Beth pays off Wolverine wager with her unusual voice

I have to hand it to Beth. For somebody who calls her blog I Didn’t Have My Glasses On, she has extremely sharp focus. Beth is a graduate of the University of Michigan. My alma mater is the University of Maryland. So when My Terrapins moved to the Big Ten to join her Wolverines for…

But my Nashville Hawkeye friends win the drinking game

I know it did not take long for moonshine shots to go down in a mini-manse in Nashville. On the first offensive play of the game, a little past noon Saturday, C.J. Brown, the quarterback of my alma mater Maryland Terrapins, threw the football into the arms of an Iowa linebacker. A couple plays later,…

A Big Ten clash with a pinky swear bet on the line

This move to the Big Ten for my Maryland Terps is serious stuff. We ran all over the Indiana Hoosiers in our first game ever in the new conference. At their place, yet. It made me very, very happy. And then Ohio State came to College Park and made Byrd Stadium Buckeyeville. After a bye…

A full Red house beat the Orange Out, but who cares, really?

It’s become the big thing to get a stadium full of fans to wear the home team’s colors. Syracuse football officials wanted a big Orange Out to help the squad build a head of steam for its Atlantic Coast Conference opener against Louisville in the Carrier Dome Friday night. Major fail. I snapped the photograph…

Maryland had the big plays, Syracuse had the big mistakes

So it was a grudge afternoon, this Saturday trip to the Carrier Dome to see my alma mater Maryland while sitting side by side with KP watching his alma mater Syracuse. Not so much. First off, through 30 years of the best of and worst of stuff, a football game between our old schools felt…

OK, I guess these are my teams

Maryland and Syracuse both played at noon Saturday, games televised on networks available to me, and I was ready with m flatscreen for the Orange vs. Central Michigan on ESPN News and my iPad for the Terps vs. West Virginia on the Big Ten Network. The Syracuse game kicked off first. And I stared hard…

What stories will this book tell these four months?

I read the text from my dear wife Karen as I sat on the short wall in little Perseverance Park a block from work at lunchtime Friday afternoon in downtown Syracuse. She told me I’d gotten three good things in the mail. Film blogger paycheck from the Syracuse New Times I immediately texted back. Correct.…

We can’t play pickup baseball on the Terps’ field?

Fresh to the University of Maryland campus, the three transfer students ran around the baseball field like the little boys we were just a few short years prior. We tested our throwing arms from shortstop to first base, and stood at home plate and did that little self-toss and crack-the-bat move to try to whack…

Breaking up is hard to do

. The Maryland fans in Comcast Center Sunday afternoon were prepared to witness something special during the Terrapins’ final regular season basketball game in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The students carried signs that trumpeted “61 Years.” That’s the amount of time Maryland has played against the Dukes and North Carolinas of the sporting world as…

After bowl Friday, Syracuse is up, Maryland is down

That was some bowl day for me Friday. One down, one up. My alma mater Maryland lost in the Military Bowl by falling apart defensively in the final quarter. I was not happy. My 30-year hometown team Syracuse took the Texas Bowl title with a last-minute touchdown against Minnesota. I danced around the living room.…