As promised!
Good evening, Coug fans!
I’m back with (probably not requested, in fact someone asked that I not do this, but I make the rules) part two in my latest installment of the “swipe left on” series. Part one is here. If there’s one thing this conference realignment is good for, I suppose it’s this! Unless you hate it. Then you don’t have to read it- we have free will, for now. Last week we covered Gonzaga, LMU, Pepperdine, and University of Portland. Without further adieu, here are the rest of ‘em!
It’s been a long week. Work was tough, your trivia team Let’s Get Quizzical placed dead last, and your friend brought her new boyfriend along to “cover the sports bases”, but he only follows Országos Bajnokság I – the official men’s water polo team of Hungary, so he was useless and pouted about it the whole time. Now you’re in your Uber heading home after having one too many Yonder ciders. As you’re staring out the window, the rain hitting it softly while an ambiguous pop song plays softly, you hear a gentle ping.
It’s Schooler! Ready to match your Cougs to some new opponents in the WCC.
Saint Mary’s College
This guy studies geology and is somehow a Flat Earther. Yeah. Can’t make this up. He looks all cuddly and sweet on the outside, but then you scroll down and he’s contradicting himself left and right. You can’t tell if this guy knows which shoe goes on which foot! You get so upset about the whole flat earth thing that you swipe left immediately. You kinda wish you could go back and unpack the rest of it, but that would cost $97 for a premium membership, and you just can’t bring yourself to hit confirm on the Apple Pay.
University of San Diego
“Have you tried simply thugging it out??” his bio reads. No, you can honestly say that is not a strategy you’ve implemented. But maybe you should. Maybe USD guy changes your entire outlook on modern dating, because truly why are we here? How did we get to here? To this point? You’re looking at the profile of a well dressed man man baby who uses his dads black card and then has his friends Venmo him, still. 80% of his photos are from various festivals, Coachella, Outside Lands, whatever that rave one in the snow is, you name it. He tried surfing once but made a big fool of himself when he couldn’t stand up, and said the board was “defective” and refused to try it again. But! He’s got really fluffy hair, and a lovely Ken Doll type smile. And he could talk stocks with your dad, not that your dad knows anything intimately about the stock market, but you’re also not sure this guy does either. You’d have a really decent time listening to him talk about himself, and he’d become a character within your friend group forever – full of “hey remember wine sniffer guy?” because he’d probably shove his entire nose into the oddly shaped wine glass and say he’s getting notes of chestnut. You’d be set for life, financially, but you’re young enough and content enough with your life, and your parents don’t put the screws to you enough for you to settle for that, and you realize how lucky you are to be in the position to say “no thanks” and swipe left.
University of the Pacific
There is not a single photo of this guy where he is smiling. It’s as if the most miserable characters in all of literary history got together and wrote someone so miserable that it makes you miserable to describe. He works in a hospital and he clearly hates it – the prompt he wrote describing his job goes “it’s long hours and sometimes people try to stab me with my pen. Keeps a roof over my head, barely.” You almost want to hug him, or reparent him, but something tugs at your senses that he’s probably in a prison of his own design. You stalk him online (again, cider-induced decision) and his family is really cute! His sister seems bubbly and bright, his mom looks decidedly not crazy. You feel pretty weird and invasive learning all this about him before he’s gotten the chance to tell you, but even in the family pictures he just looks withdrawn. You find his secret blog (don’t ask how) and it’s a bunch of ramblings about how he got a bad grade in his 10th grade chemistry class, and it’s informed his journey ever since. You get the idea that perhaps this guy has never let one single thing go in his life. You decide you’re better off swiping left, although it makes you a little sad to do. Perhaps that’s what he wants.
University of San Francisco
This guy wears a lot of beanies. They’re always rolled so they sit right above his ears, he smokes clove cigarettes, and he’s really into the movie Lady Bird. He’s obsessed with walking the city and being a tourist, but he rolls his eyes whenever actual tourists ask him for directions to the Golden Gate Bridge. He wears a vintage As jacket that he picked up at a “thrift store” for like $400, and he does it to “piss off the Giants fans”. He’d take you on an “urban hike” for your first date that would include stops for macha, “poking your heads in local book stores”, and would end, funnily enough, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Everything is in quotes because he finds everything “ironic” and you aren’t sure he knows what ironic truly means, or if he’s ever been ironic. Which is actually a little ironic! But at least you got some macha out of it.
Santa Clara University
This guy is a slightly more PG version of USD, less party drugs and black cards, more caring about the turtles. He wears turtlenecks, actually. And if they were a social trend, he’d rock a sweater vest. He’s a perfectly lovely guy, and the most interesting things about him are the jokes your friends make at his expense, usually about the turtlenecks and the turtle obsession. You find yourself oddly protective, until he absolutely loses it one night out and screams at everyone, yammering about how one day everyone will wish they listened to him about … oh gosh, you can’t remember. You cannot, to save your life, remember what this guy was yelling about. It caused such a stir! The whole bar went silent, and he chugged his ginger beer and left, but everyone remained a little shaken after. Ugh, it’ll come to you one day when you’re regaining your dating tragedies to your children after one too many rum punches on family vacation in Cabo. At least, you hope you will. Right now the cider is giving you a real headache, and you release yourself from the nightmare you envisioned with Santa Clara guy fast enough to actually get out of your Uber. Time for bed!
That’s all! Go Cougs! I might never do one of these again. Or maybe I will, who knows.