Aside from the drama, Brett Favre makes the NFL more interesting

Say what you will about Brett Favre’s ceaseless dramatics, the NFL is more interesting when he’s playing.…

Equally compelling to Green Bay Packers fans, of course, would be for Aaron Rodgers & Co. to derail Favre’s Super Bowl aspirations with the Minnesota Vikings. …

It could easily happen.

A player putting eraser to paper should not be the enduring image of a major international sports event.…

Golf looked silly Sunday, but rules are rules.…

Reggie Bush’s failure to apologize last week in a conversation with Pat Haden makes one wonder: If not now, when? …

A certain Dodgers slugger has spent so much time rehabbing the last two seasons that a headline on the Inland Empire 66ers’ website exclaims, “ Manny Ramirez is back!” …

The 66ers’ “Bark in the Ballpark” promotion Wednesday night encouraged fans to “enjoy America’s favorite pastime with man’s best friend.” …

Presumably, they weren’t talking about Ramirez. …

The Texas Rangers, threatening to bury the Angels, are the only franchise in baseball that has never won a playoff series.…

Vladimir Guerrero & Co. look determined to change that.…

More evidence that Tim Tebow is a throwback: The rookie reportedly listens to Frank Sinatra before games.…

Ring-a-Ding Ding! …

You rarely see boxers bleeding the way Eli Manning was hemorrhaging Monday night, an unsettling vision that surely put a fright into New York Giants fans.…

It looked like “something out of a ‘Friday the 13th’ movie,” as Giants center Shaun O’Hara told reporters.…

Not since 1999 has the National League most valuable player come from a team other than the San Francisco Giants, Philadelphia Phillies or St. Louis Cardinals.

Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds might change that this year — if Albert Pujols doesn’t win again. …

Larry Bird, comparing the “Dream Team” to the 1960 U.S. Olympic team of Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, etc., says the older group was “a hell of a lot tougher than we were.” …

Continues Bird, “I couldn’t imagine the ’92 team getting in a covered wagon for eight days, going across the country, jumping in the Atlantic Ocean, swimming for six days, then walking 3,000 miles to the Colosseum in Rome for a dollar a day.” …

When U.S. Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin says that he’s looking at Tiger Woods “in essence like any other player,” nobody should take him seriously.…

Thanks to ESPN, the Little League World Series might now be the most overhyped event in sports. …

Regarding Udonis Haslem’s arrest in Miami this week, reader Ralph Brax of Lancaster e-mails to ask, “Why is it when an athlete is arrested for having illegal drugs in his car, the drugs always seem to belong to the guy in the passenger seat?” …

Maybe it’s a coincidence? …

Bill Sharman, forced to cancel a trip to Springfield, Mass., last week for Jerry Buss’ Hall of Fame induction, is resting at home in Redondo Beach after heart surgery.…

The 84-year-old former Lakers coach, a Brooklyn Dodgers farmhand in the 1950s, was called up to the majors late in the 1951 season and was stationed in the visitors’ dugout at the Polo Grounds when Bobby Thomson hit his legendary “shot heard ‘round the world.” …

That was the first game televised nationally, notes reader Dick Bank of Brentwood, who watched at home in Los Angeles.…

It’s a pity that economics make it a no-brainer for Olympic beach volleyball gold medalists Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers to play in Finland this weekend instead of Manhattan Beach.…

Through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, 16-year-old leukemia patient Matthew Higgins of Palmdale met Wednesday in Georgia with Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan.…

Later in the day, the L.A. chapter of the world’s largest wish-granting charity granted its 7,000th wish.…

In extolling USA Today’s 2004 cliché of the year and his own personal motto — “It is what it is” — Michigan State defensive tackle Jerel Worthy tells Sporting News Today, “That phrase speaks the truth and I think that it can never be wrong.” …

It is what it is.

jerome.crowe@latimes.com