By now you've all seen the credit card commercial, the one in which people of disparate race and color and even gender, claim to be Emmitt Smith.

I'm Emmitt Smith. No, I'm Emmitt Smith. I am Emmitt Smith.

Of course, anyone who has so much as glanced at a television during the past 13 years, just casually on a Sunday afternoon, knows the real Emmitt Smith. No, the real Emmitt Smith needn't stand up to separate himself from a legion of wannabes. Long before Smith began huckstering long-distance phone calls with Alf, his face was recognizable, his uniform number a universal calling card.

Just dial 1-800-22-R-U-N-H-A-R-D, and the person likely to answer the call was the incomparable Emmitt Smith.

But that was then and this is now. And in the now NFL, punching that same number into the handset will elicit a message that the line has been disconnected.

Time will move forward, of course, because it always does. The sun came up a day after Art Modell nudged Jim Brown toward retirement. Ditto the morning after Barry Sanders abruptly decided to walk away from the game. The exits of Joe Montana, Reggie White, Dan Marino and John Elway didn't precipitate the league hanging an "Out of Business" placard on the door of its Park Avenue offices.

But their departures diminished not just the quality of the league, but also to a degree its humanness, because all of those luminaries superseded the game itself. And so even if Smith opts for another uniform, as did Montana, he will cease to be the same Emmitt Smith. And the NFL will not be the league as we have known it since Jimmy Johnson had the foresight to maneuver in the first round of the 1990 draft to get into a position where he could select Emmitt Smith.

No, a new uniform will not transform Smith into one of those pretenders on the credit card commercial, just less of himself. But then, the perception that he indeed is less of himself, at age 33, is what this is all about, isn't it?

At an age when most tailbacks are toting around a remote control and not a football, the Cowboys have decided that Smith is mortal, that his skills are now just as common as his surname. Having come close to another 1,000-yard season in 2002, behind the NFL's most itinerant offensive line, Smith feels his 33-year-old legs have another year or two of carries in them.

Dallas owner Jerry Jones is a pragmatic man, Emmitt Smith a prideful one. And while those two attributes aren't necessarily the emotional equivalent of oil and water, in this partnership at least, they are.

For weeks, absent the opinions of agents and advisors, the two men have spoken heart-to-heart about possible scenarios. The latest negotiation of sorts came Wednesday, when Smith was in Austin for an appointment with the state legislature, where he arrived on Jones' jet. It was a bit of very convenient timing, since new Cowboys coach Bill Parcells was convening his first full-squad meeting, and really didn't want Smith around.

Imagine the distraction that would have resulted from Smith braving the ice storms that enveloped The Big D, to have arrived at the first meeting with a new coach, a guy prepared to move on without the league's leading career rusher. Ignoring the pink elephant in the middle of the room would have been easier than overlooking Smith, and the irony of his presence.

Thankfully, it didn't come to that, and Jones would never have allowed it to ever get close to a possible crisis situation.

Fact is, Jones cares deeply for Smith, which is why he convinced Parcells in their very first meeting that he would handle the denouement with the great tailback. Smith is likewise fond of the man who has signed his paychecks for 13 seasons. But on one key component, the ability of Smith at this point in his career, they diverge. And the divergence led them down separate paths.

Jones has urged Smith, some say passionately, to retire as a Cowboy. Truth be told, the specter of Smith in another uniform, stripped of the star on his helmet, would be a chilling one. But there could be teams, like Tampa Bay or Carolina, that would offer Smith a contract. And there is a voice inside Smith's head, a tingling in his legs, that might compel him to accept.

Whatever the decision, expect that Smith will make a very well-considered choice, one he feels is best for him. His partner on those long-distance ads is a dummy; Smith isn't.

Wherever he ends up, things won't be the same. There is, no matter what the credit card contends, just one Emmitt Smith.

And the endgame to his stellar career, or at least the Dallas portion of it, was not supposed to play out this way.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.