Maryland

According the 2010 U.S. Census, Maryland has a population of almost 5.8 million people, while South Carolina's population is only 4.6 million. These facts would seem to indicate that the Maryland Terrapins would have a big advantage over the Clemson Tigers when it comes to recruiting. But that is not true -- and to understand why it is not true, you have to understand the complex history and demography of the Old Line State.

Maryland is dominated by two major population areas: Baltimore and its suburbs (2.6 million people) and Montgomery County (972,000 people). Baltimore generally has no interest in college sports -- or, for that matter, in the rest of Maryland. (Baltimore politicians -- who tend to dominate Maryland politics -- usually see their primary role as taking money from the DC suburbs and spending it in the Charm City.) Baltimore is a smaller version of Philadelphia -- a tough, hard-nosed, industrial town best known these days as the setting for two TV series about crime: Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire. These are NFL people -- I'm not sure that any town outside of Green Bay (including Pittsburgh) cares about their pro football team as much as Baltimore loves the Ravens. Meanwhile, Montgomery County has its own reasons for ignoring the Terps. A bedroom community for DC, Montgomery County (which has no nickname) is home to earnest bureaucrats and hard-driving lobbyists who care about politics, books, getting their kids into Ivy League schools, and remodeling their kitchens. These are people who will take a couple of hours each week on Sunday to check in on the Redskins, and who will take their kids to see the Nationals three or four times a year, but that's about all the time they have for sports. So the two most important jurisdictions in Maryland have virtually no interest in the Terps.

The University of Maryland is actually in the third-largest jurisdiction in Maryland -- Prince George's County. P.G. County (population 863,000) is the largest and wealthiest majority-African-American county in the United States, and many of its citizens are successful professionals who (like their compatriots in Montgomery County) moved here from somewhere else -- a fact that tends to limit interest in Terp sports.

That leaves the rest of the state -- and here we find the Maryland fan. Once you get outside of Baltimore, Montgomery County, and P.G. County, Maryland still looks very much like the Southern state that it was for much of its history. You have the rolling foothills of western Maryland, the exurbs of Frederick, Howard County, Anne Arundel County, and southern Maryland, and the farms and fishermen of the Eastern Shore. Here is where you will find the working-class folks who tend to be the backbone of college fanbases everywhere, and here is where people love the Terps. And they do love them. Maryland doesn't have very many fans, but the fans it has are extremely passionate -- no fanbase on earth (including Kentucky's) hates Duke's basketball team as much as Maryland fans.

Unfortunately, Maryland fans haven't had much to root for during football season since Bobby Ross left in 1986. Except for a surprising ACC championship in 2001, the Terps have generally been in the position of hoping to win six or seven games and go to a minor bowl. This year they have a new coach, Randy Edsell (formerly of UConn). But the season has been disappointing. Since opening with a 32-24 win over Miami of Florida, they have gone 1-3, with their only win coming against Towson State.

The glory years of Maryland football took place from 1947 to 1955, when the team was coached by Jim Tatum. Tatum won the national championship in 1953, and on September 24, 1955 he led Maryland to the UCFC with 7-0 win over UCLA. The Terps kept the title for the rest of the regular season, winning nine UCFC matchups before they were beaten by number 1 Oklahoma in the 1956 Orange Bowl. Since then, the Terps have appeared in seven other UCFC games, but have not won any of them. Their all-time record in UCFC play is 9-9.