There we were, me and Will – Will Ferrell that is – standing atop a nearly completed house for a family of 13.

It was Valentine’s Day.

Will suggested we build a labor of love for a family in need.

We spent the entire day baking in the sun, alternating grunts and hammer strokes to give a family their first home.

They were living in a dumpster outside a drug emporium in Compton.

Before leaving, Will gave me a hug. Quite the day. What could be a better reason for missing class?

If only I could get Professor Bullock to believe this, as he read my excuse note. From Will Ferrell.

Ferrell thought we had my political science professor duped.

“I think it’s pretty good,” he said as he scribbled the note during an interview in Atlanta, promoting his newest sports spoof, “Semi-Pro.”

I suggested fighting world hunger, but Ferrell instead took a more believable route.

“Professor Bullock – Please excuse Brian from missing class,” he wrote. “He was with me building a house for Habitat for Humanity.”

With triumph, I strutted up to Bullock last week and handed him my get out of jail free card.

Sadly for my attendance record, Bullock scrunched his eyebrow and muttered, “Will Ferrell?”

“The comedian,” I chimed in.

Safe to say, most University students wouldn’t need the reminder.

The absence still glimmers on my record.

Gags were to be expected from the scotch-guzzling anchorman, flame-prone Nascar driver and now ‘fro-rocking American Basketball Association owner-player-coach.

This was no sit-down with “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton. Questions ranged from Ferrell’s heads up match with a bear and crotch cam used in “Semi-Pro” to his “boozin’” days on the set of “Stranger Than Fiction.”

Even with Ferrell’s deadpan humor, his personas were absent, replaced by an ironic, reserved demeanor.

There was no burgundy blazer, fake mustache or “Frank the Tank” sound effects for that matter. He didn’t even raise his voice. Will Ferrell: Mere mortal after all?

Aside from turns in Mark Forster’s “Stranger than Fiction” and Woody Allen’s “Melinda and Melinda,” Ferrell has found his niche in the absurd, larger than life element of Americana.

“At times, we are definitely the cockiest nation on earth, and that needs to be pointed out,” he said.

“Sometimes you’ll meet someone, somewhere talking about how great they are, and they sell insurance or something.”

Apologies to all the risk management and insurance majors in the Terry College of Business.

Ferrell said he tried to work for an insurance agency but did not make it past the second interview – terrible career move.

With “Talladega Nights,” “Blades of Glory,” and now “Semi-Pro,” some might diagnose Ferrell with Kevin Costner complex, or sports movie hysteria.

“I’m honestly not obsessed with sports movies,” he said, before acknowledging it might take the “Citizen Kane” of the lot to take on a similar project in the near future.

In “Semi-Pro,” Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, a one-hit music wonder, whose “Love Me Sexy” gives him the means to purchase an ABA basketball team in Flint, Mich.

Moon pulls out all the tricks to keep the turnstiles moving for the Flint Tropics — a duel with a bear and free gerbil night included.

Ferrell said the antics were based on actual ABA promotions and added that he was prepared for both.

“Well, it’s only rough to the untrained observer because I’m very comfortable with wild animals,” he said.

“I’ll go for months at a time into the woods and just track bears down and wrestle them to the ground.”

The gerbil promotion was a little trickier.

“I don’t know what you would do with a gerbil,” he said. “I mean I know … things that have been talked about.”

But painfully, The Red & Black can report that Ferrell, like many athletes these days, is not clean.

“You can track my steroid use throughout the film,” he said.

With that in mind, keep an eye out for the visionary crotch cam shot, as Moon employs his signature underhand free throws.

“It was originally meant, believe it or not, as a dramatic angle,” he said.

Now that’s an educational experience. I should have been excused from class, even if I wasn’t saving the world one house at a time with Ferrell.