Deion now and it’s what they’ve done to a lot others, including Jerry. They’ll say ‘He’s still pretty good, but he’s not Jerry Rice.'”

Upshaw also thinks the desire to hang on comes from exactly the factor that makes a superstar a superstar — perseverance.

“When I saw Jerry going to Seattle, I was saddened,” says Upshaw, who played 15 seasons and retired at age 36. “But it’s also what made him as great as he is. He works and works and works and feels if he keeps on working he can still be better than most players.

“It’s just difficult for someone who is so highly motivated to quit. I’ve known players who will consider retirement at the end of a season, then think ‘I’ll give it another year. How much older can I be in six months?’ I went through it myself, but it was easier because I had a chance to stay in football because I had the union job available to me.”

The timing of the Rice trade coincides with Seattle’s game at Arizona, which puts him up against another superstar who should have retired earlier: Emmitt Smith. It marks the first meeting involving the NFL’s leading career rusher and leading pass-catcher since 1984, when Chicago with Walter Payton, played San Diego, with Charlie Joiner.

Smith broke Payton’s record in 2002 at age 34, ancient for a running back. Then he was released by Dallas, with whom he had spent his entire career, 13 seasons to that point. The only team interested was Arizona.