When the lights of sports celebrity dim, and franchises will no longer pay star players a living wage (by professional sports standards, that is), retired pros must look to other means of making money.

Of course, they can always try to bank on sports memorabilia - but that’s generally considered low-hanging fruit (and what finally landed OJ Simpson in prison was a fight over such relics).

In the earlier part of this decade, many athletes invested in a variety of funds. But since many players -- baseball great Sandy Koufax among them -- were involved in the Bernie Madoff and Robert Allen Stanford cases, that's changed. The most glaring case was HRJ Capital. The Silicon Valley fund started by San Francisco 49ers teammates Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott and Harris Barton once featured clients like Andre Agassi and Jerry Rice. Today, they allegedly owe Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) $69 million.

More recently, in a trend that seems to defy the current economic climate, athletes have started investing in banking start-ups. It started in 2006, with the formation of Washington State’s first Latino-owned bank, Plaza Bank, whose founders include retired baseball star Edgar Martinez. After boasting over $78 million in assets last March, the bank’s stock has since dropped - but that hasn’t discouraged the bizarre trend.

Most recently, Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Bank of Commerce announced that the newest member of its board was Miami Dolphins' running back Ronnie Brown. At the same time, Burr Ridge Bank & Trust in Illinois was filing an application with state banking regulators that included a list of 20 organizers, including 2-sport star Bo Jackson, the star of Nike’s “Bo Knows” commercials and co-owner of a massive sports complex in nearby Lockport, Illinois.

But perhaps no one has set a more shining example for athlete/investors than basketball legend Magic Johnson, whose Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund has invested heavily in underserved urban communities. A decade after being established, the Fund today claims almost $2 billion in committed capital and the title of “the country’s largest private-equity fund focused solely on the revitalization of America’s densely populated, ethnically diverse communities.”

On a smaller scale, there's also Omni New York, a real-estate developer headed by former baseball star Mo Vaughn. Since starting in December, 2004, the company has acquired close to 3,000 units of affordable New York-state housing with an eye on rehabilitation. That includes a nice upgrade for Noble Drew Ali Plaza in Brownsville - an infamously neglected property.

Naturally, there isn’t a magic formula for retired athletes. But as for the banks, we’ll probably have to wait and see.