Within the mid-morning hours of Nov. 17, 2012, shortly earlier than Maryland was set to host No. 10 Florida State, Maryland dean of engineering Darryll Pines walked into the soccer suite at Capital One Discipline and noticed college officers huddled in a nook.
“I might inform that one thing had occurred, however I didn’t know what had occurred,” stated Pines, now Maryland’s president. “I might see some intense conversations occurring between the president and different folks. ‘Why are they so intensely speaking to at least one one other? What might they be speaking about?’ I had no clue.”
After the sport, Pines returned to his workplace to a cellphone message referencing an ESPN alert that Maryland athletics was leaving the Atlantic Coast Convention for the Huge Ten. Shocked, Pines referred to as a presidential advisor who let him comprehend it was true. Maryland, a founding ACC member in 1953, had turned its again on custom to affix a convention providing its athletic division a brand new begin.
Terps alums obtained the information with bewilderment, anger and frustration. Maryland boasted a few of faculty basketball’s finest rivalries in opposition to Duke and North Carolina. Its all-sports border collection with Virginia stretched for greater than a century. Outdoors of Penn State, Maryland shared little historical past with the Huge Ten’s assortment of Midwestern universities.
“I can simply bear in mind pondering extra as a fan, as a result of I’m a younger coordinator on the time,” stated Maryland head coach Mike Locksley, then the Terps’ offensive coordinator. “I’m saying to myself, ‘What are we doing?’
“However having 10 years of hindsight and being in league now, I can inform you we’re very lucky of the choice that was made. It’s been among the best choices I might say throughout my transient time within the historical past of Maryland athletics.”
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Maryland celebrated its tenth anniversary as a Huge Ten member on Monday, and there’s extra enthusiasm for the league round School Park than throughout its muted celebration in 2014. Maryland has turn into a profitable broad-based athletics division with 49 league titles over that decade, rating behind solely Ohio State and Michigan. The college’s proximity to Capitol Hill supplies Huge Ten members with a close-by lobbying ally, and the shared tutorial advantages in analysis and international research among the many membership are profound.
However in a world that views realignment success via the prism of soccer achievement, that program’s inconsistency and modest development overshadows these storylines. That’s a degree everybody related to Maryland acknowledges because it enters its second decade as a Huge Ten college.
“We have been weaker in all probability in soccer,” Pines stated. “However we realized that we would have liked to improve in many alternative methods, and that has allowed us to be a bit extra aggressive. We’re not there but; we’re nonetheless on that journey, on that trajectory. However that’s a protracted trajectory.”
Wallace Loh served as dean of the College of Washington’s legislation faculty and provost on the College of Iowa earlier than Maryland employed him as president in summer season 2010.
As he realized extra concerning the college, he turned conscious of the athletic division’s monetary woes. Fundraising had plummeted by 40 % over a three-year interval, beginning with the 2008 financial meltdown. Revenues in each males’s basketball and soccer dropped by related percentages.
“Calling it monetary challenges is placing it diplomatically,” stated Loh, who’s retired and dwelling in Seattle. “I used to be shocked, totally shocked, after I found this. I used to be, to be completely sincere, very upset. We’re not speaking about some small quantity.
“If I had identified how deep the shortfall was within the athletic division, I’m unsure I might have taken the job.”
Projected annual deficits ($6.7 million) approached half of what Maryland ($15.8 million) obtained from the ACC in 2011-12. To get on monitor fiscally, Maryland laid off staff and minimize eight sports activities. Loh stated he needed to fulfill every athlete from the affected sports activities, which he stated was “one of the vital painful experiences in my life.”
Loh noticed a dire future for Maryland athletics with no important change. He referred to as his former boss, College of Iowa president Sally Mason, and mentioned the challenges. Mason nudged Loh to assume proactively.
“She stated, ‘Wallace earlier than you merely write this factor off, discuss to the Huge Ten and see in the event that they wish to transfer to the Northeast,’” Loh recalled. “I’ll personally advocate the admission of the College of Maryland into the Huge Ten.’ She guided me each step of the way in which. She taught me all the things.”
Loh reached out to Huge Ten commissioner Jim Delany, and their staffs labored towards an settlement. As talks progressed, Loh’s resolution settled right into a cash vs. custom debate.
For Loh, who by no means had lived in Maryland earlier than taking the job, his advisors supplied him a frank have a look at the area’s societal polarization.
“There was one thing referred to as the Civil Battle right here: Half the folks in Maryland fought for the South, and half for the North,” Loh stated. “The warfare has been over for 100 years, however there are nonetheless folks at Maryland who consider themselves as Northerners or who consider themselves as Southerners. And right here you’re a Chinese language-American, who arrives right here, and you’re siding with the North and you are attempting to maneuver the college right into a northern convention. They stated, ‘It’s important to be very, very cautious about this.’”
