Maryland Sell’s It’s Soul to the Big 10
I know there is nothing my ranting can do, but the more this decision sets in, the angrier I am getting. I just can’t believe what has transpired, and all the people who think this move is good from any stand point. If you aren’t outraged, god bless you, I wish I wasn’t, I wish I was resigned to the fact that this is a business and any interest I put into this University I do at my own risk, but I can’t.
First of all, none of these following points are aimed at the Big 10 Schools, this is entirely about the leadership of this University and where it is taking us. But before I get going, lets go back to the points.
#1) More Money. OK, I have seen the numbers, and if this were based strictly on money, it is a smart move, but here is what alarms me. It wasn’t like we were getting paid with food stamps while with the ACC. What is the school going to do with this money? How is it going to be spent? How are we to insure we don’t go broke again? Am I going to be getting a letter from the Terrapin Club that says:
“Dear Bob,
We are good for funds this year, thanks for giving in the past…oh and the Alumni Association said they are good as well, so keep your Terp
CLUB money and go buy a little something nice for the misses.
Signed,
The now much more wealthy University of Maryland”
Of course there will never be a letter like that. When you give more money to people who go broke, it doesn’t fix the problem, they’ll just spend that money too. There has to be fundamental changes, not just more money, there will never be ENOUGH money for these guys. This is a short sighted fix to a long standing problem with life long implications to Maryland fans.
#2) But what rips my heart out the most, is that the two men driving this decision, I’m willing to bet have never spent time in a crab boat. I would also bet neither owns a can of “Old Bay”, nor has either one ever drank Nattie Boh. How many people reading this would be willing to bet $1,000,000 that either is still with the University (Oh money, I’ll bet they’re reading now!) in 5 years? How many think either guy will be here in 10 years? Hell do you think either will even live in this state by then? Yet what they decide to do, will be with us the rest of our lives.
#3) Where was I when the ACC schools all turned into Community Colleges? Isn’t Wisconsin the number #1 Party School? Isn’t Ohio State more notorious for tatoo’s than books? Hasn’t both Michigan AND Ohio State forfeited Final Four appearances? Though it is my understanding that Northwestern is a good school, I would be willing to bet 1994 me could have gotten into every other Big 10 school. Yet I would not have gotten into UNC, nor Duke (this is speaking hypothetically….oh wait, who cares? Duke is no longer a rival). VT has a really strong engineering school, and UVA is pretty tough. Even if the Big 10 is harder to get into than I’m giving credit for, there is no difference large enough to use this as an argument.
#4) And where is this University headed? Why are we raising the requirements for our kids? This school was founded to educate the sons (and eventually the daughters) of our state, not to become the Stanford of the East. Who wants to be that? How does that help us? I would much rather have non elite kids getting into Maryland then educating international egg heads so they can go move out of the area once they finish school.
#5) It’s the ACC!?! How do you flush 60 years of tradition. I can’t even figure out which one of these point angers me the most, I grew up knowing at least one fan of every ACC School. Hell my sister graduated from Clemson, what do I say to her at Thanksgiving? Do you know at half time at the Maryland Clemson game Darryl Hill was recognized as the first African American player to play in the ACC for Football? For those reading, why is this such a big deal? Well Hill was from Maryland, and the game was IN Clemson. That’s the ACC family for you! But no sooner than we fly back from South Carolina and the President and AD are planning to bury the hatched in the Conference’s back.
#6) And then there is loyalty. If the conference was falling apart and we joined the Big 10, fine that’s life, but for us to be the culprit in putting the ACC in dire straights, that is unacceptable. We helped make this conference what it was, and now we are killing it. Where is the Maryland Pride in that?
#7) One board of regents said every distinguished alumni he spoke with was for the move. Then how come Len Elmore and Tom McMillen came out against it? Are they not distinguished? Stop feeding us lies.
Look, this happened because the Athletic Department needed money, and the guys in charge are A) From a Big 10 School, B) Totally overmatched for his position, and C) Have no ties or understanding of what the ACC was. That is it.
I learned many things at Maryland, but the older I get, the more letters I get, the more obvious it is that I am just a dollar sign to this school (a small one at that). It’s a shame. The problem is I don’t know how to stop loving Maryland, I think it’s because I can’t separate the school and the state because if I could I would not give a rat’s $#$ about Loh and Anderson, but I do, and thats my own problem. Too bad it can’t be fixed by money.
