There will be little guesswork by Yao Ming's representatives when it comes to evaluating his many endorsement opportunities.

That's because officials with Team Yao -- which include agent Bill Duffy and Bill Sanders of BDA Sports Management, Yao's advisor Erik Zhang and John Huizinga, the deputy dean of the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business -- will be using a calculator to help determine if the company's goals and society's perception of its product fall in line with the personal brand the 7-foot-5 Houston Rockets center is seeking to establish.

The calculator is a glorified Excel spreadsheet that is part of a 175-page report that also includes a suggested marketing plan composed by a group of students at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business.

The students, who were assigned to the project in September by Zhang, a fellow student at Chicago, were part of "Laboratory in New Product and Strategy Development," a class that has produced real-world branding data for companies like American Airlines, Frito Lay and Johnson & Johnson.

"The sports marketers dealing with Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods have done an excellent job," said Sanders, director of marketing for BDA Sports. "But many have questioned the credibility of Michael endorsing Ballpark Franks or Tiger endorsing Buick since you won't likely see Jordan eating a hot dog or Tiger driving that car. We want to learn from that and make sure that Yao doesn't do any endorsement that will harm his credibility."

While the phones are ringing off the hook at BDA offices from the news media and interested corporations, Yao's representatives were waiting for the report, which the students presented to Sanders and Zhang on Dec. 6.

Yao, who has been dubbed "The Dynasty" by teammate Steve Francis, is leading the league in shooting percentage at 59.3 percent, while averaging 12 points and 7.6 rebounds per game through the first 23 games for the Rockets.

Sanders says he anticipates that the 22-year-old Yao, one of the early favorites for NBA Rookie of the Year honors, will do slightly more endorsements in the Chinese market than in the U.S. The report says Team Yao should make its target market the 460 million kids, parents and yuppies that live in the already Yao-supportive urban populations in China. The entire U.S. population is estimated at 280 million.

University of Chicago research showed that these urban dwellers value hard-working, talented and confident people, and they are also among the most educated and most wealthy in the Chinese community.

How popular is Yao in China? Zhang said Yao participated in an Internet chat on the Chinese portal Sohu.com on Dec. 5, and according to the Web site, almost 9 million users logged in during the 1½-hour chat. The volume of traffic paralyzed the entire server network in six of China's largest cities. Rockets games that have been broadcast live in the early-morning hours in China have garnered five times the viewing audience in the United States.

Yao is in the final year of a Nike endorsement deal (he wears size 18s) that he signed when he was playing in China and the sports apparel company is reportedly readying to run a print campaign in China. Although published reports have said that Yao -- who stocks his refrigerator with Starbucks Frappuccinos -- met with Starbucks chairman and Sonics owner Howard Schultz in late November to discuss a possible endorsement deal, Sanders denies that the meeting ever happened.

Now that the report has been released, Team Yao will be able to evaluate companies that have approached it and proactively seek out others.

When considering an opportunity, Team Yao will use the branding calculator. First, it will enter the name of the category of the product that Yao could be endorsing is in. Next, they will enter the company name and finally they imput what Team Yao or Yao himself thinks of the idea.

The calculator then computes what the perceptions associated with the category are, how society views that certain company and how it reflects on Yao and adds it with the subjective opinion of Yao or his marketers. If the score is high enough, the endorsement would be a good one for Yao's personal brand.

"The calculator really surprised us," Zhang said. "It gives us a precise framework to do evaluations and they've provided us with the tools to adjust to future changes." The University of Chicago students included a form survey in the report, which would allow Team Yao to use if it needed to test the perception of a brand in the U.S. or China.

"The calculator will never be more important than the judgment of the people we have assembled," Sanders said. "But it allows us to look at every deal in that business school type of analysis, which is very important."

Sanders will be armed with a full color brochure, like the material BDA Sports produced for prospective endorsers for their rookie client, Chicago Bulls' guard Jay Williams.

"When a customer comes to a show room and is ready to pay for a big Mercedes, you have to give them a nice brochure so that long after they have left the showroom, they are constantly thinking about it. We're going to do that with Yao."

Sanders said companies he will definitely approach are official Olympic sponsors.

"We want Yao to be the face of the 2008 Olympics (in Beijing)," Sanders said.

The report advocates that subsequent advertising should then reflect one of Yao's key personality traits: Hard-working, self-confident, respectful, talented, heroic or charismatic/light-hearted.

Sanders says he expects to have two national endorsement deals done within the next couple months and could possibly pull off an unprecendented deal with two companies in the same category -- giving one the U.S. exclusive to Yao and the other international rights.

The research is owned by the University of Chicago, but Team Yao has a licensing agreement to use the data. Sanders says he intends to update Yao's business plan every year and have him sign off on it.

Zhang said the Chinese government has not limited the amount of endorsements Yao could do and that the Shanghai Sharks get a set fee from his earnings and would not get any percentage of each endorsement he chooses to do.

The Rockets, who are hiring four Mandarin-speaking executives and are planning a weekly radio show in Mandarin, have cashed in on the exposure of Yao by signing a six-year, $6 million deal with Chinese beer company Yanjing before the season. However, attendance is only up 8 percent (to 12,849 fans per game) when compared to a similar point in the season last year.

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn3.com.