John Blanchette

PULLMAN –The popular vote was cast here Saturday – well, actually in other precincts, but it was tallied here. And the Washington State Cougars lost another landslide.

When is going into a Hall of Fame not recognition enough? OK, never. It is a fish not to be thrown back.

His career in Major League Soccer spans 10 years and includes three championship rings, and if Craig Waibel’s belief in himself is too strong to describe that career as unlikely, he will admit to an unlikely defining moment. Especially since it came at Hart Field on Spokane’s South Hill when he was still in high school.

Inspiring on their immediate merits, the weekly amazements at the University of Idaho and the antsy contemplation of a bowl game are made even more remarkable cast against the Vandals’ barren history in major college football. That’s what comes from fighting out of your weight class, as the Vandals did for 40 years in the old Pacific Coast Conference and as an independent.

MOSCOW, Idaho – For the Idahos of the college football commonwealth, being bowl eligible comes with a built-in shadow. It also means you’re snub eligible, until further notice.

What does Notre Dame have that Washington State doesn’t? Other than a 28-point Vegas handicap on Saturday? That’s easy. A TV network.

All’s well that ends well for Eastern Washington – as long as the Eagles win out, the three teams ahead of them in the conference football standings carve themselves up in just the right way and the NCAA playoff bracket isn’t decided by moonlighting Big Sky referees or myopic educrats from the Committee on Infractions. Otherwise, everything is properly aligned.

So intent were the 6,000-plus Gonzaga congregants on identifying and bonding with all the new Zags – Is that Manny? Which one is Dower? – that few noticed their favorite old bugbear sitting ringside at the McCarthey Athletic Center on Saturday evening. Call it the kraziest development of all at Kraziness in the Kennel.

Blame Jim Sterk. He won’t be surprised, since he gets blamed for almost everything else. It was Washington State’s athletic director who first dipped his toe into the icy waters of regional soul-selling last spring when he championed changing the Apple Cup game with Washington from the traditional home-and-away campus wingding to a “neutral” money grab at Qwest Field in Seattle – potentially spiriting the game to the west side of the moun- tains for good. Luckily, the Huskies couldn’t control their natural one-upsmanship reflex – they wanted more tickets – and the whole thing unraveled faster than Nick Holt’s prevent defense.

For Eastern Washington University’s football community, there was no consolation in the Big Sky Conference’s acknowledgement Tuesday that Harpo, Chico and Groucho had infiltrated the officiating crew for Saturday’s loss at Montana. There was only this it-could-have-been-worse realization: Pac-10 zebras could have been working the game.

“After seven years as a professional, you realize it’s never like that again.” – Matt Santangelo

MISSOULA – Say, about that NCAA appeal … Uh, never mind.

First punch, counterpunch, combination. Whatever it threw, Team Canada delivered it with more dramatic effect Friday night, and as a result its 5-2 victory over the United States in front of a Spokane Arena crowd of 5,427 really wasn’t much of a fight.

Five-and-one, perched atop the Western Athletic Conference standings, a first-time vote in a regular-season football poll and on the brink of bowl eligibility – the insanity continues at the University of Idaho. And the happiest development?

PULLMAN – They launched what they call the “10/10/10 Initiative” this week at Washington State University. It’s the school’s mission to increase its athletic foundation membership to 10,000 by Oct. 10, 2010. That’s actually 10/10/10/10, but who’s counting?

Bluto’s cinematic counsel to Flounder – “My advice to you is to start drinking heavily” – has seen the American male through countless crises, to say nothing of an average semester at Washington State. Now the latter is the former. Again.