Oh and if any Big 10 fans are reading this and you want to know what this whole experienc is like. Try closing your eyes and waking up tomorrow and having someone from outside the midwest tell you Michigan and Ohio State aren’t going to be playing anymore.
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November 20th, 2012 at 7:40 am
Except, you already weren’t getting a home Carolina and home Duke game everything year. The only home and homes that were guaranteed were UVA and Pitt. The ACC you wax goldenly for stopped existing in 2003.
November 20th, 2012 at 7:56 am
With better grammar
Your passion is commended, except, we already weren’t getting a home Carolina and home Duke game every year. The only home and homes that were guaranteed were UVA and Pitt. The ACC you wax poetically for stopped existing in 2003. The ACC tournament has been meaningless for years. The Duke chant for Maryland at Cameron is “Not our rival!!!” The fact is, we had no rival in the ACC. Duke Carolina, UVA VA Tech. Our best rival is WVU in football and their rival is Pitt. Pitt would say their rival is Penn St.
November 20th, 2012 at 9:01 am
MD fans aren’t simply upset about losing our rivals. I agree it’s not the same ACC we grew up on but it’s still the ACC. We would play Carolina, Duke, UVA, NCST, etc at least most years. Duke chanting “Not our rival” makes us hate them even more. That is the fun part about it. Now we really don’t have any rivals with the move to the BIG conference. The closest thing we have is Michigan St. because they beat us in the sweet 16 and Indiana because you know why. At least we are the last BIG 10 school to win a National Championship.
November 20th, 2012 at 9:01 am
Good write up Bob. Well said.
November 20th, 2012 at 9:36 am
@Jim: Come on, the fact that the Dukies feel the need to shout “not our rival” in basketball is a great indication that they’d like to ignore us but can’t. The past few years notwithstanding, the Terps have played them tougher than any other team in the ACC, even UNC, Wake and NCSU for significant stretches.
We may not have any “natural” rivals in the ACC from a geographical perspective, but we have a wealth of tradition with 8 of its schools, and more in common geographically with the VA, NC, and GA schools than any Big 10 school (east coast, south of MD line, etc).
At the end of the day it probably makes financial sense for us to leave, but no one can make a convincing argument that loss of ACC tradition was an important factor in this decision. We have no geographical commonality or sports tradition with the Big 10 schools with the exception of Penn State, a university that thinks so highly of us that it has refused to schedule home and away games with us in football for the past 20 years.
Now we’re the newest adopted step child of a conference in which truly we have no rivals, and even less influence on where direction the conference heads than we did in the ACC. Maybe once we’re financially solvent again ($50 million exit fee) we can use that $ to get an ice hockey team, since that is more relevant to our new conference than lax or soccer.
November 20th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Another issue not mentioned is dropping the non revenue sports b/c of a lack of money yet there seems to be no problem in paying a potential $50 million exit fee. That is hypocrisy.
Also, I read somewhere that the administration believes this will put more butts in Byrd stadium; however, those butts will be those of DC area Big 10 fans.
November 20th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Bob, you nailed it. I agree with you 100%. The MD admin took the easy way out and destroyed a legacy. I’ll show them. They wont be getting my $30 this year.
November 20th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for commenting Jim, don’t worry, proper grammar has no place on this blog!!
November 20th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
Thanks FH, if only I owned a major corporation maybe someone would listen. It’s laughable to think any of the regents care about my Terp Club dues. It’s just sad that both Elmore and McMillen were basically ignored, those are two pretty big names in my book.
November 21st, 2012 at 7:08 am
Maryland has $100 million debt and on the brink of collapse. Maryland would rank #7 academically in the Big 10 currently. Big Ten is #1 APR. OK That is academically. Now sports. Basketball….Maryland is not that good right now. Big 10 is #1 Rated Power Conference Basketball. Have 4 ranked top #20. And football 4 of the winningest programs in modern era. Winningest program of all time. Most NCAA recognized football champions ever, most AP champions ever. And with the current Big 10/Fox Merger being the most lucrative college sports tv deal ever with the largest market and viewership not to mention Erin Andrews. Those of you who are concerned about dead rivalries or crap noone really cares about or they would have supported the teams and attended all the games win or lose, all of the teams in the big ten are going to lose some of their rivalries also. Don’t think it was win-win for the Big 10…It is a gamble. As a Big Ten fan, and an Ohio State fan…welcome aboard. I hope we can make beautiful music together and let the haters hate. We in the big ten love our sports and we spend all of our money on sports win or lose. So before you hate any more think about that stuff there. Oh remember we are joined by Gary Williams also.
