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Inside Maryland football's turnaround plan: Why success now hinges on spending big
Indiana's rapid rise shows what's possible for a 'basketball school.' Maryland's challenge is closing the gap in spending, belief and results
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Maryland's new regime has vision to spare and lofty goals -- but now comes the expensive part
Indiana's rapid rise shows what's possible for a 'basketball school.' Maryland's challenge is closing the gap in spending, belief and results
Two years ago, Maryland hosted Indiana on a beautiful late September day where everything seemed to be working for the Terrapins.
Mike Locksley's Terps crushed Indiana, 44-17, to go 5-0 on the season and all but end the Tom Allen era in Bloomington. Quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa was terrific, throwing for 352 yards and five touchdowns to lead a Maryland offense that looked unstoppable.
As Indiana made its first return trip to College Park last month since that loss, a lot has changed in college football. With schools now allowed to spend up to $20.5 million in direct payments to athletes under the House settlement, there appears to be more parity than ever. Sure, the usual blue bloods like Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia are still atop the rankings, but it has opened up a path for non-traditional programs -- like Indiana.
The Hoosiers this time blasted Maryland, 55-10, in front of a sellout crowd inside SECU Stadium. Two years earlier, Maryland fans were dreaming big about what a 5-0 season could portend; now they were chanting for coach Mike Locksley's firing.
Indiana is the best example yet of what's possible in this new world. The Hoosiers are currently ranked No. 2 in the College Football Playoff Rankings and are on pace to get a first-round bye. Indiana coach Curt Cignetti is a remarkable 21-2 in only two seasons.
What Cignetti has done at Indiana is both a blessing and a curse for programs everywhere, especially like-minded ones such as Maryland, which carry basketball-school monikers but recognize football is the financial engine that pays for everything.
If Indiana and Cignetti can do it so quickly, why can't we?
Maryland's new athletics brain trust wants a little more runway than Cignetti's remarkable two-year turnaround but has similar lofty goals of what's capable at a school frequently referred to as a sleeping giant.
"If we're good with a three-year plan, which is what I'm working with, then I think we're in the top tier of the Big Ten within three years in football," Maryland AD Jim Smith told CBS Sports two weeks ago.
The big question: How?
The new man with the new, inspired plan
Jim Smith is everywhere on Maryland's campus, documenting it all along the way on his Instagram account. In just the last two weeks, there are photos with Terps legends like former basketball coach Gary Williams, ESPN personality Scott Van Pelt and former football player Domonique Foxworth.
Smith is the energetic and charismatic leader of a new-look Maryland athletics department, hoping to elevate the Terrapins to the next level. The first-time athletic director, who arrived on campus in July, is part of a new infusion of those from the professional ranks seeking to modernize a college sports industry where money has never been more paramount. For a school that has long lagged behind its peers in that department, Smith was hired to be a rainmaker.
Before Maryland, he worked as senior vice president of business strategy for the Atlanta Braves. But over the years Smith has been everything from the president of the MLS team Columbus Crew to the president of the Ohio State alumni association to a former WWF executive under Vince McMahon. He took the job after Damon Evans, who was AD from 2017 to 2025, left in March for SMU.
Surrounding Smith are new hires of senior deputy athletic director Diana Sabau and deputy athletic director and chief revenue officer Joe LaBue.
- Sabau, who most recently was Utah State's athletic director, has known Smith for decades. Sabau is an experienced college sports executive, having also served as Gene Smith's deputy at Ohio State and as the Big Ten's deputy commissioner.
- LaBue's background is similar to Smith's, having most recently served as president of Charlotte FC. He's worked primarily in professional sports, including stints with the Carolina Panthers and then-Washington Redskins. He knows the unique terrain of the job as a Maryland alumnus.
The measures are working, but they haven't been easy. A 4-0 start to the season imploding into a 4-5 season dampens fan enthusiasm -- a long-standing problem for Maryland, even on the best days. An oft-repeated issue is that Maryland is between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. While it may be great for alums looking for jobs in major cities, it puts Maryland up against the Baltimore Ravens, Baltimore Orioles, Washington Commanders, Washington Capitals, Washington Nationals and Washington Wizards for fan attention and money. It has been a real challenge for the school to navigate in the past -- and an easy excuse for previous administrators -- on why Maryland couldn't get more fans out to a Saturday game.
