The Baltimore Sun’s sports reporter Edward Lee wrote that the University of Maryland Terps football team “feasted on three non-conference foes” last fall (“Maryland football clobbers Towson, 44-17, in tune-up before Big Ten opener,” Sept. 13).
This season was just another case of that. However, it always seems to me that the Terps customarily get indigestion from feasting on smaller, slower, shallower teams, which haunts them in their preparation for Big Ten action.
The Terrapins have never beaten the University of Wisconsin in football (0-4 all-time). They are playing in Madison at Camp Randall Stadium, a Terps boneyard. It seats 76,000-plus. Also, they may have to play against their former quarterback, Billy Edwards Jr., who probably knows the Terps’ offensive tendencies as well as anybody, outsider or not. All of that aside, I believe that Mike Locksley’s crew still seems to lack focus, discipline and common sense, as demonstrated by their eight penalties for 75 yards versus Towson. That was a lot of major penalties for an alleged group of “superior athletes” to commit in basically a glorified scrimmage against an inferior team. Locksley may have recruited a healthy number of great athletes, but what’s their football IQ?
As I see it, the Terps will still need three more wins to become bowl-eligible. What was Wisconsin’s prep? Oh, they went to Alabama to play the Crimson Tide. The first three Maryland games were, and are almost always, “the men against the boys.” Hopefully, the Terps can hold their focus and poise and stop being “the boys” when their season starts for real in Madison on Saturday. Otherwise, if they revert to form, they look like their usual 50/50 shots to become bowl-eligible.
— George Hammerbacher, Catonsville