OT: Maryland-West Virginia game Sep 21

[Mista T]

I read that tickets to the Maryland-West Virginia game, already available to Ravens season ticket holders, will be on sale to the general public tomorrow. The college games played in Baltimore have almost always been a good deal: half price or better than Ravens games but played in a first class facility (lack of dome and escalators notwithstanding, eh Losac?). I have seen just about every Terps game played in Baltimore that I can remember, but I am contemplating sitting this one out. I am still pouting about bolting from the ACC, thereby losing the classic rivalries with North Carolina, NC State, Va Tech and UVa, which go back 90 years to the 1923 season. I could give a shit about Purdue, Northwestern Boilermakers (what is a boilermaker, anyway, and what does that have to do with football?), Ohio State, etc. Road trips used to be fun, headed south, especially the 2+ hour drive to Charlottesville to UVa. Now, road trips to Big 10 schools would be akin to following the Ravens to Cleveland or Cincinatti.

Are there others who share my "curmudgeon-ness" about the Terps move to the Big 10 -- or should I just grow a pair, suck it up, and buy my tickets?:grbac:

[Nightman]

All I can say is good riddance to ACC basketball and those refs. ACC should stand for Always Carolina Conference. There is one Big 10 school you could make a road trip to and that will be Rutgers which is joining the Conference the same time as Maryland and I've heard rumors that Virginia and either North Carolina or Georgia Tech could be leaving for the B1G as well to become the fifteen and sixteenth members, Johns Hopkins might join as a Lacrosse only member so that the league can have enough schools to get an automatic NCAA berth in that sport for the league as well as providing more programming for the Big Ten Network which already has football, mens and womens basketball, wrestling, golf, baseball, volleyball and hockey.

So Mista T, its up to you if want tickets. M and T Bank Stadium has easier access to and from a football game than Byrd Stadium in College Park, I'm just giving my 2 cents.

[Raveninwoodlawn]

I read that tickets to the Maryland-West Virginia game, already available to Ravens season ticket holders, will be on sale to the general public tomorrow. The college games played in Baltimore have almost always been a good deal: half price or better than Ravens games but played in a first class facility (lack of dome and escalators notwithstanding, eh Losac?). I have seen just about every Terps game played in Baltimore that I can remember, but I am contemplating sitting this one out. I am still pouting about bolting from the ACC, thereby losing the classic rivalries with North Carolina, NC State, Va Tech and UVa, which go back 90 years to the 1923 season. I could give a shit about Purdue, Northwestern Boilermakers (what is a boilermaker, anyway, and what does that have to do with football?), Ohio State, etc. Road trips used to be fun, headed south, especially the 2+ hour drive to Charlottesville to UVa. Now, road trips to Big 10 schools would be akin to following the Ravens to Cleveland or Cincinatti.

Are there others who share my "curmudgeon-ness" about the Terps move to the Big 10 -- or should I just grow a pair, suck it up, and buy my tickets?:grbac:

Suck it up.

It was a financially necessary move.


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[darb72]

Start following an SEC team.

Hell, the only reason I watch Bama games is so I'll know who the Raven's are planning to draft.

[FadeToBlack]

Screw the ACC, that unsustainable, football-deficient, Carolina-biased suckling of Maryland's teat. Now off to the financially strongest conference in all the land, the Big Ten. Too bad about the old rivalries.

[fastlax16]

Screw the ACC, that unsustainable, football-deficient, Carolina-biased suckling of Maryland's teat. Now off to the financially strongest conference in all the land, the Big Ten. Too bad about the old rivalries.

If you think the ACC was Carolina biased get ready for an OSU/Michigan centric love fest like you won't believe. The money is definitely better tho.

[CharmCityCrab]

Penn State could be a huge rivalry. There's the geography. There's the history (Penn State refused to continue the series decades ago unless Maryland would play two games at Penn State for every one game at Maryland- a slap in the face). The first games of the renewed series will come when Penn State is down because of sanctions and Maryland could be on it's way up, maybe resulting in a key upset or two. State College isn't a bad place to spend a day or two for those who can afford to travel. And there are Penn State fans all over the general region- both Steelers and Eagles fans often root for or are alumni of that school. That's where rivalries really take off, seeing all your neighbors, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, people on the street, etc., wearing the opposing team's caps, jerseys, and jackets, having their yard signs and bumper stickers, etc., and coming down and packing each other's stadiums for games and having some friendly back and forth in the stands. And it'll draw from the Ravens-Steelers and Redskins-Eagles rivalries to some degree- Terps fans are often Ravens or Redskins fans and are used to not liking Pennsylvania teams in football. Also, many of the border areas on both sides have fans of both teams (i.e. I live in southern PA, and I'm a Terps fan, and there are plenty of Penn State fans in Maryland).