Call it knowledge or optimism, but Maryland's new leaders are all in lockstep that those professional teams don't have to be as significant an impediment as they've been made out to be in the past. From Smith on down, the mentality has shifted to say-yes-then-find-a-way. It's what has already made Smith and his new team popular with Maryland fans.
"I've heard too many times in two months here we're a college sports program in a pro sports town," LaBue said. "To me, the value prop we have is just as strong, if not stronger, than any of the pro sports teams in the area, and the area is big enough and diverse enough to support all of us."
For Smith, who has spent most of the last two decades in a pro sports town in Atlanta, there are actually advantages to knowing the Commanders and Ravens have rabid fanbases. You don't have to convince people to enjoy football; you know they are all out there.
"What I've learned is 14 million people live within 100 miles of College Park," the Maryland AD said. "When you start talking specifically about football and how far people will travel, that is a huge number of potential fans to develop. There really isn't a lot of competition for Division I football in that radius, so it gives us, what I believe, is a strategic advantage."
The upside is high. There's plenty of state pride in Maryland -- ask any Marylander about the state flag -- but the key is getting more to embrace the flagship state university. That includes an undergraduate enrollment of more than roughly 30,000 students and more than 420,000 living alumni. Right now, that is about getting them to show up to games. More fans not only equals more short-term revenue but can also help Maryland better position itself with potential corporate partners and advertisers in a competitive market. The revenue potential on ticket sales alone could be huge.
Even if Maryland had outsized demand, its stadium capacity of 51,802 is going to hold it back compared to the 100,000-plus stadiums at Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. But the gulf between the top tier of the Big Ten and Maryland is massive -- far more than double.
Maryland made $14.83 million off ticket sales in 2024, according to Knight-Newhouse data, while Michigan and Ohio State both crossed the $58 million mark. It is a reminder of Maryland's life in the Big Ten that even if it boasts healthy enrollment numbers and a wide swath of living alumni, it is disadvantaged against the rest of the conference when it comes to the most basic of all scholastic numbers. In the Big Ten, only Iowa, USC, Oregon and Northwestern had fewer undergraduate students on their main campuses, according to fall 2024 numbers. At the top is Ohio State with more than 45,000 undergraduates enrolled.
"There's no room for failure," he said. "Being status quo is not OK. We've never operated that way. I think Jim's seen me a couple times the last last two months, and he's like, 'Dude, you look like you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders.' I said, 'Jim, I'm sorry, it's the only way I know how to operate."
What everyone knows, too, is that the better the product, the easier an ask that is.
The challenge, as the Terps' new brain trust has quickly realized, is that Maryland football fans are accustomed to being disappointed just when they get their hopes up. It's a real-life embodiment of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. It's evident in the differences between "September Maryland" and "October Maryland." The Terrapins went undefeated (4-0) in September and are 18-3 in September games since 2021. In that same time period, Maryland is 5-12 in October games. After the loss to Indiana, Maryland now has the fourth-longest losing streak to ranked conference opponents in college football history, dating back all the way to 2011.
Sabau says it hurts her heart that when people talk about October Maryland, they aren't talking about great weather and beautiful fall foliage but the football program's on-field struggles. She, like her peers within the department, knows they have to find a way to get Maryland fans to believe in the vision.
"I think it's like shedding that scar tissue, which is a lot easier said than done, and really believing," Sabau said. "You have to believe every time we start a game ... that we have the ability and we have the resources to win. Whether that's trusting our head coaches or trusting the talent they've recruited and brought in, we have to believe. If we don't believe it, then we're really going to have a lot heavier lift."
The looming question, growing bigger with every on-field loss, is whether there is still belief in the current football leadership to do it.
How much does Maryland need to spend on football?
At the very top of the evaluation of what Maryland football should and can be is the resources question. Is Maryland spending enough, both institutionally and as a fanbase, to make football successful?When looking at Indiana, there are different ways to assess its success. You can highlight that the Hoosiers hired a man who appears to be a transcendentally talented football coach, Cignetti, who has elevated the program beyond even its fans' wildest dreams. Or you can focus on Indiana deciding it wanted to improve in football, significantly increasing its financial investment and giving Cignetti the resources he needed to succeed.
"Indiana started a plan about four years ago," Smith said. "They started investing in football a while ago and then they got Curt and then it skyrocketed. It wasn't hire a coach and everything's going to be OK. Put all the things in place to be successful and that's what they've done."
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