Forgetfulness is a tricky thing.

We’re trying hard not to forget about Sept. 11 — it’s already been half a week since the seventh anniversary.

We’re trying to forget Gov. Sarah Palin is a woman — it would be sexist to mention she is.

And now, we’ve got a Saturday to forget about.

If we could, we’d just mention the score 23-20, sob uncontrollably for a good hour or two and then leave it at that.

But we can’t.

Instead, we must start following the five steps of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Denial is one we have covered already. Don’t even worry about that. When you lose to a team that had lost nine of its last 10 games, 21 of 22 on the road and seven in a row against ranked opponents, it’s not hard to bury your head in the sand and act like it never happened.
Actually, let’s just say those numbers about our opponent will take care of anger through depression, too.

Acceptance is where it gets a bit more difficult.

But at least we’re not alone — seven teams in the Pac-10 lost on Saturday, leaving the conference wholly embarrassed on the weekend. UCLA, Cal, Arizona, Stanford and both Washington teams joined ASU on the long walk back to their respective locker rooms.

All eyes might not be on a suddenly lackluster game next weekend between a newly unranked ASU squad and a Georgia team that has dropped to No. 3 in the AP poll, but we at The State Press don’t plan on having anything to forget about next Sunday morning — at least we’re not playing the fearsome UNLV Runnin’ Rebels again.

As far as we can tell, there are two possible outcomes, and neither one is embarrassing:

1. We lose and spend the weekend making jokes about Georgia peaches and bulldogs with lipstick. At least we would be losing to a respectable opponent and the embarrassment factor would be greatly reduced. Besides, we can’t possibly stoop lower than Arizona, which just lost for a second straight year to the only team lower in the Mountain West standings than UNLV, New Mexico. Well, unless we start talking about UCLA’s 59-0 loss to BYU — their worst loss in 75 years. At least we will have something to gloat about when we meet those two teams later in the season.

2. We win and regain our Rose Bowl aspirations. Oregon looked vulnerable in a close OT win over Purdue, so a win over Georgia would help us close the enormous Pac-10 gap that’s wide open behind the certain champ, USC.

All we know is that we’ll take the Georgia game over one with another team from the bottom of the Mountain West conference any given Saturday.

Who knows, maybe the team will redeem itself from its epic collapse. And maybe we’ll finally be able to accept this loss.