November 21st, 2012 at 12:15 pm
I share your feelings about this decision, and I agree that neither Anderson nor Loh have really made much of an effort, if any, to get to know the state of Maryland, its history, traditions and quirks. In addition, Loh has more ties to the Big Ten and I simply don’t believe that that didn’t factor into this decision.
As Mike Wise wrote in the Washington Post, these men are educational careerists. UMD is simply another note on their resumes. At some point both Loh and Anderson will move on.
The Big Ten is, and always will be a Midwestern conference. It has its own history and traditions, and I’m not going to rag on them. At my age (60+)I’m not interested in investing my time, energy or money in new rivalries.
November 21st, 2012 at 3:10 pm
I’m sad to leave the ACC but I understand we did what we had to do. The problem with our administration is with change management. Most big changes like this should be accompanied by months of campaigning to ensure all stakeholders feel included, or at least informed, about the decision. It’s not a full on democracy, but even basic common sense tells you, if you want to avoid hurting feelings, you better inform folks of changes that are about to affect them and at the very least give them an opportunity to vent about it. A little town hall tour reaching out to the MD faithful would have gone a long way in getting more folks to accept and maybe even embrace this move. This administration prefers to rip the bandaid off and well, this is what happens…lifelong supporters who are pissed off, and more importantly, unable to focus on the positives. Perhaps the deals were done during the 11th hour with no time to manage the change, I don’t know. Whatever the case, there’s no excuse for not trying to win the support of your fans before making such a move. Oh yeah, Edsall is a loser.
November 21st, 2012 at 3:47 pm
This is not a knock on the Big 10, the Big 10 is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if this were the Big East (ok well maybe that would hurt more), the SEC, The Big 12, the Pac 10 or whomever.
This is about making a short term decision with radical long time impacts. I will leaving on Friday afternoon, being on a rival campus Friday night, attending a Football game on Saturday, and being home by Sunday afternoon.
Going to Big 10 games is going to cost a lot more money and a heck of a lot more time (which is the biggest limiting factor in my case). The fact that there was NO thought about the fans is what really hurts. Rin nailed it on the head. Again how would you feel if someone from outside of Ohio came into OSU and said we weren’t playing Michigan anymore.
November 21st, 2012 at 3:48 pm
I should say the conference we are joining is irrelevant, saying the Big 10 is irrelevant is not what I intended in that first sentence. My bad!
November 22nd, 2012 at 8:13 am
What Bob and Rin note are key – there was no discussion with alumni, students, or fans. If this was a case where Delany was really concerned about the future of the Big10, and saw the DC market as key to maintaining it’s a top conference status (as is being reported everywhere), then at the end of the day it was MD who was really holding the cards, and the administration should have taken its time deliberating this decision with this for the many reasons mentioned above.
Big10 fans can “hate” all they want for us Terps fans who don’t appreciate the move and the way this all went down, but the truth of the matter is there is no one else in the DC/Baltimore market that Delany could have considered. Loh, Anderson and the rest of the UMD officials who thought this was a slam dunk had time to present their case to the real Terrapin stakeholders, as well as with the rest of the conference. But they didn’t, which just further solidifies the sentiment expressed by Barbara above that they had the best interests of their Big10 roots in mind – rather than the University – when they decided to deliberate this in secret.
We just killed 60 year old relationships for a handout. I will love Gary Williams to the day I die, but I’m with McMillen, Elmore, and the Turtledroppings crew here – this should have discussed in the open.
December 7th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Two questions #1 what sports are you willing to cut if you don’t join the Big Ten and you will have to cut more? #2 What happens if you in the end turn down the Big Ten, do you think the Big Ten will just say gee we didn’t get Maryland so lets just go home and count our money. No since Rugters is on board 100% the Big Ten will look at another ACC univ and get them, where does that leave Maryland? There are rumors about FSU haven’t contract with the Big Ten. Be happy you landed in a safe place with univ that are pretty much the same as yours, you might end up in the Big East south, which is the way the ACC is going.