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Maryland vs. Perdue

By Bob W.

SPOILER ALERT.  If you really want to be surprised on December 29^th, I advise you to skip this article and come back to it on the 30^th.  I have devised a system so accurate that it totally takes all the joy and excitement out of watching a real football game.  Remember the time (we’ve all done it) when you weren’t able to see a game so you taped it, only to have either the radio or some jerk tell you the score before you can turn the dial or shut them up?  We’ll here’s your chance to plug year ears.   

In order for this complex system to work, we have to look at a lot of different variables, some on the field and some off (this is why Vegas is rich, the common better doesn’t look at the stuff behind the stuff).  So here is everything you need to know about the Champs Sports Bowl on December 29^th.  When you watch on TV to see what I already told you would happen, don’t come crying to me!

 Gimmick:

Perdue-  Having the worlds biggest drum.

Maryland-  Not hiring TA’s who can speak English

 Having the worlds biggest drum basically means you got nothing else going for you.  It’s like those losers who’ll do anything to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, so they find something, no matter how obscure, that no one else has any interest in accomplishing, then they go for it until finally they have some record that does absolutely nothing to advance society.  With that being said though, the Worlds Biggest Drum never caused me to fail Chemistry. 

Advantage: Purdue 

Initials:

Purdue- PU

Maryland- UM

 When you only have 2 letters to symbolize your school, you can’t do much worse than PU.  However, in Perdue’s defense, no one has ever confused them with Michigan or worse yet Ole Miss.  However even with the mistaken identity problems, UM is still better than PU. 

Advantage:  Maryland

 Famous Alumni:

Purdue:  Neil Armstrong, Orville Redenbacher, and John Wooden

Maryland:  Jim Henson, Larry David, Dominique Dawes, Bonnie Bernstein, Connie Chung, Tim Kurkjsan

First of all I stayed away from athletes as best as I could, this is more about contributions to society, the few athletes I do have I listed because they kind of bring a little more to the table than say Walt Williams and Mike Alstott.  In Purdue’s defense, none of the Maryland alums have been to the moon, but at the same time, after Neil the list kind of drops off quickly.  I don’t know if they have more famous alumni, but if they do they don’t boast much about them because this is all I could turn up.  The Maryland list goes on and on and I had to eventually cut it off, for Purdue it took a lot of time just to find these 3. 

Advantage:  Maryland

 Mascot:

Purdue:  Boilermaker

Maryland:  Terrapin

 According to my research a Boilermaker is a trained craftsman that produces steel.  It is also a shot of either whiskey or vodka with a glass of beer.  The nickname came about after Purdue defeated Wabash 44-0 back in 1891.  The reporter wrote “Wabash Snowed Completely Under by the Burly Boiler Makers from Purdue”.  Purdue considered themselves the university for the working mans kids and found the remark endearing.  And the rest is history.  The Terrapin on the other hand doesn’t require much explanation.  It’s the state reptile and much like the rest of us, indigenous to the Chesapeake Region.  It is a unique mascot, and is so symbolic of Maryland that you will probably never see any other team anywhere adapt the nickname.  Granted the Boilermaker is pretty unique as well, it just doesn’t have the same ring as “Fear the Turtle”.

Advantage:  Maryland 

Run Defense: 

Purdue: 190.1 yards per game (112^th overall)

Maryland:  174.8 yards per game (102^nd overall)

 Are you kidding me?  There is really a team out there that gets ran over more than the 2006 Maryland Terps?  We might actually have a chance in this one. I don’t know about you but if I’m betting on this game, you got to be thinking “Over*” all the way.  (* DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TAKE BETTING ADVICE FROM ME).

Advantage:  Incredibily enough- Maryland

 Tuition:

 Purdue:  In state $16,068 per year.  Out of state $29,584

Maryland:  In state $6,566 per year.  Out of state $20,005

 Wow, lets just say I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about tuition any more.  Of course one day we’ll all have kids and most of them will be college material.  Probably not E and John’s (I mean seriously have you ever seen a kid coming into the world with so many strikes against them already!!), but the rest of our kids will.  At first I wasn’t sure if I read this correct.  $6,566 for the year in Maryland seems pretty good, but is that really a full year or just a semester?   Regardless if you double it, it is still less than the Purdue education.  Also by looking at the out of state cost per year, I’m inclined to believe that the figures are accurate. 

Advantage:  Maryland

 Passing Offense:

 Purdue:  293.7 yards per game (6^th overall)

Maryland:  179.8 yards per game (81^st overall)

 Looks like Josh Wilson is going to have a busy day!  Purdue apparently LOVES to air it out, so hopefully our secondary's can shut them down.  Honestly I would still take this match up over the Navy game 100 times out of 100.  We can stop a passing team, but a good running team kills us every time (except for the Clemson game, I don’t know what their problem was that day.)

Advantage:  Purdue

 School Population:

Purdue:  30,875 undergrads  6,932 Graduate Students

Maryland:  25,154 undergrads  9,948 Graduate Students

 Because you never know when there is going to be a school clearing brawl.  Unfortunately this time if that were to occur we would not have the numbers.  If it makes you feel any better though, only 41% of those 30,000+ are chicks.  Though that factoid certainly wouldn’t help us in a riot (no offense ladies)

Advantage:  Purdue

 Pride of the NFL:

Purdue:  Drew Brees

Maryland:  Shawne Merriman

 This is a tough one.  Brees is having a terrific year and he could…get this…actually lead the Saints to the Super Bowl (has those last 7 words ever been strung together before in history??).  More importantly he is on my fantasy team!  Merriman despite his little oh how should we say, failed exam is an absolute beast.  I really don’t believe the charges at all (if they were true why would he continue to dominate after his suspension when he is now considered clean?).  Interestingly enough, these two could actually meet in the Super Bowl.  Not a given but a chance.  Both are young and could be around for a long time.  So as much as I had ties…

Advantage:  Push (Though after watching Brees lay an egg against the Skins last night, I could have easily changed this to Maryland)

 Pass Defense:

 Purdue:  242.6 yards allowed per game (106^th overall)

Maryland:  192.2 yards allowed per game (49^th overall)

 As you can see by the passing offense, this stat may be increasing for the Terps in the near future.  Still you have got to be excited if you’re a Maryland offensive player.  Purdue can’t stop the run, and they aren’t much better versus the pass.  This could be a nice parting gift for Sam Hollenbach. 

