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Somebody forgot to tell Maryland’s football team that the game was rescheduled from 8 p.m. to noon, Saturday.
There are some things that are just significantly more awful than they should be.
Samuel Adams makes this beer that they jam into their winter seasonal pack usually called Old Fezziwig Ale. Anything that says “Samuel Adams” in it should be good, and you should proceed as though no questions need to be asked.
The Old Fez though, it’s a bit brutal to the palette, and it always takes you off guard.
Such is life with Maryland football, which allegedly was on hand for a football game with Michigan on Saturday.
For Maryland athletics, the sky really can be the limit. Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour, has seen his brand soar to the second largest sports apparel company in the world, surpassing Adidas. Plank’s successful fingerprints are all over the program, and recently, Maryland’s athletic director Kevin Anderson compared the goal of UA and Maryland’s relationship to that of Nike and Oregon.
Of course it was Anderson who got this whole ball of wax rolling.
It seems like forever ago (and for some of us, it sort of is) when Ralph Friedgen had the Terps competing for BCS bowls and such. Randy Edsall was brought in with much fanfare in 2011, inheriting a 9-win Friedgen-led team in his final season.
Be careful what you wish for, apparently.
The Terps sit as an ugly 2-3 this year, with wins only over Richmond and South Florida. More glaring, Maryland has not even been remotely competitive in their two games against what would be considered top-25 level competition in getting drubbed by West Virginia 45-6 and then Saturday’s shutout to Michigan, 28-0, when the Wolverines started out looking like they had a nice bottle of wine but just realized they’d totally forgotten to pack the corkscrew.
Maryland should at least be competitive this far into Edsall’s tenure. The program was torn down to 2-10 his first season, and the rise has been plodding, to say the least, from 4 wins, to 7 wins the last two seasons.
The Terps have been beset by injuries, somewhat to an overwhelming perspective during Edsall’s time. Still, the consistent inability to develop a quarterback has rendered them as having a ceiling that is mostly mediocre every season. The year seems to be no different.
Caleb Rowe has a staggering 12 interceptions in just over 3 games and was replaced by Oklahoma State transfer Daxx Garman, which was no more a fruitful endeavor than the Rowe time.
Most glaringly, again, the Terps were impotent after halftime. Save the Richmond game, Maryland has scored all of 34 points in the second halves of their games this season. Meanwhile, Michigan (22-0) and Bowling Green (42-14) have steamrolled them out of contention after “adjustments” were made.
The West Virginia loss is skewed a bit by the fact that the Terps were hopelessly out of it before they went into the break.
I have no personal pulse of the Maryland football program and their feelings going forward, but what’s at the on-field level just simply needs to be better. Late, after Michigan had salted the game away and was just trying to get out of dodge before the rain and winds hit, the Terps lined up to punt and could barely get that interaction off.
This is a program that isn’t good, and even worse, isn’t trending upward. They’ll likely scuffle around with Rutgers at the bottom of the Big Ten East and tough decisions will need to be made in the off season. Edsall would no doubt agree that things aren’t where they need to be at this point.
Maryland has a ton of potential, as evidenced during the Friedgen era. That UA money isn’t going away anytime soon, and neither is that Big Ten loot.
There is hope. Samuel Adams usually dumps the Chocolate Stout into the winter seasonal pack, which is so good, they could put tap water in the other 10 bottles in the thing and it’d still be worth the buy. Maryland needs to brew better, and fast. It shouldn’t be like it is. Their Chocolate Stout is out there.
