A resident walks through the floodwater on Canal Street in New Orleans. AP
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I am going to go ahead -- foolishly, I know -- and predict the order of finish for NFL teams this year, but not for a few paragraphs. I mean, to focus on football at a time like this feels almost sinful, sort of Sodom-and-Gomorrahesque.

I was in Boston covering the Giants-Patriots preseason game last week at a beautiful hotel near the statehouse. It was about 4 p.m. and I was watching CNN. The images of flooding and despair were everywhere. I tried to write while it was on, but I had to shut off this laptop and stare. Wolf Blitzer, George Bush, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco and other people were walking through water in the French Quarter and people were crying through debris in coastal Mississippi. I called the PR man of the Saints, Greg Bensel, in San Jose, Calif., and found it hard to ask him about the team's plans for the next few weeks.

"How is your house?'' I wondered. "Is it still there?'' (It is, he thought.)

I went to a long-ago arranged dinner with the Patriots' owner, Bob Kraft. We talked about the league, his team and Tedy Bruschi, and then I had to raise the issue I couldn't get off my mind. The hurricane and the images from TV. Eating this phenomenal meal while thousands of people were scrambling for their lives in an NFL city not very far away.

"Do you ever sit back and think how lucky you are? How lucky we all are?'' I asked.

Kraft said he did and realized how fortunate his family was to have the support from fans, to have the three Super Bowls and to live the life he does. I'm pretty sure he was sincere, not just responding to some primitive wailing he might have felt from my voice, and I appreciated that.

Two things struck me Thursday as the chaos got more chaotic.  First, Saints GM Mickey Loomis responding to my empathy for his situation by saying, "Do not feel sorry for me. Do not feel sorry for our team. Not with what we're seeing nonstop on television. Feel for the people of New Orleans.'' And Warrick Dunn took time on his bus ride to the Falcons' preseason game in south Florida to call me on a cell phone and tell me why he was challenging every NFL player to give $5,000 to hurricane relief. "I have to do something,'' Dunn said. "This is one of the worst things to happen in the history of our country. We can't just sit and watch.''

I told a few of the Patriots before the game about Dunn's effort and they were enthusiastic. "I'm all for it,'' Tom Brady told me in the Gillette Stadium tunnel.

Back homeFriday, I got addicted to two things: CNN and the New York Times. What a great job those people are doing. How are they reporting with New Orleans datelines? Where do they sleep? How do they file the stories? How do they evade the looters and the gun-toting thugs? You can't pay those people enough. What a great picture those reporters and camera people painted of a slow-to-react government and a ruined city.

Being in the middle of it is unimaginable to me. How do you avoid being overwhelmed by depression? I have such admiration for the police, guardsmen and firefighters. How did more of them not walk away? I have to turn away from the TV and/or the paper after maybe 90 minutes. I have to see a brighter reality. The nurses, the doctors, the cops, the mayor, the reporters ... they're my heroes. I'm just wowed by their perseverance and dedication.

I struggle to know if focusing on football is the right thing to do right now. The other day, I heard a debate on ESPN Radio in New York about whether the Giants were getting an unfair advantage in the schedule by playing a ninth home game at the expense of the Saints, with the league moving the Week Two game to the Meadowlands. My blood boiled. Are you kidding? What kind of idiot would think of that at a time like this? Thousands lay dying and someone would think about the advantage of playing nine home games instead of eight in a freakin' football league?

God give me the strength to have some perspective over the next six months. Please. And so I guess the best thing to do is to do what I do -- make bad predictions and comment on the state of affairs in the NFL.