Maryland Football Schedule

The Terps kick off the ACC season on Saturday with a tough game at Clemson. That means that Maryland's early season stretch of too-close games against bad opponents is over.  It would be really nice to see the athletic department schedule fewer cupcake teams each year, especially since those are the schools that always give the Terps heartburn.

Here's the Maryland Football schedule for this year:

Date	Opponent*	Result		Record
Aug. 30, 2008	Delaware	W	14-7	1-0
Sept. 6, 2008	at Middle Tenn.	L	24-14	1-1
Sept. 13, 2008	California	W	35-27	2-1
Sept. 20, 2008	Eastern Michigan	W	51-24	3-1
Sept. 27, 2008	at Clemson	12:00 pm ET
Oct. 4, 2008	at Virginia	7:00 pm ET
Oct. 18, 2008	Wake Forest	TBA
Oct. 25, 2008	NC State	TBA
Nov. 6, 2008	at Virginia Tech	7:30 pm ET
Nov. 15, 2008	North Carolina	TBA
Nov. 22, 2008	Florida State	TBA
Nov. 29, 2008	at Boston College	TBA

It's great that we scheduled Cal this year, but really, three games against Delaware, MTSU, and EMU is an embarassment.  I know that all big schools schedule a lot of easy opponents (obviously MTSU wasn't easy enough), but Maryland would be better served by bucking the trend.

My ideal out of conference schedule would include standing home-and-home's against West Virginia (on hold while we play Cal for two years) and Penn State (who we haven't played since 1993 and haven't beaten since 1961).  Those two regional rivalries would really help with recruiting as long as the Terps didn't get embarassed every year.  But with the way Maryland gets killed in local recruiting by PSU as it is, losing to them couldn't hurt all that much.

The other two out of conference games could be scheduled against sucky teams from big conferences or good teams from sucky conferences.  How does a Thursday night game against Boisie State sound?  A trip to Northwestern?  Baylor?  Vanderbilt?  Sure, some of those will be losses, but it looks a whole lot better than a loss to "Middle."

If I were in charge of scheduling, the Terps would certainly make it to fewer bowl games.  But the bowl games we did make would be much better.  Finishing at .500 with that schedule looks a whole lot better than the 6-6 we're hoping for this year.  And really, who wants to go to the Congressional Bowl?  Or the Meineke Car Care Bowl?  I say shoot for the stars.

Another added benefit of my schedule would be additional national television exposure.  As it stands now, there are far too many Maryland football games that aren't even on regional TV.  If we were playing Penn State, do you think that game would go untelevised?  There's a huge recruiting advantage gained by being on TV more.  Just ask Fresno State.

Instead, we'll just keep playing crappy teams early in every season.  We'll lose to some of them and have unimpressive wins against some of the others.  Wouldn't it be nice to play some more meaningful games in September?