Content Nausea No. 43: Keep It Even
You gotta keep it even, even when you're uptight, even when you're happy
Welcome to the 43rd edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 42 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
Maryland Stadium, June 2010.
Maryland football chose me more than I chose it. The Terps did not become a consistent presence in my life until August 2010 when I moved into a forced triple on the eighth floor of Cumberland Hall. Maryland had floated around me. I watched any college football game we could get on basic cable on Saturday afternoons, so I had my fix of Jefferson Pilot Sports and Notre Dame on NBC. Terps basketball was more of a consistent presence in my life. It was also the better team.
My first favorite non-NFL player played for Maryland, too. Scooter Monroe did amazing things on the football field for my future high school in the late 1990s, so I tuned in to the Terps whenever I could for a chance to catch a glimpse of him. But other than that, neither of my parents were from Maryland, and there was a humorous-in-hindsight push/pull about whether I would ever attend the state party school.
But once I moved in, I just became a Maryland fan. Maybe it was all the free t-shirts they gave us. I wouldn’t even say I embraced it. It was a simple assimilation into one aspect of college culture, even as I resisted many others. I have a bizarre memory from early in my first semester of walking down Union Lane between the Stamp Student Union and the Union Lane Garage and looking up and seeing “Home of the Maryland Terrapins” atop the then-Byrd Stadium grandstand and getting the school fight song stuck in my head. (Just weird behavior, man. Not OK). After resisting Maryland despite living there my entire life, it just sort of happened.
So it’s been a decade of this fandom, with suspensions in 2013 and 2015 out of journalistic “objectivity” or something like that. There’s been a certain projected irony to the relationship to give myself some removal from it. If I felt bad after a Maryland loss, it wasn’t because the Terps lost. It was because they lost in some sort of miserable fashion where Ohio State or Penn State or Michigan absolutely blew them off the field or a comedy of errors led to loss to Rutgers or Indiana or some other fellow bottomfeeder.
I refuse to be earnest for a program where *gestures at the past decade of Military Bowl appearances, Randy Edsall, DJ Durkin, quarterback ACL tears, Shawn Petty, Shane Cockerille, Wes Brown, etc.* has happened. And I guess that makes it fun.
Maryland comes back tonight against Northwestern, and it’s going to make me feel bad. The Terps are 11(!)-point underdogs to a Wildcats team that I know nothing about, and I fully expect them to lose by 24. When Northwestern goes up by 21 points halfway through the second quarter, I will resist retweeting the president’s pleas for Big Ten football to return. This is Sober October’s greatest challenge yet. It won’t be fun (maybe Taulia Tagovailoa and Rakim Jarrett will make it entertaining, at least), but I will watch.
I will put the general disclaimer here that I feel overall queasy about college football returning during the pandemic, and the past month or so of the ACC, Big 12 and SEC playing games hasn’t necessarily assuaged those feelings. But I am already morally compromised by the NFL, so the sentiment does not mean much. The Big Ten’s attempt at a season also seems like quite the logistical challenge because the conference wants to play nine games in nine weeks, and the NFL — which actually has uniform protocols and precautions for its teams and at least some transparency — hasn’t even made it through half of its season without rearranging the seasons of more than a quarter of its league. I’m sure things will be fine.
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, Maryland is back, and who knows if that is actually a good thing, but it’s something I will watch.
The erstwhile Moon Crew summed things up well in its ranking of the Big Ten fan bases:
Why did you hire Mike Locksley after he punched an assistant and won two games in a little over two years at New Mexico? Why are you in the Big Ten at all, when everyone knows a charter rule of Big Ten membership involves being a place where ordering seafood is a bad idea? Why, Maryland? Why you, ever, at all, in the Big Ten or anywhere?
Counterpoint:
Go Terps.
Ahead of tonight’s season opener, The Washington Post put together a look at the past decade of Maryland quarterback play, and it is not for the faint of heart. The names just sort of wash over me at this point: Caleb Rowe, Perry Hills, C.J. Brown, Max Bortenschloger, Tyrrell Pigrome, Tyler DeSue and so many others. Remember when Danny O’Brien was the future? He favorited one of my tweets once. I used writing about Rowe as an excuse to write about Brett Favre. Brown was at Maryland before and after I got there, which I feel like there should be a name for.
