It’s easy to bemoan bowl season’s diminishing returns year after year, both in terms of the quality of the contests and fan interest in what are increasingly becoming glorified exhibitions for next year’s team.
Those criticisms are still fair, but apparently, Friday’s win over North Carolina State in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl was meaningful for Maryland. Or at least, meaningful to whoever runs the athletic department’s Twitter account.
After the 16-12 win over the Wolfpack, which was sealed on an ugly interception from Ben Finley — the fourth quarterback to start for N.C. State this season — the Terrapins’ official account had a dunk ready in the drafts.
Lol we left the ACC and NC State keeps on losing to us
See ya'll later
— Maryland Terrapins (@umterps) December 30, 2022
Aside from the malpractice in the spelling of “y’all,” which offends my sensibilities as a lifelong southerner, it’s easy to see why the Terps are taking some bragging rights from this one. Both founding members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the two programs spent six decades in the same conference and were division rivals before Maryland left for the Big Ten after the 2013 season.
This was the first time the two teams have met since then, and the Terrapins extended their winning streak in the rivalry to two.
It’s always nice to renew a rivalry, but considering Maryland hasn’t finished higher than third in the Big Ten East since making the jump (and has only finished better than fifth twice), I’m not sure leaving the ACC in the dust is the dunk Maryland thinks it is.
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