The Maryland Terrapins are headed to the Big 10 and the
pissing and moaning coming out of the DMV is louder than a baby on a cross-country
flight. As a self proclaimed and unapologetic hater of all things Terrapin, my
hair trigger reaction is to tell Terp Nation to shut the heck up. But after
further review of the Conference Move, my reaction is….SHUT THE HECK UP TERP
NATION.
This is a good move. Wait, no. This is a really good move!
Wait, still not there yet. This is a
GREAT move! There we go.
The biggest obstacle for many of you is this feeling of
nostalgia for the old ACC, and I completely get that. But the ACC really hasn’t
been the ACC since Miami and Virginia Tech joined up. And with the upcoming
additions of Pitt, Syracuse, and Notre Dame, the ACC is about to be as
recognizable as Joan Rivers before her 3,764 plastic surgeries. The ACC is
changing, expanding it’s market, and quite frankly these moves were not going
to be good for the University of Maryland. But we will dig into that sport by
sport later on.
The move to the Big 10 is a money grab, plain and simple.
This has become commonplace in collegiate athletics, and there is absolutely
nothing wrong with this. In case you
have been sleeping under Ralph Friedgin’s gut for the past few months, you know
that Maryland’s athletic department has been hemorrhaging money. To the point where they had to slash seven programs
including the swim team, men’s tennis, and a whole bunch of men’s track teams
(that’s right, the runners are multiplying!).
With the move to the Big 10, Maryland will take in a projected $30
million annually (TV Revenue, Ticket Sales, etc.) which will go a long way for
a school whose athletic programs need cash flow more than Antoine Walker. This deal from the Big 10 is like someone
with years of student loans and credit card debts opening their front door and
seeing Ed McMahon with a large cardboard check.
Maryland will hopefully know what to do with this newfound
cheddar, and they will need to funnel it into recruiting. Period. Byrd Stadium is already a great venue and the
football facilities are state of the art.
The Comcast Center is a far cry from the vibe of Cole Field House, but
it is certainly enough to entice recruits.
Testudo is on the balcony ready to jump off and I’m the
police officer with the megaphone who is trying to talk him off the ledge. My wife has left me and she took the kids all
because I have a bad drinking habit, which stems directly from the fact that I
let a 16-year-old girl jump off her apartment balcony 6 months ago. This is a tough thing to get over, and it’s
cost me everything, but maybe just maybe, if I can prevent Testudo from jumping
I will redeem myself. Well here it goes
Football
This is the sport that stands to benefit the most. Football is most schools’ major
moneymaker. Maryland’s football
tradition in the ACC is about as storied as any of these contestants on Dancing With the Stars. This
whole “Oregon East” movement backed by Under Armour can work, and the Big 10
will provide a wider net for this.
Whether you are a Randy Edsall supporter or a Randy Edsall Hater, this
conference move is a good thing.
Haters: Maryland does not have the money to fire
Edsall. If they fired him with this many
years left on his contract, the school would be on the hook to continue to pay
him the remainder of his contract. They
cannot afford to pay him and another coach at the same time. This move can give
them the financial support to fire Edsall and bring in a viable replacement and
pay him an appropriate salary.
Supporters: For those of you who still believe in Edsall,
the move to the Big 10 is still a good thing. Football is better in the Big
10 than it is in the ACC. With that
Randy Edsall can start to recruit a different caliber of athlete than he could
in the ACC. Players who get spurned by
Ohio State or Michigan will want a crack at those schools and Maryland can
provide that opportunity. The move
provides Maryland with a more legitimate opportunity to open the recruiting
trails in the Big 10 states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan will be a sellout every
single year they play at Maryland. They
have large fan bases that will buy up tickets, which in turn will also bring
Maryland’s fan base out for the big games.
Playing big time programs like this will also help recruiting. As a high
school football player, you want the opportunity to play the Ohio States, the
Michigans, and the Wisconsins. More
national television games and more national exposure mean better recruiting
pitches. Getting a chance to play at the
Big House, the Horseshoe, Happy Valley, or Camp Randall will help recruit a
better caliber of athlete than going to play Virginia Tech, Clemson, or Florida
State (which is a great venue, but wouldn’t you take the opportunity to play at
3-4 great venues per year, not just one?).
With more money coming in, there will be bigger recruiting
budgets and the Maryland staff can go on more visits, and get out and watch the
players play more. It may take a couple
of years for Maryland to get up to where they want to be, and it may take a
different coach, but as far as football goes THIS IS THE RIGHT MOVE.