But if Taulia Tagovailoa and Lance LeGendre can at least be something, then Maryland has a chance at doing anything. The piece spurred the above and the below.
It’s been a decade since Maryland football became a part of my life that I cannot extract (I tried in 2018 and it worked until it didn’t), and with the new season beginning tonight, here is a look at what I was doing for the past 10 Maryland football openers.
Sept. 6, 2010: Maryland 17, Navy 14
I had been on campus for about 10 days and really had no idea what I was doing. This game was at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, and I got a ticket. But then I realized I didn’t have anyone to go with. My friends who were on campus either did not go to the game or were going with other groups, and I did not want to impose. So I just didn’t go and spent the next week worrying about if my chance at getting a ticket through the lottery would be harmed. It was not.
So I watched this game in the lounge on the eighth floor of Cumberland Hall with a couple other people. Jamarr Robinson was not good. The Terps made a goal line stand. Adrian Moten made a flying tackle that it is very hard to find a good video of on YouTube. The Terps won. I made it to three more games that year, including the Military Bowl at RFK Stadium for Ralph Friedgen’s finale. A nine-win Maryland? The future seemed bright!
Sept. 5, 2011: Maryland 32, Miami (Fla.) 24
Entering my sophomore year, I pegged the Maryland fan base as an apathetic group, and I still believe this to be true. (The obvious caveat: Winning solves everything). So when Maryland announced a plan to have different sections of the stadium wear different colors, including the student section in white, I did not take it seriously. It was also pouring rain, so I wore a blue jacket that was water resistant but not waterproof in a futile exercise, and when we finally found a spot in the student section, everyone was wearing white. I was wrong. I really wished I bought one of the white “Sucks to be ‘U’” shirts most people were wearing.
This game is arguably the high point of four years of going to football games at Maryland. The Terps won on prime time on ESPN. It’s bafflingly hard to find this game online. They wore those gaudy state flag uniforms that I still love, especially the shoes. It rained a lot. One of my high school friends who came with me got a parking ticket and threw it off the top of the Mowatt Lane Garage. The game was exciting. The Randy Edsall era — and my sophomore year — were off to a good start, and obviously, it would not last.
Sept. 1, 2012: Maryland 7, William & Mary 6
Just an absolute garbage heap of a football game. I was supposed to meet Becky and Guido outside of the stadium before the game, but some wires got crossed and service was spotty, so I spent the whole first quarter waiting outside before I realized they were already inside. I missed nothing (except the beginning of Perry Hills’ first career start) when I arrived at the beginning of the second quarter. The student section is in a corner where it is hard to see what his happening on the field, and many times, it winds up in direct sunlight. It was a miserably hot and humid September day, so I left at halftime. No one really cared.
I was constantly refreshing Twitter while walking up Route 1 toward Treehouse when Justus Pickett scored the game-winning touchdown in the fourth quarter. According to some research by Dan, Justus Pickett is a male model now, so things worked out well for him. For the rest of us, the jury is out.
Aug. 31, 2013: Maryland 43, Florida International 10
This was the first Maryland football game I ever covered in a professional capacity with The Diamondback, and it was pretty cool. C.J. Brown had a really good day, Deon Long and Stefon Diggs scored touchdowns and it seemed like the Terps were on to something in Year 3 under Edsall. The stadium was also very empty and it was another miserable day. I never judged students for skipping games or leaving early because I would be doing the exact same thing.
Aug. 30, 2014: Maryland 52, James Madison 7
I had been home from California for a couple days when I had training for my fall gig covering high school football for The Washington Post. I went into Northern Virginia on Friday night to watch a reporter cover a game and then had to go into D.C. on Saturday afternoon to do it again. So on Friday night, I went to Metzerott and sat outside with Aaron and Dan until 3 or 4 a.m. catching up after our summers. I listened to the game on the radio as I was heading into Washington that day.