In contrast to earlier Huge Ten enlargement preparations, Delany supplied Maryland between $20 million and $30 million as a journey stipend to affix the Huge Ten. Till it turned a vested member, Maryland might borrow in opposition to future media rights earnings and repay it on a negotiated time-frame. However the monetary particulars have been to stay quiet.
“It’s a negotiation like every negotiation,” Delany instructed The Athletic. “There have been phrases and circumstances that we negotiated with Nebraska, with Maryland and with Rutgers. The 990s are about as a lot as I can say about it.”
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As soon as Maryland’s exit turned public, the backlash involved college officers. Maryland’s police division commissioned two officers to accompany Loh across the clock and really useful his spouse go away for Seattle. Police automobiles remained parked in entrance of his house always.
“I don’t know if I used to be at risk,” Loh stated. “I can solely assume that they wouldn’t be doing this until they felt that there was a chance of one thing occurring.”
The warmth intensified round Loh till the monetary particulars of Maryland’s Huge Ten deal have been revealed. Loh says he didn’t leak the numbers; he believes Huge Ten officers did so to diffuse the vitriol across the Terps’ ACC exit. To an extent, the anger dissipated.
“The choice was then no extra athletics at College of Maryland, as a result of the quantity that we have been getting from the ACC was not sufficient,” Loh stated. “Had it been sufficient, I might by no means have checked out going elsewhere. So the selection was to have or to not have intercollegiate athletics?
“You needed to discover a convention that’s prepared to provide the cash. The ACC doesn’t have that sort of cash. There’s just one supply; it’s the Huge Ten. Now, I by no means stated that publicly. However folks can draw their very own conclusions.”
Once they left the ACC, the Terps walked away from some cherished rivalries, together with the basketball program’s battles with Duke. (Bob Donnan / USA Right now)
Gary Williams performed males’s basketball at Maryland within the mid-Sixties and returned to his reeling alma mater in 1989. Simply three years earlier than Williams’ arrival, Terps star Len Bias had died from cocaine-induced coronary heart failure two days after the Boston Celtics drafted him No. 2 general. In ’87 and ’88, this system dedicated a number of NCAA violations that will result in a two-year postseason ban.
It took Williams time to rebuild, however by the mid-Nineties, his Terps have been a nationwide powerhouse. They reached the Remaining 4 in 2001 and gained this system’s solely nationwide championship in 2002. Earlier than retiring in 2011, Williams ranked third in ACC victories. The Xfinity Heart’s basketball courtroom is called for him.
“As soon as we bought issues going, the rivalries with Duke and North Carolina, particularly with Duke, actually turned intense,” Williams stated. “It was a nationwide rivalry; it wasn’t only a league one the place we turned superb. And that’s out of respect to the applications that Duke and Carolina had.”
The evening Williams’ Terps gained the nationwide title, Maryland employed Brenda Frese as its ladies’s basketball coach. Inside 4 years, Frese gained a nationwide championship. From 2006 via 2014, the ladies’s group superior to the Elite Eight 5 instances, together with a Remaining 4 look within the faculty’s final ACC season. Then, it was off to the Huge Ten, which Frese in comparison with leaving for an additional job.
“It was actually laborious, I’d say, that first three to 6 months,” Frese stated. “The most important shock was for the followers. However I’ll inform you what, I knew it was the appropriate transfer after first recreation we performed in-conference. We went to Nebraska, we have been on BTN, and the quantity of textual content messages I obtained throughout the nation of people that seen that recreation I likened to what I might obtain in the course of the NCAA Event. So I knew proper then and there, the nationwide scope that we have been receiving from the Huge Ten was second to none.”
Frese has loved much more convention success within the Huge Ten than she did within the ACC. Maryland completed both first or second in every of its first 9 Huge Ten seasons and has by no means missed the NCAA Event as a league member. The Terrapins helped pressure Huge Ten ladies’s basketball to shift from a post-driven energy league into one with higher athletes and zone defenses.
Maryland’s arrival had the identical impact in sports activities like ladies’s lacrosse, males’s lacrosse and males’s soccer — all of which have gained nationwide titles as a Huge Ten member. The Terps’ 2018 NCAA soccer championship squad included Donovan Pines, son of the college president. Maryland’s presence enabled the Huge Ten to sponsor lacrosse, and its ladies’s program turned an prompt rival with nationwide powerhouse Northwestern.
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As well as, Maryland subject hockey has gained six convention titles, whereas the baseball and males’s basketball groups have additionally claimed championships.
