Celebrating Terps Love
That's how one of the Maryland scribes described what could be a momentously busy, if not necessarily momentous, day in College Park. The 7-2 first-place football team is currently discussing its bizarre 7-2 record. In a few hours both the defending national champion women's basketball team (which starts its season this week) and the defending national champion men's soccer team (which starts its title defense next week) will practice. Tonight, the defending national champion women's field hockey team will hold an NCAA selection show watching party, an event that promises to be attended by at least one member of the national blogging community. (I'll give you three guesses.) Also tonight prodigal sons Mattie Hahn and Mike Lonergan return with the University of Vermont, and the men's hoops team begins its march back to respectability. Plus, a certain blogger appears to be attempting to set the world record for chocolate chip M&M cookie consumption.
My question for all manner of Terps: how does success/failure change life on campus, and how do these various teams rank on the campus interest meter.
"Never thought about that before," AD Debbie Yow said. "I would not be prepared to give an answer. My goodness. Gosh. As an AD I never think of it like that. Something for everyone, is how I look at it."
(Also, Debbie recently got off the phone with ACC Commish John Swofford, in which she expressed her concerns about that safety call at Clemson last week. "He was appropriately responsive to our concerns," she said. "I am very satisfied with his response.)
(In terms of actual football news, Ralph Friedgen said he hopes to get Drew Weatherly back this week, he sees the confidence in the locker room going up up up and he thinks Miami is just about the best team in the country. At least, that's how he described them, talking about how many first-round NFL picks they have and how big and fast their defense is and how scary their talent is. Bear in mind, Ralph's team is two games ahead of Miami in the standings.)
By Dan Steinberg |
November 7, 2006; 1:44 PM ET
| Category:
Terps
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Posted by: soccergo9 | November 7, 2006 02:09 PM
I'm not sure how it affects those on campus, but for me it's nice when all of our teams do well. But I'm not sure that's very different than at any school. Having champions in non-revenue sports like soccer and women's bball is great, especially since they are gaining in popularity.
The football team's record is very bizarre indeed, but they have certainly found a way to win every week. And, despite our contradictory stats (yards against v. record, say), we're certainly making clutch plays (or just having good luck). I'm not sure where we'll end up in the standings, but it's nice to see the team with confidence again.
I'm also cautiously optimistic about the men's team, not that they will be great, but that they will return to a team who's about basketball and winning (instead of the NBA and themselves). So many distractions in the last three years really diverted the focus. Hopefully the freshmen and Osby will bring in a new attitude.
Posted by: kate | November 7, 2006 02:52 PM
Men's basketball is far and away number one. After that the football isn't that far behind. The men's soccer team and the women's basketball team pretty much tie for third, though I'd have to give the edge to the soccer team all in all.
After those it's a fast fall down the scales. Men's lacrosse would probably be next, followed by field hockey, volleyball, gymnastics, women's lacosse, cheerleading, swimming and wrestling. Any other competitive sports don't really get any notice at all.
Posted by: | November 7, 2006 03:09 PM
Is this cause to burn College Park again?
Posted by: Kim | November 7, 2006 03:09 PM
your right i forgot about the men's lacrosse team
Posted by: soccergo9 | November 7, 2006 03:37 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
I'd say that rankings for sports at UMD is:
Men's Bball
Football
Men's Soccer
Women's Bball
Field Hockey
Baseball
everything else