He should stay out of Green Bay

Brett Favre fans can mourn all they want, wrote Michael Rosenberg of the Detroit Free Press, but they should not let their hearts blur reality.

“The better team won, and so did the better quarterback,” the columnist wrote. “Can I say that? Is it OK? Now that the Brett Favre Appreciation Tour is over, at least for a little while, can we calmly acknowledge what just happened?”

When in Rome . . .

Smartest fan at the Packers-Giants game in Green Bay? Here’s a nomination for local resident Sarah Frisk, who wore a full-length penguin suit.

“It’s really very warm,” she bragged to a Green Bay Press-Gazette reporter covering the game, which was played in sub-freezing temperatures.

Trivia time

The Chicago Cubs this year will be playing their 100th season since last winning the World Series. Who did the Cubs beat in 1908 and how many more Series appearances did they make?

Tribute-taries

Monday’s headlines in the New York Post: Parad-Ice, Super-Mann and About Tynes! -- in ode to the Giants’ victory, Eli Manning’s performance and Lawrence Tynes’ game-winning field-goal in overtime after he’d missed twice during regulation.

Poetry

Headline suggestion from Times reader Sol Sorgenstein: It was the worst of Tynes, it was the best of Tynes.

Looking back

Today marks the 35th anniversary of George Foreman’s second-round knockout of previously unbeaten Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight title.

Fans might remember the six times that Frazier was knocked down, and Howard Cosell’s now immortal call, “Down goes Frazier.”

The fight occurred the same day as the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, and the death of former president Lyndon Johnson.

Kick ‘em when they’re down

TNT basketball analyst Charles Barkley recently labeled the Phoenix Suns “softer than tissue paper,” adding, “Imagine if you’re playing football and the toughest guy on your team is the kicker. You can’t win. The Phoenix Suns’ toughest player [Steve Nash] is a kicker.”

Responded Arizona Republic columnist Paola Boivin: “If I were [Amare] Stoudemire or [Shawn] Marion, I’d want to bicycle kick that quote right back into Barkley’s pie hole.”

No contest

What would happen if the current New England Patriots were matched against the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins?

Dolphins’ radio analyst Jim Mandich, a tight end on the 1972 team, told the Miami Herald: “They would kick our [behinds] from one side of the field to the other.”

Observation tower

From Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel: “Two reasons Kelly Tilghman of Orlando-based Golf Channel hasn’t lost her job [at least not yet] following the totally inappropriate, racially charged ‘lynch him in a back alley’ term she used about Tiger Woods:

“(1) Because she’s a FOT [Friend of Tiger]; and (2) Because she’s not an old white dude [see Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek, Al Campanis, Fuzzy Zoeller, etc., etc.].”

How ‘bout them . . . ‘boys?

From David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “Did you hear that botanists have discovered a type of palm tree in Madagascar that flowers, then self-destructs? They’re classifying it as Treeus Cowboyus.”

Trivia answer

The Cubs defeated the Detroit Tigers in five games and were unlucky in seven tries thereafter: in 1910, 1918, 1929, 1932, 1935, 1938 and 1945.

And finally

From Andy Borowitz of BorowitzReport.com: “Frustrated by persistent questions about steroid use, pitcher Roger Clemens threw a car at a reporter.”

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pete.thomas@latimes.com