Members of Drew Brees' fraternity at Purdue work on a house in New Orleans. Jack Bowers/Habitat for Humanity

6. I think I hear really good things about Bobby Petrino. I mean, really good things. About his organizational skills, his no-nonsense approach, his offensive plan (with new offensive coordinator Hue Jackson) and attention to detail. Imagine if Mike Lombardi had persuaded him to take the Raiders job 16 months ago, and Al Davis hadn't saddled the team with a wasted Art Shell/Tom Walsh year. Imagine Petrino working with JaMarcus Russell. (Not that Lane Kiffin's not going to do well, mind you. It's just that Petrino's got a better track record working with quarterbacks than most NFL coaches right now.) The Raiders would be lots farther down the road to competency right now. And the Falcons? I think they'd be coached by one of two Mikes right now -- Singletary (an Arthur Blank favorite) or Tomlin (hired by the Bucs when current Falcon GM Rick McKay was in the same role with Tampa Bay).

7. I think you know I have a soft spot for two New Orleanian things -- the work Habitat for Humanity is doing rebuilding the city, and Drew Brees. Nice combo platter last week by Brees and Habitat.

"This city cannot be forgotten,'' Brees told me last week from a Habitat jobsite, Musicians Village, in the Upper Ninth Ward, where he'd summoned some of his Sigma Chi brothers currently in school around North America to work for a week. "We need to make sure people keep coming here and seeing the progress this city's making and coming here to support the rebuilding.''

My problem, quite frankly, is the rebuilding is too slow. This country should be mobilized by the federal government, like yesterday, to attack the reconstruction of a tattered city.

"It's great to see all these Americans getting together to help rebuild New Orleans,'' Purdue student A.J. Alley said, "but I definitely thought we'd see the area further along after Katrina. There's a skyscraper downtown that still has windows blown out. There's a level of destruction here that you'd expect to see a few days after a hurricane, not almost two years.''

Good for Brees, who housed and fed about 105 volunteer students, and good for the hotels who made deals with Brees to put the kids up, and good for the kids, who worked through Saturday afternoon.

8. I think it might be worth a few minutes tonight, if you can tear yourself away from Cavs-Nets or Marlins-Pirates, to catch a few snaps of the Chicago-Dallas Arena game. It's the best two teams in the league (they're a combined 17-2), and there's an intriguing player in the game -- 6-3, 220-pound Chicago receiver Bobby Sippio, who might engender a small bidding war (very small) between NFL teams at the end of the Arena season in July. He's a big receiver, obviously, not just the typical Arena smurf, and he's on pace to catch 71 touchdowns. I have no idea what that means in the real world, but in Arenaball, it'd be an all-time record. The game's on ESPN2 at 8:30 Eastern.

9. I think Pacman Jones has to be out of his mind if he thinks his suspension is going to be reduced more than in some very, very minor way.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Belated Happy Mother's Day, ladies.

b. If I'm not the worst rotisserie player on the planet, I'm close. Of course, when the first two pitchers you pick are Matsuzaka and Wainwright, and you try to outsmart everyone with Delmon Young and Ronny Paulino. In other words, I deserve my catastrophic fate.

c. Coffeenerdness: Ever been in the Omni William Penn Hotel Starbucks in downtown Pittsburgh? Convivial. Bright. Airy. One problem: Weak, inconsistent espresso shots. Get on it, Seattle.

d. Gotta love TV Land. There's not much as funny, and I mean ever on TV, as the Mr. Ed episode where Leo Durocher teaches Ed how to hit a baseball -- and then Ed slides into home.

e. Have a good next phase of your life, Tony Blair. You sure were good in The Queen.

f. Speaking of chick flicks I liked quite a bit, I recommend Waitress, a neat little fairy tale about a likeable waitress, Keri Russell. Excellent actress, by the way. Lots of good life lessons in there.

g. Watched some of Suns-Spurs on Saturday night, quite unlike me. And a football game broke out.