Cougars are ours and you can’t have them

Mountain Lion. Puma. Catamount. Lion of the Andes. Panther. All different names for the same thing: But unlike Death Cab for Cutie, none of those are authentically Washington. You see, out where I’m from, that critter you see above is called a cougar.

Although aware of the existence of those many alternatives, I actually went years thinking “cougar” is a relatively common term. It certainly helps that it has taken on a strong secondary connotation in pop culture. So imagine my astonishment when I took the New York Times’ Dialect Quiz about a year ago and discovered that the name is pretty much endemic to Washington:

Trojan horse in California

I don’t follow Cardinal football, but I do know a few things about the program: Jim Harbaugh was probably a horrible person when he coached in Palo Alto, Doug Baldwin and Richard Sherman both played for him there, the team mascot is a tree, and the school has a rivalry of some sort with USC.

In other words, basically everything I know about the Stanford football team either dates from my one visit to the school, or can be credited to my following the Seahawks.

This post focuses mainly on Stanford’s rivalry with the USC Trojans, which I’m definitely not making up, regardless of whether you measure the rivalry in terms of longevity —

a rivalry between the Pac-12’s private California schools that dates back to 1905

–  USC, Stanford ready to renew rivalry, AP 9.15.2012

— or in terms of recent animosity:

Stanford-USC has provided us with some of the most entertaining football — not just college football, but football — over the past half-decade.

– Stanford, USC have recent history of havoc, ESPN 9.13.2012

So it was that I came across something peculiar while watching the latest installment of former Cardinal Doug Baldwin’s Fresh Files. He is training over the offseason at the practice facilities of his alma mater, and decided to interview former teammate Jonathan Martin inside the Cardinal locker room:

Aren’t you forgetting something, Seattle Times?

Like, I dunno, the word ‘candidate’?

Where I’m going to Law School – and a few words on how I made my decision

I was admitted to Stanford in mid-February at 8AM. At the time, I was preparing to move to Philadelphia to start my current job, which is to say, I was fast asleep. Honestly, I expected better from a school located – like I was at the time – on the West Coast, but I think I managed to hide that fact from Dean Deal.

And when I say ‘I think’, I mean, ‘I hope’.

I’ll be honest: at the time, I did not give the school much thought. In my mind, there was not a great deal of doubt about where I would be come Fall. You see, I had already been admitted to Yale Law School. YLS was the first place I toured; the school that got me thinking, “Maybe this is something I want to do.” When Yale’s Director of Admissions handed me an admissions binder* (moments after I walked in for a tour), I excused myself and texted a few friends something like, but not necessarily, “holy shit i got in.”

*only the second most-unusual way in which a school accepted me, after ‘phone call to grandpa’

As has been pointed out, Yale is Yale. And while that specific context may have been a joke, the sentiment was expressed to me repeatedly in its various forms, most commonly: “Nobody turns down Yale Law School.” I considered accepting on the spot, but I knew that a bit of time and space might be helpful in making a clear-eyed, rational decision. So I made my way to Claire’s Corner Copia to celebrate. I went out of my way to order the most unhealthy-looking item on the menu, and the most unhealthy-looking drink for good measure – this, despite the fact I had just eaten a few hours before. I imagined three years of lunch at Claire’s, and it was good.

But due diligence was important to me, and I decided to wait until I’d heard from every school – especially Stanford – before making a decision. I’d heard nothing but wonderful things about the school, so when I was accepted two weeks later, learned that the school offered reimbursement for airline tickets, and that I could stay with JJ and see Boris and zvi Zvi, I went West. When I stepped off the plane in California, I put my odds of ending up in Palo Alto at around 5%.