Basketball
Here is where people are most upset. Reasons being, the nostalgia over their
“rivalries” with Duke and Carolina, the reputation of the ACC, and their
regionally geographic bound with the Atlantic Coast. Lets debunk all of these
right now. In order for it to be a
rivalry, both sides must consider it so and the hate and passion must be so high
on both sides that this game is the biggest of the year, regardless of the two
teams’ records. With that said, there’s
really only one true rivalry in the ACC and that’s Duke and Carolina. Maryland fans hate Duke and they hate
Carolina – as evidenced by these being the only two games the student section
is actually full. Duke and Carolina
enjoy beating the ever-living piss out of the Terps, but no more so than Wake
Forest or Florida State. This is not a
rivalry just angry little brother syndrome.
So move on Terps fans and forge new rivalries in the Big 10.
The second part of this is the reputation of the ACC. For a few years, the ACC had ascended to the
tops of College Basketball where 7-8 teams were making the big dance. However, it has become a very top-heavy
conference with tiers. Your Top Tier is Duke and Carolina and now you HAVE to
include N.C. State. The 2nd
tier is the next batch of schools that are competitive, jump in and out of the
top 25, and make a run every few years, only to shy up once the lights come on.
This is Florida State and it used to be Wake Forest. Maryland would sniff this tier, but in
reality they were in the 3rd tier with everyone else. The Terps were lost in the shuffle most
years, and not even a GPS could help them find a way in the new ACC, which will
include Syracuse, Pitt, and Notre Dame (which is a better job and program, cut to Mike Brey nodding).
Finally, the regional attachment to the ACC. I get this argument somewhat because the
charter members of the conference come from the Maryland, Virginia, and
Carolina region so there is a certain bond.
But once the ACC welcomed in schools from Florida and Massachusetts,
that bond essentially disintegrated. And
now with schools from Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and even Indiana coming
aboard, this regional attachment is nothing more than an old man refusing to
give up his recliner despite the fact the original covering is withered away to
nothing.
In recent years the Big 10 has surpassed the ACC as a
basketball conference. The Big 10 has
won the past 3 ACC-Big Ten Challenges, since 2009 the Big 10 has made 3 Final
Fours while the ACC has made 2, and currently the Big 10 has the no. 1 ranked
program (Indiana), the no. 3 (Ohio State), the no. 4 (Michigan), no. 15
(Michigan State) the no. 24 (Wisconsin), and Minnesota who is somewhere between
26-28. Besides the Tobacco Roadsters
(Duke no.5, UNC no. 9, and NC State no. 16) there is not much going on in the
ACC. Florida State will be there, but as a whole the Big 10 is far more
competitive. It is the better basketball
conference and with the recruiting classes that Turgeon is bringing in, I could
definitely see Maryland getting more at-large bids out of the Big 10 than they
would in the ACC.
As far as baseball goes, Maryland was never EVER going to
compete in the ACC. They won 5 games a
year in conference, and eeked their way to a .500 record overall year in and
year out. While the Big 10 is a major
step down from the ACC in baseball, it gives Maryland a chance to be who they
really are. They were never going to be
a good ACC team and trying to fool themselves every year was counter
active. Now they can compete on a more
even playing field. Not bad for a
program that barely survived the program slash from this summer.
As for those of you who are complaining about how it affects
lacrosse. Put on your croakies, and your
pastel shorts, hop back into your daddy’s beamer, and drive back to whatever
hole you crawled out of. You are a niche sport for rich white kids.
There are only 3 teams in the Big 10 now
with Maryland and Rutgers making 5.
Maryland has the option to just become independent much like Johns
Hopkins. Seeing as there are only like
20-30 college lacrosse teams anyways (not accurate number, but I’m not taking
the time to look up how few college lacrosse teams there are) Maryland can go
independent and still load their schedule with the premier teams they’ve grown
accustomed to. Your sport generates no
revenue for Maryland so stop complaining about how it impacts your sport. Football and Basketball are the CEO’s and
CFO’s and Lacrosse works in the mailroom.
Bottom line, this is a good move for Maryland. The university will make far more money which
will lead to improved facilities, more recruiting resources, better academic
funding, and they can even reinstate many of the programs that had to be cut
over the summer. Come on Testudo, get
down from that ledge it’s not so bad. Forget about cursing out Roy Williams or
Mason Plumlee. It’s time to direct those obscenities at Thad Motta’s children
and Gary Harris’s mother.