Advantage:  Maryland

 Current NBA Players:

Purdue:  2 (Brian Cardinal, Brad Miller)

Maryland:  7 (Steve Blake, Juan Dixon, Joe Smith, Steve Francis, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Chris McCray, Chris Wilcox)

 What’s this have to do with the Champs Sports Bowl?  Nothing, but I’m putting it in anyway.  The most intriguing part of doing this research is that Joe Smith is still in the league!  Also I’m surprised Purdue doesn’t have more NBAer’s.

Advantage:  Maryland

 School Colors:

 Purdue:  Black and Gold

Maryland:  Yellow, Black, Red and White (almost shorter to list what isn’t our school colors)

 Purdue doesn’t have much of a chance in this one.  Obviously the blacks cancel each other out, the gold and yellow are pretty much the same thing, we can toss in white for Purdue, but they still can’t match the red.  Plus our colors are based on our state flag and actually have meaning (the color of the coat of arms for Lord Baltimore’s Family).  To my knowledge Purdues colors were just picked out of thin air. 

Advantage:  Maryland

 Bowl Records:

 Purdue:  7-6

Maryland:  8-10-2

I was originally going to call this category Bowl Victories, but I changed it to Bowl records.  I figure I can’t give every category to Maryland or I will start losing credibility.  Regardless the Terps have been to the post season 20 times to Purdue’s 13.  We have more wins, but also more loses.  The Terps are however riding a 2 post season game win streak into Orlando so hopefully they can continue the march back to .500!

Advantage:  Purdue

 Weather (average days on December 29^th):

 Purdue:  Ave. High-33  Ave. Low- 17  Record High 64,  Record Low -12

Maryland: Ave. High 44  Ave Low- 29  Record High 75,  Record Low 2

Did anyone really think I wasn’t going to work a weather scenario in here somehow?   Anyway as you can see, College Park is a lot warmer this time of year than West Lafayette, Indiana.  I really didn’t think there would be too much difference, but when you think of it, Chicago isn’t too far from Indiana, and we all know it gets pretty cold in Chicago.  Though both teams will be happy to be in Orlando for the end of the year, it looks as though it is going to be a little tougher for the Boilermakers to head back home after the game.

Advantage:  Maryland

 Stadium Capacity:

 Purdue: Ross-ade Stadium 62,500

Maryland:  Byrd Stadium 48,055

Here’s a factoid.  According to the University of Maryland’s website, the capacity of Byrd Stadium can be increased to 62,000 with the addition of bleachers.  I some how don’t believe that, and until they prove it, I’m calling the Athletic Departments BS on that one!  Anyway, even if we could increase our capacity to 62,000, it would still put us behind Ross-ade Stadium.  Speaking of which there are about 100 Ross-ade/Gator-ade jokes going through my mind right now.  Unfortunately none are funny enough to put in here.  I must be losing my touch.

Advantage:  Purdue

 Total Offense:

 Purdue: 10^th

Maryland:  96^th

 How bout them Terps cracking the top 100!  Oh well, we still got our 8 regular season wins.  Purdue on the other hand has got there act together when they have the ball.  Not many schools put up offensive numbers like the Boilermakers and it looks as though Chris Cosh is going to have plenty of sleep-less nights leading up to game day.

Advantage:  Purdue

 Total Defense:

 Purdue:  114^th

Maryland:  89^th

 If you’re like me, right now you are looking at the total offense category and the total defense category and you’re asking yourself, what exactly does Maryland do well?   Well, I don’t know.  I do know our special teams don’t exactly carry the torch for us, but regardless, at least we are doing better stopping our opponents than Purdue does.  114^th Total defense!?!?  You know it’s bad when we’re ranked 89^th and win this toss up by a landslide!

Advantage:  Maryland

 Tailgating Sites:

 Purdue:  Goldfan.com

Maryland:  A-game and D-7 Tailgate

 Ok, it’s the last category, I didn’t really dig that deep for this one.  I typed in Maryland Football Tailgating and Purdue Football tailgating and saw what came up on page one.  Goldfan.com looks like a pretty legitimate site, but the home made sites are so much better.  On the first page of results for Maryland we had both A-game and D-7 come up so that’s two to one.  The thing that bugs me though is how many commercial sites are returned in the search, every one is trying to sell you stuff for tailgating.  Why can’t it just return fan sites?  Oh well, you know what they say, if we’re going to be a capitalistic society we have to take the good with the bad!  Regardless, obviously with D-7 as the Trump card, the Terps win this category as well.

Advantage:  Maryland

So there you have it.  A totally unbiased (wink, wink) look at the Champs Sports Bowl match up.  The Terps take this one 11-6-1.  Purdue put up a fight, but in the end they just couldn’t match up with the University of Maryland’s awesomeness.  Now the good part.  We plug these numbers into the secret formula (patent pending) and come up with the final score.  So this is our last chance to divert your eyes……

 Maryland 29  Purdue 16

 By the way, do you know how hard it is for a Marylander to spell Purdue with a “u” instead of an “e”.  I must have made that mistake 15 times while doing this!

 Happy Holidays Everyone!!

Go Terps!!