It’s been a good news-bad news kind of week for Brett Favre.

On the good side, Randy Moss, one of the best wide receivers in the NFL, joined Favre’s Minnesota Vikings in a trade and will give the 40-year-old quarterback an extra weapon in the offense.

On the bad side, there’s that whole alleged sex scandal.

You may recall that back in August, sports website Deadspin reported that Favre had sent Jenn Sterger, a former Maxim and Playboy model, a series of voicemails and pictures of his naked self when both were working for the New York Jets in 2008. What the site didn’t have was any evidence of the alleged calls and photos.

Until now, that is. Deadspin has posted what it says are voicemails from Favre to Sterger, as well as a few messages left on her MySpace page during the time both were with the Jets — Favre was the team’s QB in 2008, and Sterger was working as a sideline reporter. The messages and pics came from a third party, the site says.

The messages themselves aren’t all that scintillating. “I just got done with practice. I’ve got meetings here for a couple more hours, then going back to the hotel and just chill. So send me a text. … I’d love to have you come by tonight,” Favre (or someone who sounds a lot like him) says in one. The photos (be warned; some seriously NSFW stuff at the end of Deadspin’s video) are another matter.

Sterger, who now co-hosts a show on Versus called “The Daily Line,” hasn’t commented. Favre brushed a question about the leaked voicemails aside at a Vikings press conference Thursday (Oct. 7): “I’m not getting into that,” he said.

By the way, the Vikings’ opponent this week? None other than the Jets. We suspect Jets fans will have a thing or two to say about that when Favre arrives at the stadium.

North Korea’s gymnasts have been suspended from the world championships starting next week because one team member’s age had been falsified.

The International Gymnastics Federation said Thursday it provisionally suspended North Korea’s federation and gymnast Hong Su Jong for 30 days, ruling them out of the worlds — being held Oct. 16-24 in Rotterdam — and any other international or national event.

North Korea — which entered four women, including Hong, and two men to compete at the worlds — can appeal to the FIG within five days.

The FIG’s disciplinary commission met Wednesday and noted that Hong’s entry for the worlds had her birth date as March 9, 1989.

FIG documents show that she competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2006 worlds using a birth year of 1985, and won the silvermedal on vault at the 2007 worlds using 1986. American Alicia Sacramone was the bronze medalist on vault in 2007.

If Hong was born in 1989, she would have been ineligible to compete in Athens. Gymnasts must turn at least 16 in the calendar year of an Olympics to be eligible.

“The USA has always played very correctly and followed the rules. We would be very happy to see other countries doing the same thing,” said Martha Karolyi, coordinator of the U.S. women’s team. “From time to time, it’s frustrating to see some people are not playing by the rules. I’m very happy the FIG stands up and is trying to track down these mistakes.”

Age falsification has been a problem in gymnastics since the 1980s, when the minimum age was raised from 14 to 15 to help protect still-developing athletes from serious injuries. The minimum age has been 16 since 1997.

North Korea was banned from the 1993 worlds after the FIG discovered Kim Gwang Suk, the 1991 gold medalist on uneven bars, was listed as 15 for three years in a row.

Earlier this year, the International Olympic Committee stripped China of its team bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Olympics for using an underage gymnast.

That case followed an investigation by FIG into unproven claims that some of China’s gold-medal team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics could have been as young as 14.

The governing body now requires all junior and senior gymnasts who represent their countries at most international meets to have a license that acts as proof of their age for their entire career.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Like every other Notre Dame player asked about a cringe-worthy stretch of play for years, Harrison Smith insisted this time is different.

The senior safety sounded like more of the mind-numbing same, until he said something Wednesday to suggest otherwise.

Recalling a room of beaten, solemn faces last weekend, and heeding the burr in his stomach, Smith flatly said it has to be “kind of like life or death when it comes to winning” for the 1-3 Irish.

He said what many have been aching for any Notre Dame player to say for, oh, four coaches or so. He said enough to insinuate that, in the so-far uninspiring Year 1 of the Brian Kelly era, there is a microbe of a fresh mentality taking hold.

“I don’t want to say it’s new, but maybe there’s just a lot more of it right now,” Smith said. “After some of the losses, you can see it in everyone’s face — not that we’re actually dying, but that’s what it’s like.

“So the next week, instead of giving up and backing off and just taking it easy, everyone has ramped it up. It has gotten more intense every week because we’re sick of it and we have to start winning.”

They haven’t, but an examination of Kelly’s previous Year 1s indicates a crawl space for hope entering Saturday night’s game at Boston College (2-1). His first teams at Central Michigan and Cincinnati enjoyed wildly different levels of success but did not succumb to adversity, and those 2007 Bearcats easily handled the more manageable portion of their schedule — a stretch soon approaching for Notre Dame.

Smith’s statement and corroborating testimony from teammates — “Losing is the closest thing to dying; it does not feel good,” linebacker Manti Te’o said — signify reprogramming that might lead the Irish down a similar path. And Kelly is happy to push them along.

“You have to operate with a sense of urgency, or it takes too long to build a house,” he said. “I just don’t like waiting that long. Our guys understand this isn’t a transition year, this isn’t a rebuilding year, this isn’t ‘Let’s feel good about everybody before we start to click.’ No, we have to do it right now.”

By Oct. 23 of Kelly’s first year at Central Michigan, the Chippewas had lost three straight to plunge to 2-5. But only one of their last five games was decided by more than five points, and the offense jumped from averaging 15 points in its first five games against Division I-A opponents to 30.2 in its last five.

In Kelly’s debut season at Cincinnati, the Bearcats averaged 46.4 points in nonconference play and 29.9 in Big East play, allowing 10.6 points per game in their first five games and 24.3 in their last seven.

So Cincinnati drubbed competition at or below its own talent level — which is precisely what the Irish will face the rest of the way, Utah and USC excepted.

The takeaway: Even Kelly’s first teams, working to grasp a new philosophy, stayed the course. If semi-relevant history holds, that might give the Irish a chance to rebound in coming weeks.

“The process is the same, it’s just the expectations are different,” Kelly said. “You take over a new company as the CEO, and you’re having a rough quarter. You’re going, ‘OK, I’m not sure what’s coming up here, but I’m going to stick with what I’ve been doing and know that it has worked in the past and it’s just a matter of time.’ That’s kind of what we’re going through right now.”

Numbers and history don’t guarantee a turnaround. They just guarantee the approach, and on the couple of occasions he has started over, that has been bedrock Kelly builds upon.

“He’s not going to change,” guard Chris Stewart said. “The program is not going to change. Our program is tough-minded and it’s going to continue to be that way and it’ll pay off in the long run.”

Extra point: Touted freshman quarterback Chase Rettig will make his college debut for Boston College on Saturday, according to the Boston Globe. Coach Frank Spaziani had hoped to redshirt Rettig but made the switch when Dave Shinskie and Mike Marscovetra struggled.