“We consider we introduced high-quality sports activities and competitors in lacrosse and subject hockey to the Huge Ten, which brought on all of the groups to improve their high quality to compete with us,” Darryll Pines stated. “We have been in all probability one of many premier faculties in these sports activities. Not that they weren’t good in these sports activities, however we had gained many, many nationwide championships. I feel that has been good for the Huge Ten.”
The rivalry dynamics are a sluggish construct, however they’re brewing. A lot of Maryland’s highest-attended males’s soccer matches come in opposition to fellow nationwide energy Indiana, Pines stated. Maryland-Northwestern ladies’s lacrosse is a signature matchup. Each time Frese’s groups face Iowa, the place she grew up, it turns into a must-see occasion. The boys’s basketball and soccer groups might not but have rivalries like they did with Duke, North Carolina or Virginia, however their collection are rising organically.
“Everybody speaks concerning the lack of pure rivalries,” stated Herman Veal, who performed males’s basketball from 1980 to ’84. “I feel the video games that Michigan State and Maryland have performed have been super video games. I feel that if it’s given a chance to develop and to be nurtured by the fan bases, then it could be an impressive rivalry.
“It’s simply going to take time. We have been one of many founding members of the ACC. And so to depart from the ACC, Tobacco Street, these are the video games that the fan base goes to all the time aspire to have.”
Locksley has led the Terrapins to a few consecutive bowl victories. (Jeff Hanisch / USA Right now)
From a set overlooking the Goal Heart ground on the league’s males’s basketball event, athletics director Damon Evans touted his division’s Huge Ten accomplishments. Maryland has established itself as an upper-level Huge Ten program in each sport however one. Sadly, most individuals decide athletics success primarily based on soccer prowess.
In its 10 Huge Ten seasons, Maryland sits 53-65 general and 27-57 in league play. In 2019, Locksley turned this system’s fourth coach in its first six Huge Ten seasons. Now coming into his sixth season, Locksley has ushered in a surge of three consecutive profitable seasons, all of which ended with a bowl win. However the coach and athletics director acknowledge Maryland has loads extra to do in soccer.
“We’ve bought to create extra recollections in soccer,” Evans stated. “The subsequent step for us is we bought to beat a kind of groups, whether or not it’s an Ohio State or an Iowa or a Penn State or a Michigan. That’s what our followers are in search of, for us to beat a kind of groups.
“Iowa was right here on a Friday evening, a sellout. It was nice. And we laid an egg (a 51-14 loss). Penn State got here in a single 12 months, we lay one other egg (59-0) with a fantastic crowd. If you’ve bought this massive excessive, after which this massive letdown, that goes to folks saying, usual Maryland. What I’m right here to say is it’s not the identical. However make no mistake about it, I perceive that we have to win a kind of video games.”
Throughout its first eight-win marketing campaign since 2010, Maryland noticed a pleasant bump in attendance in 2023, averaging 40,314 per recreation final 12 months, its highest mark since 2015. However ticket income is the place Maryland sits woefully behind its Huge Ten brethren. Within the 2023 fiscal 12 months, Maryland generated simply $5.52 million in soccer ticket gross sales, rating final among the many Huge Ten’s public faculties, in response to an open-records request. Purdue was next-to-last at $10.2 million.
Over its first 9 Huge Ten years, Maryland totaled $53.86 million in soccer ticket gross sales. That was lower than both Michigan ($57 million) or Ohio State ($64.3 million) generated in fiscal 12 months 2023 alone.
“I feel that is our largest wrestle, at the least as an athletic division, is having our fan base, consider in that exact sport and having some stage of consistency,” Pines stated. “Folks have a number of decisions, and if you happen to’re not glorious, I suppose they’ll go and do one thing else for that Saturday.”
Locksley understands the problem and accepts it.
“The subsequent step is to turn into a championship-caliber program,” he stated, “and that’s the hardest step to take.”
In a saturated sports activities market with seven main skilled groups in each D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland will want years of soccer consistency to attain a everlasting foothold. However it’s making an attempt. Financially, the division will full its Huge Ten payback in 2027. Maryland obtained $125 million in additional funding from the Huge Ten earlier than subtracting the journey stipend and debt forgiveness. Huge Ten commissioner Tony Petitti declined to substantiate or reveal how a lot Maryland owes the league.
Daunting challenges stay, with athlete funds on the horizon and a deep 18-school convention opening play this fall. However a decade after leaving the ACC for the Huge Ten, one query stays: Was shifting to the Huge Ten value it?
“No query,” Pines stated. “After we look again, it was an incredible resolution.”
“Had I identified all of this upfront,” Loh stated, “I wouldn’t have spent so many numerous hours of lack of sleep and worrying about it.”
(Photograph: Greg Fiume / Getty Pictures)
