MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
It was far from being a select Southern Cal team that Maryland beat in its Homecoming game Saturday night, but read the first part of that sentence again — Maryland beat Southern Cal.
That the USC football team, even with famous band and famous fight song in tow, is now 3-4 matters not one bit to the University of Maryland and to the students who rushed the field at SECU Stadium following the Terps’ thrilling 29-28 come-from-behind victory over Fight On.
What matters is the game was a season rejuvenator for Maryland, and it showed that the Terrapins have not quit under head coach Mike Locksley, when just last week it didn’t seem that any of this would be possible.
Saturday’s exhilarating win also showed to the Maryland players and coaches that even if much of the Maryland fanbase can be as wishy-washy and as transient as the locale of the beloved old commuter school itself, by gosh, their fellow students still have their backs, and on Saturday several thousand of them stayed to the glorious end and for the first time in their lives as Maryland students were able to experience rushing the field to embrace their football team and, yes, their fellow students for one helluva job that was relentlessly-well done.
So to all of the fuddy-duddies out there who harrumphed the rushing of the field, lighten up and just shut up, will ya?
Let the students enjoy the moment. It’s their time as Maryland students, and who knows? This might just be the first of a handful of these that these kids are able to experience during their time in College Park, because guess who else was in attendance Saturday night at SECU Stadium? Archbishop Spalding quarterback Malik Washington, one of the top 10 high school quarterbacks in the country who has committed to Maryland for next season, not to mention St. Frances edge rusher Zion Elee, the No. 2-rated recruit in the nation for the class of 2026 according to 247 Sports, and a host of other prized recruits who were on the sideline as Maryland’s guests.
You don’t think they felt the electricity and the excitement in the building on Saturday night? Elee himself posted a picture of himself amidst the celebration and wrote, “I like Maryland,” so you bet a big victory for Maryland over a traditional blue-blood football school is meaningful in more ways than you can imagine.
It was a big deal.
Though I agree with Locksley that it’s closer now than it’s been in many years, Maryland clearly has quite a way to go. For it was the same senseless, unforced penalties and mistakes that keep happening that put the Terps two touchdowns behind in the fourth quarter to begin with.
Yet at 4-3, if the Terps can somehow win two more games they will be bowl eligible for the fourth straight season, which would be significant and not something to take lightly for a program like Maryland’s. Of course, that’s easier said than done with remaining games at Minnesota, at No. 1 Oregon, home against Rutgers and Iowa, and at No. 3 Penn State, but Saturday’s comeback against Southern Cal again showed that the process is, in fact, slowly but steadily taking place.
It’s just a matter of when it finally kicks in, which makes two of Maryland’s losses this season, Michigan State and Northwestern, even more difficult to stomach.
So it’s time to accelerate the process.
That head coach Locksley two weeks ago would step in to do the play calling is perhaps the most telling sign of what has been missing for Maryland football, even through the success of the previous three seasons.
Money is hard to come by, of course, particularly at a school that is tiered in its conference the way Maryland is in the Big Ten. But football is the biggest revenue generator any major university has. Therefore, to make money, you have to spend money, and Maryland athletic director Damon Evans needs to boost Locksley’s budget by about $5 million to hire a top offensive coordinator, a top defensive coordinator, and a good offensive line coach who has both college and professional coaching experience.
As Maryland found out in the first three seasons of the Ralph Friedgen era, top coordinators make a difference, not only with their experience and know-how, but in the high-quality players that tend to follow them to the schools where they work.
Maryland’s task at hand is to build off the USC win and continue to play combatively and as close to error-free football as it can to extend its bowl history even more.
Once this season is complete, though, it’s time to, as the Terps did on Saturday, put their chips in the middle of the table and get Mike Locksley some much-needed and long-overdue help.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT