After bye week, students are noticing Maryland football's strong start

Chase King
Oct 3
3 min read

The Maryland Terrapins are 4-0 and undefeated, coming out of their bye week for the first time in Head Coach Mike Locksley's tenure. Fresh off an announcement of a sold-out crowd expected at SECU Stadium for Saturday's Big Ten home opener, there is a lot of hope building around this football team. That includes the students.

“It feels good, like I’m proud to talk about the football team. I don’t got to like, when somebody brings it up, I’m like, disappointed in stuff, because I know we’ve lost, so I feel happy that we’re winning right now. You know proud to say I’m a Terp,” said Jacob Rhouli, a freshman Biological Sciences major.

Maryland has won all of their games so far this season and looked good while doing so. They have an average margin of victory of 20.0 against their three FBS opponents, which ranks 13th in the country.

“I’m honestly proud of us. We had a rocky start last year. I mean, I’ve seen our defense, I've seen how our QB is doing, so hopefully we win against Washington. I mean nothing’s promised, but yeah, things are bright,” said Noah Kadir, a sophomore Neuroscience major on the Terps' 4-0 start.

“Very exciting. Good warm-up games. I hope it keeps going. Keep the trajectory up with the bigger ones,” said Sydney Mullen and Charlotte Owen, junior and senior Dance majors.

Freshman QB Malik Washington has been a big part of the team's success. He was ranked as the best true-freshman in the nation through five weeks by ESPN and was the highest graded true-freshman QB on PFF.

Washington has truly been the star QB that this campus in the fan base have been waiting for, and they are loving him.

“I mean, he’s playing pretty dominantly. I feel like he's just out there making plays, and you wouldn’t even tell he’s a freshman. And I feel like it’s pretty surprising when you see someone like that at a school like Maryland,” said Talan Jones, a sophomore letters and science major.

“He’s pretty good, you know, like I see him going places. Like, he really does have an arm, and he’s pretty fast, too. I think he’s going places,” said Josh Dada, a sophomore Information Science major.

“I certainly hope to get to watch him for all four years I’m here,” said Tom Rispoli, a freshman Engineering major, “it’s great to see that we have a bright future.”

With Maryland’s success, the games have become a much more desirable destination for Maryland students compared to years past, when they've struggled to find success in the Big Ten.

“It’s really exciting. I've gone to the games, and I’m really enjoying it. Honestly, I don’t even need to sit through the whole thing, because we’re always crushing the other team by like, the third quarter,” said Tom Rispoli.

“I think it’s pretty great. It’s been fun to go to the games. And obviously, games are more fun when you’re winning, so that’s been nice to have,” said Marisol Bolen, a freshman economics major.

This team is one of the most promising that a lot of Maryland students have gotten the chance to witness, especially following a disappointing year last year.

Sydney Mullen and Charlotte Owen said having a promising team is “good, it’s good. Good Morale.”

For sophomore Noah Kadir, comparing this year to last year, he said, “I mean, I’m a lot more excited. Obviously, it would be cool if I were in my freshman year and had like a decent football team, but I mean, hopefully, it gets everybody to you know support the football team, support Maryland.”

A popular sentiment with the University of Maryland can be summarized with what Tom Rispoli said: “When I was coming here, they told me our football team wouldn’t be very good.” This was a sentiment that both Marisol Bolen and Talan Johns repeated, but with the strong start from the Terps and such a young team, it looks like this football program will have a chance to erase that feeling.

Now as the Terps look onto their game vs. Washington, every single one of the students I interviewed, along with thousands of other students and alumni, will be at the game where Maryland looks to make another program-shifting win.

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