Falling for the Big Ten: Hello, Maryland
The Ducks need some new friends. Here's what Maryland brings to the table.
This week we continue our “Falling for the Big Ten” series with Maryland. This installment features a conversation with Kyle Goon, a sports columnist for The Baltimore Banner, a Maryland grad, and someone who spent the first portion of his career snow-deep in the Pac-12 covering Utah for the Salt Lake Tribune.
Tyson Alger: Dear Kyle,
With Oregon joining the Big Ten, I’ve been doing my best to try and find unique angles to preview the conference’s new teams for my Oregon audience. There’s a lot of easy storylines:
I wrote about UO’s history with Michigan last month, Oregon and Ohio State have had some massive games and I can’t wait to figure out what Rutgers is all about.
But with Maryland? I’m not quite sure where to start. UO and UM have never met on the gridiron. Heck, they’ve never met on the men’s basketball floor. To me, I just know Maryland for two things:
It’s the school with funky jerseys (this is saying a lot from an Oregon writer). And it’s the school who produced a heck of a one-time Pac-12 Conference beat writer, Kyle Goon.
You, Kyle Goon, lived in Salt Lake City. You’ve lived in Los Angeles. But you’ve recently moved home back to Baltimore where you’re a sports columnist for The Baltimore Banner.
I’m curious: as we dive a little more into what Maryland is really all about, where do the Terrapins currently stand on the Maryland sports fan’s hierarchy?
And have you fully recovered from the bubble yet?
Kyle Goon: Dear Tyson,
It’s funny you mention the bubble, because here I am again, writing from Florida for Orioles spring training. But I’ll be back soon for March Madness, something you and I know well from strung-out, long days in Vegas, watching Joe Young hit a game-winner over the Utes among other things.
The thing is Maryland — which won both a men’s and women’s national basketball championship in the aughts — isn’t a major player in the Big Ten this year. The men’s program was aggressively mediocre in coach Kevin Willard’s second season, and can’t shoot to save its life. The women, a powerhouse for so long under Brenda Frese, are taking something of a gap year after reaching the Elite Eight (and let’s face it, everyone is in Caitlin Clark’s shadow in this conference).
In football, the Terps have never been a big player, and since joining the conference 10 years ago, they’ve risen from the bottom to … the top of the bottom? Bottom of the middle? Squarely middle? Despite having the most prolific QB in Maryland history, Taulia Tagovailoa (you might have heard of his brother), they’ve never done better than four conference wins, and their 8-5 record last season is more forgettable than it sounds.
The Terps feel kind of blah right now. When they entered the Big Ten in 2014, it was heralded as a program-altering move, one that would enhance their revenue and give them access to more talent in a number of sports.
You only need to see the angst over Florida State to see that it was a good decision for Maryland to leave the ACC, but keeping up with the neighbors has been harder than anticipated. The athletic department spends a lot less than the Ohio States and Michigans of the world, and the field is getting more crowded with the pipeline that I’m now going to call the Reverse Oregon Trail – the Ducks and Huskies traveling in wagons back to the Midwestern United States in search of their fortune.