Why can't MD FB be dominant?

[JohnD]

Yes, I got my timeline wrong. Easy to do when you're at work that early in the morning. You are correct.

[Birds of B'more]

Yes, I got my timeline wrong. Easy to do when you're at work that early in the morning. You are correct.

No problem. The only other thing I'd add to your well-thought post is the hope that maybe the new administration (plus Kevin Plank and his Under Armour money on the BoR) will decide to start putting the resources necessary into the football program. The fact that they don't have an indoor practice facility is the first thing that needs to change.

One of the things that I think Ralph might have been alluding to in his final presser, when he mentioned that the administration wasn't willing to do certain things for football to be successful, is occasionally relaxing admissions standards for a particular recruit. Personally, I don't think we'll start to see that sort of thing now, but I think that can hold back some programs. I'd say it's the main reason why Notre Dame will never win another national championship (despite how myopic their fans might be) and is also why some schools like Stanford and Northwestern occasionally have a very good season, but never sustain it. I certainly don't criticize UM for not bending on that....if that's what their core beliefs are then sticking to them is fine. But everyone will have to understand that it can hold a program back.

[BaltimoreTerp]

Maryland football hasn't been dominant since the early 1950s. College football has changed a lot since then and Maryland has never really bothered to put any resources into making sure the program keeps up. That's why beloved Jerry Claiborne left Maryland to go to Kentucky in the 1970s. It's why Bobby Ross left Maryland to go to Georgia Tech. Since Bobby Ross left in the mid to late 1980s Maryland has fired each coach it went on to hire. In addition, none of the coaches it hired were all that sought after or desired.

Joe Krivak took over after Ross left. Krivak was the offensive coordinator under Ross, lasted a few dismal seasons, and was canned.

Mark Duffner took over after Krivak left and brought his run and shoot offense to Maryland. The Terps routinely lost games 49-35 and went to one bowl during his tenure. They tied Lousiana Tech in the Liberty Bowl. Debbie Yow came in, gave Duffner a four-year extension the year before his deal was up, and then fired him the next year.

Ron Vanderlinden, then the DC for a rising Northwestern team, replaced Duffner and started losing games 21-10. The best season he had was his last one, when he went 5-6. He lasted four years. He was also given a four-year extension after his third year, and then fired after that fourth year. I was a student there those four years and I think I went to one game my last two years combined. It was a complete non-entity.

Ralph Friedgen came in after a bunch of alumni, including Boomer Esiason, essentially forced Yow to interview him. He got the job and succeeded far beyond anyone had since Bobby Ross was in town. We all know what's happened since then.

The common denominator has been that Maryland has often either gone cheap on coaches or hasn't done enough to keep the good ones it had. Friedgen was willing to stay because it was his alma mater, but he did almost consider offers from Georgia Tech and from around the NFL early on. Since then most of the improvements done for the program have been cosmetic and designed to raise more revenue, but not exactly benefit the program beyond that. Yes there's a new locker room/field house complex that includes offices, film rooms, and a player's only dining hall. But there's also the sky boxes, which seemed soft of foolish even as the stadium was seeing a lot more sell outs and near sell outs.

But what else? Football simply isn't a priority for the school or for the boosters. At least not in the way that basketball is, which as was mentioned, continues to get really innovative improvements inside Comcast Center, including a basketball-only practice center renovation. The tens of millions of dollars spent on that simply never seems to make its way to football. Maryland is a basketball school in a basketball conference. That's why the ACC expanded to begin with, so it could try to pretend it cared about football too, rather than risk losing Florida State, Georgia Tech, and/or Clemson, which at the time was somewhat of a concern.

But the school has never put the financial resources needed to make the program better. Heck, TCU spends more than twice as much on football as Maryland does. Wake Forest and Duke, both football juggernauts, right?, put more money into their football programs than Maryland does. Maryland's practice fields are a big patch of grass enclosed by a fence and stuck between some classrooms and a parking garage. Bad weather has them adjusting their practice schedules to avoid rain, storms, snow, you name it. They were seriously looking at riding buses for several road games just a couple of years ago, including four and five hour trips to games in North Carolina. That's simply not what big name football teams do, even if it seems reasonable.

To go with that, the team charges pro-prices (40-some dollars for some football and basketball tickets) to go with 15 dollars to park, in an area with so many other competing interests. The Redskins and Ravens rule in the metro areas, followed by the MD basketball team. But you've also got Georgetown, the Wizards, the Capitals, the Orioles, and the Nationals all competing for those entertainment dollars just among sports teams. There are so many other events that can take away fans, too.

Meanwhile Maryland loves to boast about teams no one cares two licks about until they win championships, and sometimes even then, no one cares at all about how good the competitive cheerleading squad (and lets be honest, that's an absurdly bad joke of a program for any college) is, or water polo, or swimming and diving teams are.

Contrast that with Oklahoma State, for example. T. Boone Pickens has donated more than 200 million dollars to the football program there and basically selected his coach (Gundy is a former OK St QB) and the results are starting to pay off in the couple of years since then. Their facilities are top notch and the recruits have gotten increasingly better. This year Okie State was in the race for the Big 12 title game going down to the final couple weeks of the season, even though Oklahoma and Texas are teams they play every year.

Maryland has rich alumni like one of the co-founders of Google, the creator of the Muppets, Larry David, and others. Only Kevin Plank seems really interested in doing anything for football, and that's just recently. But with no support from the school or the alumni to make the football program top notch, with only weak investments in the resources and the facilities, and the fact that cutting corners and hitting a certain bottom line are far more important to the school than anything else the football team does, Maryland will continue to be a mediocre program at best. Heck, it's exactly why it was a total non-entity (far less interesting than it was even during Freidgen's worst years)

And all of that is among the reasons why I thought Friedgen, who won eight games in 2008, and nine games here in 2010, should have stayed. He did pretty good considering how hamstrung he was. I'd have liked to see what he could have done with an investment in resources.

The Terps can't be like the Nationals, who want to see fans show up and invest themselves in the team before going out and making the investments that capture fan interest. That's why the Nats finally capitulated and signed Jayson Werth to that insane deal. You have to spend money to make money, and until Maryland gets serious about becoming a football school as well as a basketball school it'll always be a place where 8-4 is considered a really good season. From the top on down Maryland hasn't really tried. Now that it seems interested in imposing a newer, tougher standard on the program, it needs to do its job to meet those standards as well.

Great post, John.

[blid]

To be frank, I'm not a Maryland fan, but if they bring in Leach... I'll be watching.

[brooksie05]

There's just too much competition in a professional sports environment. Also, the U of M has very limited cross-over appeal to Baltimore folks who just consider it a glorified DC area school carrying the state's name. I'm originally from Arkansas, who thanks to a great economy from one of the few booming areas in the nation, Jerry Jones and Wal-Mart money, spent more than 20M on the football program this year. It's also the only game in town. I remember as a kid in school the Razorbacks fight song was piped in every Friday before a Saturday game.

[Majin Buu]

John, that was a great post. You nailed it. I think college football could work in the Baltimore-Washington area. Daniel Snyder is doing well with his season opening matchups. Where Maryland fails is that Debbie Yow never saw the importance of scheduling someone out-of-conference that people would care about outside of Navy and West Virginia. I mean, we could occasionally put Pitt or Penn State back on the schedule. That would generate some interest. Hell, she takes West Virginia, whom we sort of have a rivalry with, off the schedule for two years to play California? It took forever and a day to get Navy, whom people do care about, back on the schedule, but we are supposed to be "all jazzed up" about Wofford, Delaware, William & Mary and Middle Tennessee State. I believe that this is reason why Maryland hasn't been asked to host a season opener yet at Fedex Field and VaTech has (twice). I hope Kevin Anderson recognizes that.

[JohnD]

To be fair, the Virginia Tech vs Boise State game was supposed to be played later in September. The schools moved it for the opening day.

Maryland is playing Notre Dame at FedEx next year.

[OregonBird]

]It took forever and a day to get Navy, whom people do care about, back on the schedule, but we are supposed to be "all jazzed up" about Wofford, Delaware, William & Mary and Middle Tennessee State. I believe that this is reason why Maryland hasn't been asked to host a season opener yet at Fedex Field and VaTech has (twice). I hope Kevin Anderson recognizes that.

It's a delicate balancing act for an AD. Yes, you want games that generate interest but you also want your team to have a good record. Without some of those cupcakes the Terps don't go to a bowl game in some of those years. Without the cupcakes RF has a sub .500 record the last 7 years of his tenure.

[Majin Buu]

It's a delicate balancing act for an AD. Yes, you want games that generate interest but you also want your team to have a good record. Without some of those cupcakes the Terps don't go to a bowl game in some of those years. Without the cupcakes RF has a sub .500 record the last 7 years of his tenure.

True, but the way I see it, we need to play a decent out-of-conference schedule if we want national attention. We don't have Alabama and Auburn coming in week to week in-conference, and we really can't do anything about the ACC schedule. While I'm on the subject, most of the ACC schools we play are just as lazy as us when it comes to promoting their football programs, and the ACC in general made the mistake of dividing the divisions in order to get a potential Miami-FSU matchup in the championship game every year. Imagine the divisions being setup so that fans could drive every weekend to other division member schools. The ACC has a lot of growing up to do if they want to be taken seriously.

[brotherlo38]

Where Maryland fails is that Debbie Yow never saw the importance of scheduling someone out-of-conference that people would care about outside of Navy and West Virginia. I mean, we could occasionally put Pitt or Penn State back on the schedule. That would generate some interest. Hell, she takes West Virginia, whom we sort of have a rivalry with, off the schedule for two years to play California? It took forever and a day to get Navy, whom people do care about, back on the schedule, but we are supposed to be "all jazzed up" about Wofford, Delaware, William & Mary and Middle Tennessee State. I believe that this is reason why Maryland hasn't been asked to host a season opener yet at Fedex Field and VaTech has (twice). I hope Kevin Anderson recognizes that.

I'm not sure what your railing about. While I wasn't a big fan, Yow managed to set up home-and-homes with Cal (which was big for fundraising) and Rutgers as well as UConn (upcoming). She also set up next year's ND game and a psuedo home-and-home with Texas, we're playing our game at Fedex.

As someone else mentioned, the school does need some cupcakes on the schedule. If I was in charge of scheduling I'd do two cupcakes a year, WVU, and then set up rotating games with Navy/Pitt/Cuse/Rutgers/ECU/South Carolina/etc. with a national game thrown in every once in a while. Personally I think we'd be better off not playing Navy since it's a no win situation for MD and playing the option only helps us in years we play GT.

And the main reason MD hasn't been asked to host a season opener at Fedex is because they're not a major program. MD has trouble selling out Byrd (56,000 capacity), so the only way we're going to play at Fedex is if we play someone with national cache. We're not a big name in football and I'm not sure how many teams are willing to come here for one neutral site game (I'm not a big fan of using Fedex as part of a home-and-home) and whatever team did come here would have to be able to sell out 50% of the stadium. That's not a big problem for Texas or ND, but it is a big problem for a lot of other CFB programs.

[CSB Jack]

There's just too much competition in a professional sports environment. Also, the U of M has very limited cross-over appeal to Baltimore folks who just consider it a glorified DC area school carrying the state's name. I'm originally from Arkansas, who thanks to a great economy from one of the few booming areas in the nation, Jerry Jones and Wal-Mart money, spent more than 20M on the football program this year. It's also the only game in town. I remember as a kid in school the Razorbacks fight song was piped in every Friday before a Saturday game.

This is a problem that absolutely must be addressed. It seems that the Terps are making some inroads in Baltimore in basketball, so that is progress.

But as someone who has been a Baltimore sports fan all my life but never lived within 50 miles of Baltimore city, I can say that it is ludicrous in my opinion if people of Baltimore do not recognize the University of Maryland as the flagship university for their state. It is a top notch academic institution that also has a good athletic history. It is the University of MARYLAND, of which Baltimore is only the largest city, not even the state capital.

