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.

What about Oregon? Are people excited for upcoming road games against Rutgers in the (Much) Big(ger Than) Ten?

Alger: You know, I’ve never had a bad time in New Jersey. Granted, the only times I’ve been in the state were for one Devils game and the few times I’ve flown out of Newark. 

The travel part will be fascinating. Oregon fans have always had a presence at away games – whether it was their actual traveling fan base, or just having games in states where many alumni live. And I’d like to think we’ll still see that for some of the marquee road games. But for games against the Marylands and Purdues of the world, that’s an awfully long way to travel from Eugene for what used to be a game against Cal. I’m sure there will be some curiosity factor in checking out all the campuses of the new conference, but I don’t know how many Oregon fans have price alerts set for D.C.

However, Maryland has won three consecutive bowl games for the first time (I believe) in program history. Does football have any shot at becoming something bigger on that campus, or will it always be a hoops school? And if you had to sell an Oregon fan on coming to a game at SECU Stadium, what are you leading with? 

Goon: Have you ever watched SportsCenter when Scott Van Pelt is doing a Maryland highlight, the Terps win, and he wraps by saying, “Let’s go to Bentley’s!” Well, you can go to Bentley’s — the same site where I celebrated my 21st birthday. My own memories of that night are … well, I digress.

I think the biggest thing is that College Park is, indeed, close to the nation’s capital. The metro stop is nearby and the system is easy to use. The journey to SECU Stadium is probably best done as a long weekend, where you can hit up museums, monuments and see the sights. 

I would add that the benefit of being a Ducks fan in Maryland’s stadium is you’ll probably see lots of green: I attended Maryland-Michigan last season, and the sea of blue looked as deep as, well, the real high seas. Attendance has been lagging for football of late, and the program, even though it has won more under Mike Locksley, needs some kind of star to shake things up.

Maryland sits at a tough confluence of robust Baltimore sports teams (the Ravens and Orioles) and the much less successful but still popular D.C. sports teams (the Commanders, Nationals and Capitals, who hopefully don’t move to Virginia). In the 2000s, they were pretty popular and successful (the Terps’ peak was an Orange Bowl berth), but in the NIL era, they’ve struggled to make a dent in the same way. For Eugene, the Ducks drive the sports culture. In Maryland, the Terps are competing for attention and dollars.

Obviously Oregon football had a tremendous season last year, and I think they would have been in the mix for the national title if Washington hadn’t gotten in their way. But moving back East, I have to note that there is a powerful bias that the Pac-12 (R.I.P.) is a finesse league that can’t compete with the corn-fed boys of the Big Ten. How do the Ducks (and their fans) view the challenge of joining a league that has generally been more successful in the playoff era, and what effect might it have on Oregon’s footprint?

Alger: Ah, 21st birthdays. Mine was in Missoula … let’s move on. 

The Oregon fanbase is 90-percent jacked for this move. The Ducks were near the top of the Pac-12 for the last two decades and were often hurt by the rest of the league not pulling its weight. When Oregon was at its very best, its conference’s reputation was at its very worst and it gave all the teams out West here zero margin for error. In recruiting, where the Ducks have thrived for the last seven years, they’ll no longer lose any players because of the conference they’re in. This feels like the next step in Oregon’s quest to become one of the big dogs. 

But also: They’re now going to be recruiting against Ohio State and Michigan. They’re going to have a schedule filled with quality opponents week after week. I mean, we’re kind of joking about Maryland being an auxiliary program on the football field, but that’s not a bad team. There’s not going to be a lot of easy wins on the schedule. And that’s fine when you have an Oregon team like this 2024 one that is projected to be one of the best in the conference. But in a down year, or a year with a key injury, it’s kind of daunting how competitive this thing is going to be. 

But also also: Those vegan-hippie-liberal Ducks were more than physical enough the last time they played Ohio State, the last two times they played Wisconsin and the last two times they played Michigan. The Ducks have always gotten up for those big games. There’s just going to be so many of them now.

Hey, because we like to talk shop here sometimes: How has the new job been? After covering the Lakers as intensely as you did, what’s it been like not having to drop everything when LeBron James has a cold?

And how is our guy Adley doing out there? 

Gooner: As I write to you, Adley Rutschman has the day off, but it’s not like he needs to prove anything. Unlike last season, when he was arguably the poster child of the Orioles’ resurgence, he’s poised this year to be one of a handful of Baltimore stars — Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Corbin Burnes. I’ve always had the feeling that the former Beaver enjoys the feeling of just being one of the guys, though I’m sure his spring training house with many of his teammates is quite the pad.

I notice you didn’t ask about Willie Taggart, the Ravens running back coach who I think made it out to the Northwest once. How do Ducks fans feel about him? You know what, don’t answer that.

Guys like Adley in my orbit have kept it from being quiet in the Baltimore sports market. I’ve been enjoying being able to get away from microanalysis of LeBron James’ legacy and minutiae, even though I had a good experience in my five years covering the Lakers. 

There’s a community facet to what I do now: I connect with people here about the Orioles being good again; about Lamar Jackson having moments of greatness and the occasional game he’d like back; about why the Preakness is a fleeting moment of glory, despite taking place in one of the state’s biggest money pits; about Baltimore native Angel Reese and what her national title at LSU means to up-and-coming ballers. I think you know a little bit about what I mean. We don’t have I-5, but we have I-95, and I’ve been driving up and down the interstate trying to meet folks and get experiences (Messi is coming to D.C. this weekend, maybe!). 

It was Baltimore native H.L. Mencken who called this “the life of kings.” I’m not sure if you and I, Tyson, are royalty strictly speaking — and it is admittedly a bad time to be in a royal family right now — but we are living large.

Or at least Big.

Ten.

Do you see what I did there? 

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor

Previously on Falling for the Big Ten:

Hello, Michigan