Honey, hand me that rake because my Saturdays are free

PULLMAN – Got the list handy? All the stuff you’ve been meaning to do? Because now you have time.

Install the gutter guards.

Mow the lawn one more time.

Lowball your kid on his raking fee – no more than a buck a bag. Threaten to outsource the job to the kid next door.

The Cougars? You cleared the slate for them this fall? Every Saturday in the stands or in front of the tube? Tuesday night by the radio with Bill Doba? All the way back to a bowl game – Vegas maybe, Emerald at the least?

Well, now they’ve returned the favor and cleared the slate for you. So …

Find out if Santos beats Vinick on “The West Wing.”

See if “Law and Order” has found an assistant D.A. who can act.

Recruit 10 people to boost the Nielsens for “Arrested Development.”

Because it’s over down here. Oh, not the schedule. Washington State still has six football games to play – but a look at who the next five are against and what’s happened against the last two should make it clear that the season as a meaningful exercise is a goner.

Funny. It’s as if the Cougs subconsciously came to understand that themselves about the time the ball was kicked off Saturday afternoon against Stanford, which was supposed to role-play the antibiotic to Wazzu’s own strain of football flu.

What’s more, all was to be well once the Cougars returned to the cuddly embrace of Martin Stadium, which they hadn’t felt for – what was the exact count again? – 37 days. We’d break that down into hours and minutes, but our math skills were spent totaling up the yardage Stanford’s Trent Edwards gained on quarterback draws Saturday afternoon.

It was easier just to recap the final score – Stanford 24, WSU 21 – and to mentally fill all those free hours ahead.

Rotate the tires – when can those studs go on?

Throw a bag of sand in the trunk.

Change the oil. This time remember to put the cap back on.

No, it’s not exciting stuff. But it beats watching what transpired here Saturday.

Apparently it beats being a part of it, too.

“We were lackluster, we were real flat,” said defensive end Adam Braidwood, even before looking at the statistics that showed him with one tackle. “We didn’t play with a lot of heart, we didn’t get off the ball, we didn’t play hard.”

We’ll take his word on that last item. The flat business was self-evident. When the Cougars charged out of the tunnel and promptly allowed Stanford – heretofore the worst offensive football team in the Pacific-10 Conference, by a ton, and against a flapjack schedule – to drive for a touchdown the second time it touched the ball, that’s flat. When they came out of the same tunnel to open the second half and quarterback Alex Brink fired three passes incomplete as a prelude to a punt, that’s flat.

(This as opposed to what happened to Stanford, which was merely funny. When the Cardinal coaches climbed to the Martin press box before kickoff, they were led by John McDonell – who couldn’t find the visitors’ booth despite having worked at Wazzu for only 12 years. “Never been on this side of it,” he said, allowing himself a brief dig after mistakenly heading into the president’s box.)

It’s good to have a sense of humor at Stanford this year. The Cardinal took an embarrassing tumble against UC Davis, another brainiac school but without the sweat cred of Stanford, seeing as it’s not even officially Division I yet. Of course, this happened three weeks ago, but there was a whiff around Wazzu that the Cardinal were supposed to still be wrestling with the hangover and humiliation – though naturally all the Cougs insisted no one was taken lightly.

“No,” said offensive coordinator Mike Levenseller. “It was just a weird game. It felt strange, didn’t it? It felt out of synch.”

Yes, it certainly did – the damning evidence being that the Cardinal had the ball for 37 minutes to Wazzu’s 23.

“Maybe that was my fault,” Levenseller offered. “When we went up-tempo, getting in out of the huddle quickly and forcing them to go to a quick tempo, we had some success moving the ball downfield. But you don’t normally go to that until the situation arises when you have to conserve clock. Sometimes it’s smarter if you feel a lull like that to get into an up-tempo game.

“It might have been something to spark us.”

Well, maybe. But frankly, these Cougs needed a bonfire and not just a spark. In fact, they’d do well to make a list themselves, the things they might want to re-evaluate.

For instance, their playmakers making plays like fair-catching a punt on the 1-yard line.

Or spending all week preparing for a scrambling devil like Edwards, then watching him run wild on draws all afternoon and then not consider that it might happen on a key third down with the Cougs running out of clock.

“We gambled, blitzed outside and didn’t have someone in the middle,” said defensive end Mkristo Bruce, one of the rare defenders who played well for Wazzu. “We didn’t even think about a draw. That wasn’t really going through our heads.”

Or wasting a sensational 218-yard rushing performance by Jerome Harrison by not using it to better set up the pass – a circumstance that can’t solely be blamed on the injury absence of game-breaker Jason Hill.

Or stubbornly sticking with Brink when his level of performance at any other position on the field would send the position coach hollering for the backup, even if it’s only to give the defense a different look or find that elusive spark of which Levenseller spoke. It seems as if Brink got his first opportunity last year in just such a circumstance.

Or just not answering the call. Too many Cougs didn’t.

“I’m one of those guys,” acknowledged Braidwood. “I didn’t play the way I wanted to today. I have to go home and look in the mirror, and other guys will have to, too. I’m a senior. I take a lot of responsibility for this. I don’t think the last two games I’ve played up to my potential.

“I want to show these young guys how to win, and we’re just not doing that.”

Last week, with the late pratfall against Oregon State, it seemed as if the Cougs hadn’t done themselves a favor with their Bums of September Tour (good thing they didn’t schedule UC Davis). Now, it’s beginning to look as if Idaho, Nevada and Grambling were all savvy moves – or else they might be looking at a record somewhere under the Mendoza Line.

Dead ahead: five Top 25 teams, starting with unbeaten UCLA, with but five losses among them – all inflicted by either each other, or Top 10 teams.

“If anyone says we’re not a bowl team,” said Bruce, “that’s a slap in the face.”

Hmm. It would appear that Stanford – and Oregon State before that – just said so.

But if not, it’s probably on UCLA’s to-do list.