Sept. 5, 2015: Maryland 50, Richmond 21
Will Likely rules:
This was my first game with The Baltimore Sun and Will Likely, the confident cornerback who was shorter than me, was the story. Future Eagles practice squad quarterback Kyle Lauletta played in this game for Richmond, too. This was also the first game where they served beer at the stadium, and I hung out with noted Richmond alum Allison at halftime. It seemed like things were going to go well this year. It did not go well.
Sept. 3, 2016: Maryland 52, Howard 13
We were driving into Virginia to go to a wedding during this game, so we listened to the game on the radio until we lost it. Later, me and Aaron watched a replay of it because we’re regular people.
Sept. 2, 2017: Maryland 51, Texas 41
The Maryland-Texas series embodies the absurdity involved in college football scheduling. The two-year series was announced in September 2010. By the time September 2017 rolled around, things had changed significantly for both programs. Each had discarded two head coaches in the interim. Neither were particularly good, even though the Longhorns had the preseason No. 23 ranking. The game just kind of lingered out there on the schedule. I remember when we got these schedules in 2013 that had Maryland’s schedules for the next 10 years or something (the Big Ten loves its planning) and the Texas series was there, and it was just kind of like, all right… When I covered the team for The Sun, I joked that I wanted to keep the job until I got a trip to Austin out of it. (I did not).
I was out covering high school football this day and eventually caught a replay a couple days or weeks later. Things seemed like they were going to be good.
Sept. 1, 2018: Maryland 34, Texas 29
I watched this game on my computer in the media house at the Eagles facility on cutdown day. Given everything that happened in the month before this game, it was a release to watch the Terps play, and it was kind of an absurd game with a weather delay and the soaked turf at FedEx Field. After seven years of hype and waiting, Maryland got two wins in two years over Texas. Go figure.
Aug. 31, 2019: Maryland 79, Howard 0
I guess I had this game on in the background while I was working because it was another cutdown day? I was also moving. I basically remember nothing about this game. But hey, 79 points is a lot, and I’m sure with such a great start to the season, things continued to go very well, right?
Oct. 24, 2020: Northwestern More, Maryland Less (probably)
Well, after All Of It, we’re here, and the Big Ten is going to start. We’ll see if it will finish. I will be enjoying this game tonight on my couch with a watermelon lime Aha seltzer and some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Here goes nothing.
Some content I wrote this week
Brandon Graham thinks things are changing for the Eagles after Thursday night’s win.
Carson Wentz was not good for most of Thursday night, but he was also great when the Eagles needed him to be.
The smallest player on the field, Boston Scott, came up big again against the Giants.
I’m still not sure how the Eagles won Thursday night.
The Eagles lost to the Ravens on Sunday afternoon.
Some content I listened to this week
The 102k20 playlist needs a lot of work in terms of putting things in order, but there is much to work with.
New Nilüfer Yanya is good:
Live Forever by Bartees Strange has been fun to listen to the past couple days:
The band I like has a new good song out this month:
RIP JR:
Some content I read this week
Hmm Weekly on “Supermarket Sweep,” which I spent plenty of time watching on Pax (remember that channel?) in my youth.
Who cares about sports TV ratings? Probably people who don’t actually care.
Assorted World Series pieces on the Rays, Randy Arozarena (who rocks), Arozarena again, Clayton Kershaw, more Kershaw, and rookies making their MLB debuts in the postseason.
I want to watch TV but I also know I do not have to.
The critical problem here is not that American culture abhors even the appearance of weakness, but about how much is built upon that belief, and about how that belief rewrites an increasingly brutal status quo into a legible natural order. Because the strongest win, the winners are the strongest. The diers mostly just die. If you believe this, a pandemic isn’t a problem to solve. It’s just two-a-days.
Alaska is weird, man.
A New Yorker profile on the founder of Signal.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
It took me more than 10 months of living in my apartment, but I finally used my oven last night? The cookies are good! Here is the recipe.
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Thank you for reading the 43rd edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
There's a phone with a number that I try not to call
But it's ringing
For someone I've tried to keep to myself
But I'm singing
It's logic that's twisted and paraphrased
And justified by a distance
That separates a bond, bound of persistence
—D.G.