RADIO – Randy Edsall of UConn fame is the new University of MD head coach this season. Replacing the long-time Ralph Freidgen after he was let go to make room for a coach that was going to take the program from “good to great.”
Coach Edsall spoke with contributing writer Dave Zirin about topics including conference realignment, what he says in the locker room at half time, amateur player endorsements, and the little known NCAA bagel-and-cream cheese rule.
Click the player above to listen or read the transcript below.
Dave Zirin: We’re here talking to the new coach at the University of Maryland, the football coach—the man himself—a guy who’s made a big splash already in the world of the NCAA; his name is Randy Edsall.
Coach Edsall, how are you doing, sir?
Coach Edsall: I’m doing great, Dave. Glad to be with you.
Dave Zirin: So I woke Monday morning and found out that there are two more teams in the ACC, Pitt and Syracuse, is this a good thing for college football? Is it a good thing for the ACC?
Coach Edsall: I think it’s a good thing for college football and I think it’s a good thing for the ACC. In this day, in age of conference realignment, you’re trying to make yourself as stable as you can be and increase who you are. I think what happened is sometimes if you sit back and watch, you could be left at the table without any food, you feel maybe for some of the other conferences but again I think, what happened is everybody is kind of looking out for themselves and whatever is best; that’s what they try to do. And really college athletics has become a big business and it’s like a corporate merger or corporate takeover of smaller company or smaller entity.
Dave Zirin: But, Coach, the book on you coming in and maybe the book was all wrong. You’re traditionalist, you’re somebody who really feels the traditions of the games certainly the traditions at the University of Maryland. Is there a small part of you that sees Pitt and Syracuse or sees TCU in the Big East and just sort of says to yourself “what’s happening to the traditions that I came up with?”
Coach Edsall: Well, I think when you really sit back and take a look at it, conference realignment has taken place for over 50 years or so; because you can remember growing up here in the Northeast, you know, teams where with other teams and there were Eastern independence, everybody is moved around, I mean, you had Holy Cross as a 1-A school at one time and no longer. So I mean there’s just a lot of evolution in terms of what’s taking place, but that’s kind of a nature of the beast. I mean, I think if people would have bought into the idea when Joe Paterno way back when said we should have formed an Eastern Conference with Penn State, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Boston College, Maryland and all schools back when he suggested this, maybe, we wouldn’t have any of these stuff today. [Laughing]
Dave Zirin: We’re here talking with the University of Maryland head football coach, Randy Edsall. Coach Edsall, another question, you had a game that certainly gotten a lot of buzz over the weekend against West Virginia, down 27-10 at the half, furious comeback in the 2nd half. I know all losses stink, but is there some solace or there like positive lessons that you take out of that game seeing how you, guys, hang in there and then almost pulled it out at the end?
Coach Edsall: Well, there is. I mean every game you take out positives and there are things that you take out that aren’t really good either. Our kids hang in there, they fought, they played to the very end, and that’s a plus. There was a place made on both sides of the bones, special teams that were good, but again when you only get 12 opportunities per year, you just want to make sure you make the most of them. We didn’t make the most of that opportunity in the 1st half, which called us to get behind, then we hang together. Nobody put their tail between their legs. I think that’s always good especially when you’re coming in new to a situation and you’re faced with that kind of adversity; the kids didn’t roll over and die, they kept battling.
Dave Zirin: Can you take us in the locker room at half time, you’re down 27-10, are you a “fire and a brimstone” guy when that kind of thing happens? Do you keep it calm? Do you let your assistants speak to the players? What do you do at half time when you’re facing that kind of deficit against the team as good as West Virginia.
Coach Edsall: Well, I just came in at half time as we got into the locker room, and I told them, I said, “Hey, guys, what are we made of? Here’s the first taste of adversity. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna roll over? Are you going to go back out there and play and just really try to challenge them?”
Before we came then the assistants will get with them after we make the adjustments and then talk to them and then before we went out I told them, I said, “Guys, it’s 0-0. You got to refuse to lose. You got to hate to lose. The mentality that we go out there is gonna say a lot about of who we are and just try to let them know with that and just let them know what we had to do and here’s where we are now. We’re going to find out what kind of people we really are. What kind of team we are.”
Dave Zirin: You got a hell of response then?
Coach Edsall: Yes, we did!
Dave Zirin: Then after that you feel good about…
Coach Edsall: We got a great response and, hopefully, I don’t have to say those things anymore.
Dave Zirin: Right. And I know it wasn’t part of the game plan that count on another Joe Vellano touchdown, right? That wasn’t… [Laughing]
Coach Edsall: No. Not at all. I mean, that was one of the issues. I think anytime that you can score on defense it really helps heroes get scores on special teams that helps in. They got a score against us on defense with an interception and that’s something that you want to be able to eliminate. You want to be on the other end and those making sure you’re scoring and not the ones being scored upon.
Dave Zirin: You mentioned about having only 12 chances and it does seem like a very cruel sport college football does where you lose one game early in the year and it punctures your national title hopes, you lose two, you lose three, and the puncturing just piles up, are you somebody who thinks there should be a playoff in the NCAA?
Coach Edsall: I think the bowl system is good, but I do think that there should be some type of a playoff to really determine who the winner is on the field. I think anytime that you got to declare a champion it should be done on the field; it shouldn’t be done through voting to pick two teams that will play for the championship. I think everything, if you’re really good, say, “Hey, this is your true champion.” You know, it needs to be decided on the field. And I think really in football, that’s the only sport going in college football that it’s not decided that way; that it’s computers, it’s humans, who would determine who actually plays for the right to be the champion of a college football.
