Joe Montana is rich. His name recognition is higher than that of any current NFL quarterback. His reputation is unassailable.

And yet, here he is, trying to stifle young entrepreneurship at its most nascent state. Tsk tsk tsk.

Montana is suing a teenager for using his name to link to a porn site. Worse, none of the women on the site are wearing any Montana-approved memorabilia.

At least we think not, since we hadn't bothered to visit the site. The thing about porn sites, as you doubtless know to your shame is that, when you visit one, you end up solicited by thousands of others, and the next thing you know, you're having to explain to your daughter why she can never use the Internet again.

But we digress. The point is, Montana is closing himself to a weird but doubtless profitable revenue stream. This is, of course, his choice, and frankly a good one as well.

But the funny thing about entrepreneurs, even ones committing what are probably felonies, is that they spurn imitators. Even stranger, there are probably some athletes who don't have Montana's sense of propriety, let alone his revenue streams.

Thus, we may be looking in the future at athletes who will sell their name for the right price to some clever porn middleman.

Do we think this will happen soon? Of course not. Are we in favor of it? Lord, no. We're just trying to get you past the first four paragraphs for a change.

But you may have noticed over the past couple of years that the market for celebrity athlete endorsers is a little thin. Seems that they just don't move product the way they used to.

Oh, the Williams sisters are out there hawking women's clothes, and Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant are doing fine. But for the most part, the commercial world has shied away from athletes because, well, only a very few of them interest the casual shopper, and in any event are only good at moving uniforms with their names on the back -- the money from which, we might add, goes to the clubs rather than the athletes.

Plus, as the dot.com world collapses in on itself, there isn't the kind of disposable money out there for celebrity endorsers, or any other kind for that matter. We hate to say this, kids, but to make their money now, the stars may have to go back to caring about their free throws.

Besides, the closest any athlete has come to crossing this line, the late, great Wilt Chamberlain, is stuck post-mortem with a house he can't move. True, there isn't a lot of call for homes in which there are no right angles, where everything is sized to someone a foot and change about the average American's height, and where light switches are positioned in places only a gynecologist can properly appreciate.

But that was Wilt, lord of all he surveyed and master of his domain ... at least for as long as he lived. Now, as part of the feathered choir, he stands in the celestial hereafter knowing that his legacy includes producing a realtor's worst nightmare.

Thus, we are still years away, we suspect, from the time when our athletic heroes will see the commercial opportunities in Internet pornography. There's obviously nothing in it for Joe Montana, and he ought to win huge damages in court from the uppity little amateur filth merchant.

But someday, someone will go for the money, as sure as there's point shaving, illegal drug use, academic fraud and the International Olympic Committee.

And at that point, people will stop hauling out that tired old nonsense about, "Athletes are role models." Frankly, it's almost worth it. Not quite, but almost.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.