Don’t look now, but I’ll be damned if there’s not only about six weeks left until our heroes (and Jason David) gather together once again in beautiful downtown Jackson to kick off attempt #3 at not losing half their roster to heat stroke making a run at one of them there Lombardi trophies.

In the meantime, there’s so little in the way of actual news, the Times-Picayune has resorted to publishing articles on John Fourcade’s desire to become the head coach at West Jeff.

The silver lining is that I’m now aware of the existence of the Intense Football League. You can tell that they’re big time by that bitchin’ web site. 

Apparently the IFL consists of eight teams based in Louisiana, Texas and… Alaska. Perhaps you’re furrowing your brow in a vain attempt to comprehend why, but it makes perfect sense to me. Alaska’s a natural geographical fit. The drawback is that road trips are a bitch. Eight guys packed into the back of a flatbed truck from Odessa to Fairbanks sounds like quite an ordeal. I’ll bet it’s INTENSE!

Some other interesting Intense Football League facts:

• Current IFL teams hail from such burgeoning metropolii as Belton, TX and Lake Charles, LA. Candidates for expansion include Fuquay-Varina North Carolina, Sorrento Louisiana and Hagåtña Guam.
• Franchises can be purchased at the customer service counter of your local Dick’s Sporting Goods. All major credit cards are accepted. While you’re there, you can leave your name and email address to make yourself eligible for their draft.
• Their games are played in the ground-floor concourses of local malls. If you happen to shop at one of their stadia, you may have noticed the residue left from the duct tape used to mark the yard lines.
• If the ball carrier makes it all the way to the top of the escalator, it’s 30 points!
• If a defender pushes a ball carrier into a Starbucks, it’s a safety. And the defender gets a free mochaccino.
• All eight current IFL teams have passed on signing Aaron Brooks.

Now that’s what I call INTENSE! The burning question is why Fourcade would want to leave all that. But I suppose the heart wants what it wants.

In other, slightly less significant news, apparently Big Number Twelve has gone all AWOL from voluntary OTAs. And yet, the sun continues to rise in the east. Despite any supporting evidence whatsoever, popular wisdom seems to be that it’s a shot across the front office’s bow, and that Colston is about sick and tired of being paid like a backup long snapper on an Intense Football League team.

It’s a testament to the amount of good will Colston has built up with Saints fans that, so far, nobody’s throwing around words and phrases like "thug" and "me guy"… yet. I mean, Colston has to be one of about three Saints who can miss a voluntary offseason workout without Message Board Guy lining up to ride him out of town on a rail about 30 seconds after the (pseudo-)news breaks. That being said, all bets are off if he dares not show up for a couple more days and in Message Board Guy’s head it becomes a full-blown holdout. From voluntary offseason workouts. Which end tomorrow.

Part of me hopes that Colston, Loomis, Payton and Joel Segal had a top-secret conference call a few days ago where the parameters of an extension were worked out, and Loomis was all "Dude, wait, okay check this out…. why don’t you take the last couple days of OTAs off. We’ll say we don’t know what’s going on. Sean, you act all pissed off about it. Call it an unexcused absence or something. They’ll totally fucking freak out on the message boards, and we’ll leave ‘em hanging for like a month. Come on man, this could be epic. I’m laughing my balls off just thinking about it. Somewhere around the 4th of July, I’ll use one of my internet aliases and post that I heard it from someone high up in the organization that we’re at an impasse and you’re being shopped."

Meantime, WWL has signed none other than the venerable Robert Stack to tape hourly updates on the Colston situation.

Stack:
UPDATE… We still have no fucking clue where this guy is.

In still less-significant news, Jimmy Smith seems to think it’s safe to say that Bobby McCray might be a better free agent acquisition than Drew Brees was.

Jimmy Smith:
After viewing five minicamp practices and one organized team activity, we can safely say this: If Bobby McCray looks as good in pads and games, he could be the best free-agent pickup the Saints have ever made.

Now we’re not saying Jimmy Smith is a dumbass. We like Jimmy just fine. But wow. Just… wow. That’s an absurd statement even by message board standards. Show me Bobby McCray healing lepers, restoring sight to the blind and inexplicably multiplying small quantities of fish and bread, and then… maybe… we’ll talk about whether or not McCray is fit to hold Drew’s jock. Hell, he hasn’t even trekked up to Baton Rouge to fix Janis’ flat tire yet.

The Volunteers of America bestowed upon Tom Benson their Good Samaritan Award. They’re still deliberating on this year’s recipient of their Really Fucking Lousy Samaritan Award. Upon receiving his plaque, Benson reportedly asked "What is this inscription, some kind of Hebrew thing?" and demanded that Paul Kantner "Get a haircut, hippie. And get offa my proppity."