I think the bigger problem is, as John pointed out, the competition for sports fan dollars. As a general rule, the Northeast is more of a pro football area than college. In other areas that is not the case, particularly in SEC territory. But the Terps have to compete against the Redskins and the Ravens for the attention of football fans.

That culture change won't take place overnight, if it ever does. There was a good article by John Feinstein in the Washington Post today in which he interviewed former ACC Commissioner Gene Corrigan, who helped set up the BCS (but is now advocating for a playoff). The landscape he described for ACC football when he became league commissioner in 1987 clearly shows that the ACC was a basketball league and football was a distant second. There has been movement, but Maryland has never made being a consistent power in football a priority.

The firing of Friedgen indicates that Kevin Anderson is planning to push to make Maryland football more important. Why else would you fire a guy who clearly loved the University, cared about his players, and even went to bowl games 7 out of 10 years? The fact that this time around the search is focusing on "big name" coaches rather than going the cheap route supports this possibility. Whether that can translate to a successful program that is routinely in the top 25, competes for the ACC championship most years, and occasionally hits the jackpot of being in the national title hunt is a more difficult matter.

[OregonBird]

One thing that I always thought interesting was that from about Washington County west, college athletic fans have more of an affinity for WVU and Penn State. While I can't say I'm totally surprised, it seems like I see very few Terp fans while traveling through those parts.

[brotherlo38]

Lots of things to blame for why MD doesn't have more fans. The Bias tragedy and the events that followed, being stuck between two big markets that contain a combined 6 professional teams, poor marketing, MD being seen as an outsider to the DC market (where it's not a DC team) and the Baltimore market (where it's seen as a DC team).

I just accepted the fact that the MD fanbase has a large fairweather portion. I mean, I root for the teams, not the fans so I could care less whether we have 20,000 or 100,000. Yes I know the advantages of having more fans and I wish we were filling a 100,000 seat stadium, but there's nothing I can really do about it that I don't do now, which is root hard for the Terps and encourage others to do the same.

One sad fact I learned at the Military Bowl, the Terrapin Club has 8,000-9,000 members, ECU's booster club has around 12,000.

[NewOwnerNeeded]

One sad fact I learned at the Military Bowl, the Terrapin Club has 8,000-9,000 members, ECU's booster club has around 12,000.

ECU has an extremely loyal fan base, especially from the Alumni. I live 3 hours away from ECU, but I work with a good number of people who went there. You also see the pirate stickers all over the place. The people that go to school there and even live in Greenville love ECU. So it doesn't surprise me one bit that their booster club is larger than MDs.

[Birds of B'more]

Lots of things to blame for why MD doesn't have more fans. The Bias tragedy and the events that followed, being stuck between two big markets that contain a combined 6 professional teams, poor marketing, MD being seen as an outsider to the DC market (where it's not a DC team) and the Baltimore market (where it's seen as a DC team).

I just accepted the fact that the MD fanbase has a large fairweather portion. I mean, I root for the teams, not the fans so I could care less whether we have 20,000 or 100,000. Yes I know the advantages of having more fans and I wish we were filling a 100,000 seat stadium, but there's nothing I can really do about it that I don't do now, which is root hard for the Terps and encourage others to do the same.

One sad fact I learned at the Military Bowl, the Terrapin Club has 8,000-9,000 members, ECU's booster club has around 12,000.

That's the main point here. MD fans are fickle. Part of it does have to do with the fact that when the Terps struggle, people in the area have other teams to turn to. But when the Terps do really well the fans will jump on the bandwagon. That's not to say that they have to win 10 games and go to BCS bowls ever year....even the best programs in the country can't sustain that for very long. But if they're at least going to decent bowl games, in the hunt for the ACC most years, and if everything falls right maybe in the national discussion once in a while, then the fans will be there. It's just a matter of whether or not the university is willing to invest in having that sort of program.

As for ECU, I remember it being mentioned more than once during the Military Bowl that they have the 2nd best home attendance of any non-BCS school, behind BYU.