Dave Zirin: As long around the subject of problems in the game, I know you’re well aware of the scandals in college football in recent months at the University of Oregon, Ohio State, of course, and something that you hear people say. Certainly a lot of the talking heads on the big networks they say if you look at any school closely enough, you’re going to find NCAA infractions. What do you think when you hear that? Is that true?
Coach Edsall: I think there might be some things, but I think there’s a lot of schools that will try to do everything by the book and there are going to come times where, you know, there are so many rules for whatever reason or might not have been enough communication and maybe somebody, one of your coaches, calls the recruit in the early of the week then somebody else might have or something little like that.
The thing that bothers me, I think there’s a lot more big stuff going on than really what people realize and I think that’s starting to come to light. Also with the 20-hour rule per week, I think people violate that quite a bit in terms of how they do that.
But I just think that sooner or later the NCAA needs to come down harder on some of these programs where you see these things that are taking place. Until that happens, I mean, you see things where now people can self penalize themselves and do this. Some people say, “Well it’s okay to maybe to cheat because this is all it’s going to happen and we reap the benefit from what we did.” And I just think that there needs to be a lot more enforcement taking place and I think that there’s got to be more drastic penalties than some of the penalties that are given out.
Dave Zirin: Coach, I got to ask the tough questions. Have you, Randy Edsall, ever serve cream cheese with bagels when you’re just supposed to serve butter? [Laughing] Just a little known NCAA rule.
Coach Edsall: Well, no. I mean, have I had to turn myself in or something that we did and not knowing? Yes, we have. But nothing where you predetermine that you’re going to make that, you know, you’re going to go an premeditate and say “Hey, we’re gonna do this” and I know what’s wrong. Again I think, there’s a big difference there. The bottom line is there’s got to be more accountability to the rules that you have to abide by.
Dave Zirin: There have been several head coaches and certainly a lot of people in the media who have said that one of the ways you can cut down on scandals is to cut players in to the big business that you described at the start of this interview. Where do you stand on the question of paying players or maybe making scholarships guaranteed for 4 years even if a player gets cut from the team, of making sure there are some trust available later in life. Do you have a view on that?
Coach Edsall: Yeah, I do. I’m not for “paying the player” so to speak. I think that player should get a stipend or if they should be able to – the problem I have with the cost of attendance is it could cost a lot more to go to certain schools. And now those young men can make more money by going to one school over another and then I think that creates an unfair recruiting advantage. But I believe that they should get some type of stipend for all the money that’s being made through the institutions but again, I’m not for the cost of attendance because every school’s cost of attendance is going to be different and if a kid knows “Hey, I can get $5,000 by going to this school as opposed to $2,000 to go to this school.” Now you’re going to have kids making decisions on “how much more money I can get” because of what the cost of attendance is, and I don’t think that’s right.
Dave Zirin: Do you think scholarships should be guaranteed for players?
Coach Edsall: No, I don’t. I don’t think that should be the case at all. They did that years ago and what has happened there were people that were quitting the team who had a scholarship for 4 years. Now if there are some stipulations in that – but again if your program and the scholarship has a 1 year renewable and the only way the scholarship will not be recommended to get renewed is if you quit the team, you flank out of school, you’re getting trouble with the law and in some way they have to terminate you or through the drug-testing program, I don’t know why people can’t just live by that. Because if you got to try to run people off because they’re not good enough, eventually, that could get you a problem usually with the APR and things along those lines. I just think that what they should do is put a limit on the number of scholarships based on the seniors that you have for that year. You know, you can only give X number of scholarships so people can’t try to go sign more and then know that they’re going to try have this kid go to 1-AA or Division II school or leave the program.
I think those are the things that you can put in place. Like I said, I think there’s got to be more people who are going to get their arms around this whole thing, and it’s got to be people who have understanding and knowledge of what college football is all about and the problems that it’s facing, and people who have been in the trenches doing these things because we’re the ones who know what the problems are.
Dave Zirin: You have a tremendous quarterback – O’Brien. What if Wheaties wanted to put O’Brien on the cover of a box, or if Under Armour said that O’Brien should be their spokesperson, do you think that players should have the right, the ability, to be able to do that while in college?
Coach Edsall: I don’t think so in college. I think that’s a whole different thing. I think that’s more of a promotional thing from where they can do that and get endorsements when they become a pro. I think that’s what people have to understand. If we want to make these guys professionals, okay make them professionals, but right now the way that I know it and the way the rules state is that they’re amateurs, and if you’re an amateur, you can’t receive money because it makes you ineligible. So unless they want to change things and make this like the minor leagues in baseball where kids come out of high school and they go into the minor leagues and if you want to make the college minor leagues and pay the money. That’s what you got to have, but I think you got to have a lot more problems if you do that. The thing in this day and age is, all these kids need to get their education because the percentage of them moving on to the next level to play football is very slim, very marginal, and the thing that they need is education. And then right now, there is no minor league system for college football.
Dave Zirin: And last question for you, Coach. We’ve got a lot of listeners who tuned in on the show at UMD in College Park. Tell us a little bit, how do you feel like you’ve been welcomed. How do you like the College Park atmosphere? What are your thoughts about the University of Maryland?
Coach Edsall: I think it’s been great. I’ve been well-received. It’s a great school academically. The kids can get a great education. It’s a great environment here at the university and to be around and like I said, I think the fans through the first two games have been outstanding. We just got to keep it up and we got to keep doing our part to keep them excited and make them want to come out and see us even more.
Dave Zirin: Coach Edsall, thank you so much for joining us.
Coach Edsall: I appreciate it.
Dave Zirin: I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Coach Randy Edsall, ladies and gents.
