Folks, give three cheers for UWWSU

Call me what you want. Efficiency expert. Downsizer.

Hatchet man.

Sure, that hurts, but I can take it. It’s nothing to compare with what you’re going through.

All I know is that our economy is bad and our football is worse. I can’t stop the retreat of your 401K. I can’t make the football any better. But at least I can cobble together a strategy so that there will be less of it – football, that is, since there can’t be much less of your 401K – and perhaps save a few of your donor or ticket-buying dollars in the process.

It will be painful. It will be trying. It will offend our senses of order and decency – hell, it will offend our sensibilities on every level. But tell me there’s any other reasonable option.

You know where I’m going with this.

The football programs at Washington State University and the University of Washington must be merged immediately.

This is suggested in the spirit of unity and bipartisanship which is working so marvelously in our current gubernatorial campaign, in which no thought has been given to pitting one side of the state against the other for the sake of political gain.

I know what you Cougars fans are thinking: that you’ll embrace cooperation with the Huskies when UW coach Tyrone Willingham grows a personality. And I know all you Dawgs are thinking, “Walk with the Cougs? And get cowflop on my new Top-Siders?”

But, of course, Cougars and Huskies have more in common now than ever. Calamity. Humiliation. Hopelessness. Itchy trigger fingers.

You know the math. Washington’s teams are a combined 1-11 this season – 0-7 in the Pacific-10 Conference. They’re being outscored by an average of 50-12 in conference games. Among the NCAA’s major college 119 teams, the Cougars are 114th in total offense and 108th in defense; UW is 100th and 118th.

Our state is a football Superfund site.

The Cougars can’t keep an audience past halftime. The Huskies, meanwhile, aren’t drawing any fans at all because their stadium simply isn’t safe – that’s what we’re hearing from Margarita Prentice, anyway – and surely they wouldn’t put their people at risk. Would they?

But let’s not be about problems. Let’s be about solutions.

Let’s bring together the resources of these two storied programs. There’s little to lose and much to gain. After all, they’re within a game of eighth place at the moment.

Why does this make sense? Well, for instance, this week the Cougars have the choice of:

•Using a walk-on at quarterback against USC and having him hand off all day.

•Burning a prospect’s redshirt eight games into the season.

•Or starting a guy with a broken back.

Now, the Huskies are only down to their second-stringer at the position. See? A win-win. Or at least a chance to beat the 421/2-point spread against USC.

Likewise, the Huskies are a little short on wide receivers. That must have been the reason Willingham looked at the scoreboard against Arizona, saw his team trailing 38-7 and decided it was the perfect time to use up a year’s eligibility of Cody Bruns, who had been on the redshirt track until then.

But manpower is only part of the issue.

Willingham is as doomed as Fredo Corleone was sitting in the fishing boat with Al Neri. New UW athletic director Scott Woodward hasn’t kneecapped him only because there is this notion that out west we’re somehow better than the cavemen at Clemson and Auburn and those places where college football matters too much and coaches must be fired in October, if not sooner.

But if the programs are merged, parting with Willingham can happen now. Husky fans will hardly care that their team is being coached by a Coug – to them, anyone is preferable to Ty. Willingham can even be allowed to fall on his sword on principle. He can go out the door saying he doesn’t want to let his resignation overshadow the players losing their jobs in this terrible turn of events – and then he can go on Oprah and Jim Rome and any Web site with a comments function to advertise for himself.

Some other upsides:

•By combining the school colors of purple and crimson, it will match the players’ bruises.

•This may be the only way to stay below Idaho in the Bottom 10.

•UW’s stadium bailout will no longer be necessary, and the $150 million they’ve guaranteed can pay off the final two phases of Martin Stadium renovations.

•The Huskies will get a nice trip to Hawaii out of it. Alas, the Cougs will have to play Cal and Oregon State all over again.

•Washington can cancel the contest to come up with a permanent name for its mascot and just go with “Butch.”

•It will save us from having to endure the Apple Cup this year.

Sure, this is a radical notion. But the cooperative has become a way of life in high school sports. Look how well it’s worked for Garfield and Palouse, Tekoa and Oakesdale, Lind and Ritzville.

Of course, for the Cougskies – or would it be the Husgars? – to actually get good, they might have to merge again.

With Central.