Finals season at the University of Virginia: the lack of sleep, the unresponsive TAs, the cold on the way to the library where you’ll spend the first forty minutes doing what scholars before you have always done: pretending you’re about to start. In years past, sleep would be lost over the fact that you need to be losing more sleep in order to get that GPA you want. This year, you sleep easier because whatever happens to your GPA, at least you’re not the guy who fumbled the ACC Championship and didn’t make it all the way to the College Football Playoff.
Oh, but if there’s anything us girls know about, it’s not getting to the finish line all the way and having to explain why “almost” doesn’t count…along with the fact that the most important season of the fall isn’t football. That’s right. Cuffing season has just begun.
Cuffing Season: The Prequel
It’s the summer of 2020.
Local pretty girl, Makena Wilde, posted a repeatedly screenshotted meme with the tag line “screenshot and post on your story if you’ll be participating 😳👀🙌” on her Snapchat story.
It’s a cuffing season schedule. A calendar for romance dressed up as sport: scouting, drafting, tryouts, preseason—and then the real season, just in time for when the air gets cold and you’d rather wear a lover than a coat. Makena already has a loving boyfriend, in fact she has two, but posts it like she’s taking applications. You hate her. You don’t know why, you just do. And it kills you to admit it, but Makena clocked the whole thing early—the freedom, the appetite, the audacity—the trend. She was a whore before it was chic. And the worst part is how much you respect her for it.
The month of August is for scouting out the best men, or really just the most attractive ones, but with the quality of our options, the difference accomplishes very little.
September—drafting—should really be the time you start considering the most important character traits: can he sit through a full class without hitting his Geek Bar? Can he afford to Uber you home after a night at Trin? Has he slept with any of the friends you love? Has he slept with any of the friends you hate?
By tryouts in October you’re working double duty: Bodo’s hangouts where you realize you can’t stand talking to half the shortlist sober, and figuring out with your friends if a couples costume with option 1 is worth losing option 2.
In November’s preseason, you’re doing private audiences weekly with your top three picks. Over Thanksgiving break, two of them call you—neither of them are your favorite.
And now finals season at the University of Virginia. Football is over, basketball season has just started, and maybe the original meme has been dead for years—save for the occasional updated ‘25-’26 version put up on Instagram Reels by an AI meme stealer account—but the cultural revolution from it lives on, and so cuffing season does too.
A Drafting Fumble
It’s Julian Sanchez’s second cuffing season while here at UVA, and this year the stakes feel higher—mostly because his fraternity has a date function coming up. He doesn’t want #1—who couldn’t make it and didn’t care enough to offer an excuse—to find out he brought her understudy. “Is it even worth it at this point?” Julian asked. “Because then we have to navigate around Thanksgiving.”
“She doesn’t like you enough to go to a date function, but you think she likes you enough to go official?”
“Well, yes,” he said.
There was a pause.
“She likes you enough to become your girlfriend, but so little that three days of long distance will require a navigation plan?”
“No need to keep asking questions, you seem to have a good grasp on what’s happening,” Julian said.
“Do you?”
A week later, Julian brought #2 to the date function and #1 heard from a friend that they drunkenly dry-humped each other on the public couch on the second floor of his frat.
He didn’t lock down either of them.
Fantasy-League-In-Law
Right after Thanksgiving, you got an exclusive look behind the scenes of a Fantasy Cuffing League group chat that a friend-in-law, twice removed, runs with some other girls in her sorority.
The friend-in-law, twice removed, grew up in a sports family with two values: your best friend should always be the one with the best tailgates—and if you can’t play in the big leagues yourself, you might as well bet on them.
So they place free bets on girls they know: who will get strung along, who will become official with who, and whether it’d be worth it if they do.
They hope Georgia—who puked on one of them at a frat mixer—is just getting used for sex by golden boy Matt and that he’s not seriously considering her.
They root for Jess, an incurable romantic, to lock it down with Jack—who has been a running joke among them for the past year, but agree would look perfect beside her in a hard launch.
They laugh at Carolina who is aggressively and—especially after a few drinks at Ellie’s—loudly trying to “lock down” Tyler Anders. The punchline is that when it comes to wanting to date Tyler Anders, you lose either way.
One detail stays carefully unmentioned: most of them have hooked up with all three men. Or tried to. Or failed. Which is, of course, part of the fun—because nothing makes people judge your choices faster than wanting the same ones.
Stella’s Game
In the last week of classes, you’re getting a rundown from one of your oldest friends at Starbucks. Meet Stella Greene.
She loves to study. She’s good at studying. Her studying keeps her busy. Her studying, in her mind, makes her a superior person to others. As a nursing major, she is undeniably a serious person. She also has a deeply unserious personality. She knows this. She’s proud of this too. Her personality, in your mind, is what makes her a superior person.
“I have a boyfriend!” Stella screamed, waving a photo. “Isn’t he handsome?”
“He’s…tall,” you said.
“Yes,” Stella said.
“Sorry,” you said, “I should sound and be happier for you. Congrats!”
“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t need to be,” Stella said, “it’s not like I love him.”
“Oh?” You asked, “you don’t love him?”
“It’s not that deep. Well, he’s not that deep. We’re not that deep,” Stella said, shrugging.
“But you did it!” You said the math out loud, “December: Christmas, January: Birthday, February: Valentine’s Day! Presents, presents, presents.”
“Exactly!” Stella said. “And I’m not a virgin anymore!”
“You were still a virgin?”
And for a moment you think of the meme, how Makena Wildes hopped on the whore trend early, and how Stella Greene did a tad late.
Season Preview
It’s yesterday and you’re shocked you managed to get a table in Shannon to study at. Julian’s locked into a conversation about our football season. You’re finishing an article about cuffing season.
Will Julian make an impression in the loser bracket? Can Carolina successfully drag Tyler to the championship game? Will getting there even be worth it to Stella? Maybe having a boyfriend is embarrassing.
But Vogue knows. And so do you—that the reason we still partake in cuffing season is that having a boyfriend is as embarrassing as wearing a nice jacket from an unethical company. You put it on anyway, because come on—it is a hell of an accessory. He holds your place in line at Trin. He reposts your story on Valentine’s Day. And he gives you an extra gift for each holiday.
And if anyone asks questions? You have the justification ready. He was pre-owned. You thrifted him. Adopt, don’t shop. Etc. Besides, the most fashionable women have caught onto the fact that the real winners are those that cuff a girlfriend instead.
“Well if it was because of the concussion,” Julian said, still on football, “we should’ve sold him for parts when he got it.”
“Don’t you have a final to prepare for?” you asked.
“Bro,” Julian said, “not everyone’s married to their grades like you.”
No. Some people are married to the idea of being picked—and that’s much harder to study for.
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