Maryland AD Damon Evans looking to "start believing" football program can replicate Indiana's 2024 season

Ahmed Ghafir
Jan 22
3 min read

With the college football offseason officially here following Monday’s national championship game, now is the time for fans and analysts to look in the rear-view mirror to see what went right and wrong through the fall.

For Maryland, coming off their first bowl-less season since year one (excluding COVID season) after finishing 4-8 (1-8), they quickly turned toward restocking the roster around what’s viewed as the most complete recruiting class of the Locksley era to-date. Central Connecticut OT Rahtrel Perry became the tenth portal addition of the offseason after Maryland defeated a field including Florida, Florida State, Ohio State, Pitt and Syracuse among others, but he was far from the first in the fold. WR Kaleb Webb flipped his portal commitment from Wake Forest to Maryland after Dave Clawson was fired, while the secondary saw a boost thanks to commitments from Jamare Glasker and Dontay Joyner. TE Dorian Fleming fills a key need in the tight end room while DL Eyan Thomas joins Lavon Johnson as an interior tandem to anchor next year’s defensive line.

The transfer portal remains in play with the coaching carousel far from finalized while the two championship teams – Ohio State and Notre Dame – have the rest of the week to finalize stay-or-go decisions, giving Maryland a chance to monitor the portal through the spring. Still, athletic director Damon Evans is staying in wait-and-see mode before judging the haul so far.

“I like the efforts that we've made in the portal. I think that Locks and his staff have does some good things, but at the end of the day you guys, you don't actually know until they get here,” he said on 105.7 on Wednesday. “I've seen teams that have gone out and spent a lot of money in the portal that have not done very well. I've seen teams that have gone out and got really, really talented kids and have not performed well. Then on the other side, I've seen some teams go out and have great portal success. It's still about getting the right pieces and making sure that those pieces fit and work together. You got to have the strategy. You're going to have the talent, but if those pieces don't fit, and I remember Nick Saban saying on college game days, you can go out and spend money, but he said something the fact of you better get the right people. So what I read, things sound good, what I hear, what I see, things sound good, but the proof will be in the pudding when they get here on the campus and play together and how they fit in our system.”

While the blue bloods and SEC schools have been the ones dominating the top of the NIL payrolls in 2024, so was Indiana under first-year head coach Curt Cignetti. While the former James Madison head coach was able to bring 13 transfers to Bloomington, having reportedly around $12 million to work with in the transfer portal helped those initial roster efforts as Indiana became the Cinderella team in 2024 en route to the College Football Playoffs. While Maryland and Indiana – who meet on the hardwood on Sunday – have been viewed by some as comparable programs in the Big Ten, Evans isn’t ready to make that claim, instead offering “hope.”

“I'm trying to get to a way – it's great to see what an institution like Indiana was able to accomplish. A lot of people put us in that same level of an Indiana. So I've got to get away from the hope and start – we have to start believing that we can make it to a 12-team playoff. It provides a lot more opportunity to get there than a four-team format does. It starts with believing. It starts with putting together the right strategy and having that supporting structure to carry out that strategy. And so I do like the opportunities that are ahead of us, but half the battle is believing that you can get it done. And we got to focus on believing we can do it and that we belong.”

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