Also, Ohio State is another great program that's not terribly far from the Baltimore-Washington area. Michigan is a huge football program. Nebraska has won national championships. Rutgers is basically a New York school, Baltimoreans hate the Yankees, Washingtonians hate the Giants.

I think this is a great move for the Maryland football program. You put yourself in a conference with schools like Penn State, Michigan and Nebraska that play before 100k and draw great TV ratings and that gives you the opportunity to recruit better players and more of them, and bring your program up to the level of the competition. We could play in the Rose Bowl one day. We could attract a good head coach who's nationally known, maybe an ex-NFL guy, if Randy Edsall doesn't work out and stop promoting guys from schools like UConn. Brian Billick- Terps head coach of the future? That name is probably a stretch, but maybe a former NFL head coach of some sort.

Plus, we keep our out-of-conference game with West Virginia, our biggest football rivalry. I understand why the ACC attempted to push a Maryland-University of Virginia rivalry, but I don't think it ever clicked. I just didn't care about the Cavs. They aren't even a football school, or a basketball school, or an athletics school. Maybe it was a plus to have the debate team go down and debate against Thomas Jefferson's university, if debate teams still exist and if that actually happened, but it wasn't working football wise, for me, anyhow. I didn't mind the game, but I didn't consider them a rival.

The ACC just wasn't a football conference. There were too many Wake Forests and Dukes and the like there. They brought in FSU and eventually drug it down to their level. They brought in Miami and, well, ditto. Heck, I live just across the state line from Maryland and I can't get a lot of Maryland games on television here. When I pull down the "ACC Network" stream on the computer, it's usually two southern hick announcers who sound like they know less about football than most average football fans I know, amd who miss things like the kicker getting pulled in that one game and kept announcing the attempts as being by the gentleman who had left the game, and where the video quality looks like a 1980s video game even though I have the bandwidth to stream full quality television shows and the like.

In the Big Ten, every conference game will be on national television. We'll be playing schools that live and breath football and have huge rabid fan bases. We'll be in a conference that we have more in common with culturally. We'll have the money we need to invest in our sports programs. I think this makes sense from a lot of angles.

Basketball wise, people can talk about our historical rivalries with Duke and North Carolina, but the ACC spit in our face when they decided on a divisional lineup that put us in a different division from both schools, and added paired guaranteed home and homes for rivals in opposite divisions from another, and didn't give us either school as our favored rivalry. Coach K can rant about how Maryland is throwing out old rivalries and traditions, but where was he when this divisional lineup and these favored rivalries were determined and Maryland was denied it's traditional home and homes with it's two biggest basketball rivals? It's just another Carolina screw job- the way Maryland always gets screwed out of hosting conference championships, the way the ACC refs always favor the Carolina teams in big games, and so on and so forth.

If the ACC cared about Maryland basketball and the rivalries it had and brought to the table, it would have made sure we kept those home and home series with Duke and UNC. The ACC showed us exactly what they thought of us when they didn't bother. They agreed with the Duke fans who spent nearly a whole game chanting "Not our rivals" at the Terrapins a few years ago. See ya, ACC.

Plus, the basketball was getting watered down. Boston College appears to play their home games in a high school gym. The last Maryland road game at Boston College there seemed to be roughly 15 people in attendance in a gym that looked like it seated about 2,000. ;) I had to watch that on a lovely stream that was too pixelated to even see the scorebox in the corner.

At this point, the Big 10 may even be the better basketball conference. That's arguable, maybe the Big 10 isn't quite the ACC basketball wise, but the gap is getting much smaller, at least. With football, there's no comparison. The Big 10 is like the NFL of college football and the ACC is like the arena football league of college football (At best).

Besides, when the ACC collapses, the Big Ten may well bring in Virginia and North Carolina anyway. Duke can beg us for admission and we can tell to check back when they have a football program. ;)

[Journeyman]

So who wants to be a super-awesome guy and PM me the access code on Ticketmaster so I can get my family awesome seats?

[thebird7689]

I am a huge fan of the move to the Big Ten. This will give the Terps more chances of beating ranked teams to better there chance of getting into the big dance. Duke and Carolina are usually our only chances of a big upset and even Carolina has been up and down the last couple of years. I know there was talk of Carolina maybe coming to the Big Ten and I would love to see what Coach K has to say about tradition if that happens.

Football is going to be much better since we will actually play decent teams. It will help with recruiting also.

I think one of the big things is that all Terps games should now be on TV dueto the Big Ten network. If they want to build the Terp brand, they need to put all the games on TV.

[middleriverterp]

I am pleased with the move to the Big 10, no more terrible ACC Conference tournaments in Greensboro, NC with nothing but Duke and UNC fans and refs. Now if Edsel can finally recruit, maybe it will be worth going to the game. I am avoiding this game because I don't want to pay 85 dollars a ticket to watch a crappy football team get beat by WVU.