There are two kinds of Cougs right now: the ones who can tell you what time the soccer team kicks off against San Diego State on Thursday, and the ones who cannot. The difference is not talent or loyalty. It is whether you clicked on Jon Haarlow's weekly column. The man publishes a literal reading list for the Cougar faithful, and if you are not checking it, you are missing the best cheat sheet for a Thursday in Pullman.
Here is the take: Haarlow's desk is the closest thing this fanbase has to a morning huddle, and it works because it does not try to be a game preview or a press release. It tells you what a Coug reads. That means it points you toward the things that actually matter that week, whether that is Soccer lines up Thursday with San Diego State in an afternoon tilt or a new BECU podcast where BECU's new Cougar Athletics pod sits down with Foss and Buren. You do not have to hunt through three different Twitter accounts or hope the athletic department's Instagram story catches your eye. You open one column and you know what is happening. That is a service, plain and simple, and it saves you the ten minutes you would have spent trying to remember if volleyball is home or away this week.
The practical consequence for you, the Coug who left Pullman but never left the Cougs, is that you no longer have an excuse to be surprised. Thursday afternoon soccer against San Diego State means you can watch the Cougs while you eat lunch. The volleyball team is hitting the road for Boise then hosting Fresno State in the same week, which is a brutal travel swing that you should know about so you can tune in when they get back to Bohler. Haarlow is not writing for the person who lives in the CUB. He is writing for the person who lives in Seattle, or Phoenix, or wherever your career took you, and still wants to feel like they walked into the Bookie on a Thursday morning.
What matters here is not the column itself. What matters is that someone in Pullman is still doing the work of keeping you looped in. That is rare. Most programs let the alumni newsletter rot in your spam folder. Wazzu has a guy who sits down every week and says, here is what you need. The only open question is whether you are reading it. If you are not, start this Thursday. The soccer game is at 1 p.m. Do not be the last Coug to find out.