There were a few folks saying it out loud. There were more than a few folks who were thinking it.
As Curt Cignetti and the Indiana Hoosiers were celebrating the most astonishing turnaround in modern college football history on Dec. 6, a few Maryland fans couldn’t help but wonder why their school remained committed to a struggling coach while Indiana was providing definitive proof that if you just hire the right coach, you truly can turn things around in an instant.
Now to be fair, the people making the arguments would have the same opinion even if Indiana had lost the Big Ten title game by 40 points. They want Michael Locksley out at Maryland. They’d make any comparison they possibly could in an attempt to justify that opinion.
But I’d be forced to agree with them. I will declare it boldly. If Cignetti is interested in the Maryland job, I’d fire Locksley and give it to him.
Of course, I say that to be flip. But if we’re going to have the conversation, we need to have the conversation. What Cignetti has done is the greatest coaching job arguably in the history of coaching. The reason we’re reacting this way is because this doesn’t happen. Teams don’t go from being Indiana to being a national championship favorite.
We have to recognize this to understand the fallacy of thinking that Maryland could just be the next one. This doesn’t just happen. There is no comparison. Indiana isn’t the next team to have done it. They’re the only one. It’s a group of one. In college football, there aren’t first-time national champions. There is a still smallish group of programs that are capable of winning national championships and then there are the Indianas and the Marylands of the world.
And Indiana might have actually been even worse than Maryland! Do you realize that Indiana (actually still hasn’t) won a bowl game since … 1991? (!) Indiana stands alone. This is the greatest job anyone has ever done in modern college football. You’re not getting the next Cignetti. It’s like saying you’re looking for the next Shohei Ohtani. This doesn’t happen. This is a miracle.
This should be studied, though. That’s not hyperbole. Every coach at every program should be trying to learn everything they possibly can from what Cignetti and Indiana have done. They should write books about it. They should teach classes. Maryland should try to poach some staffer away from Indiana just to provide insights into every aspect of what the Hoosiers have done. There should be something to be learned from how they’ve spent their money. But you’re not doing what they’ve done. This is a once-in-a-lifetime turnaround.
But that doesn’t mean the conversation about Locksley isn’t relevant.
I understand why Maryland chose to retain Locksley for 2026. I would have understood if Maryland had chosen to part ways with him. I don’t know that there was necessarily a “correct” answer.
If you’ve read me before or listened to my show, you’re probably aware of my primary thoughts about the job. I think that being the football coach at Maryland is legitimately an impossible job to do. I think there are major limitations in how athletics is viewed by the school, how the athletic department has functioned in recent years (it’s not like we’ve seen it look particularly dysfunctional in a very public way or anything like that), how insanely far behind the rest of the Big Ten the program is historically and how minimal the appetite is for Maryland football regionally. I think the job is nearly impossible to do.
I think Locksley, by virtue of having three winning seasons and bowl victories in ’21, ’22 and ’23, did about as well as any coach could possibly do at Maryland. I mean that. I think that’s the high-water mark of what is possible. That’s how bad I think the job is. I think the last two seasons have been dramatically disappointing and in a lot of circumstances, two back-to-back seasons like this would be a fireable offense.
But this is Maryland football.
I also happen to think that Locksley has accomplished more in recruiting than could be reasonably expected from a Maryland football coach. I think that matters significantly in why he’s being kept around. I think Maryland wasn’t ready to watch Zion Elee, Zahir Mathis, Sidney Stewart and Malik Washington all walk out the door and start over from a talent perspective. There’s no defending an eight-game losing streak to end the season, but there were going to be growing pains when they committed to a younger roster.
In a hypothetical world where Locksley got fired, there wasn’t a quality Group of Five head coach to hire who could bring a solid roster of talent with him. Other than Brian Newberry (who couldn’t bring his team with him), the coaches of the best American Conference teams all took better jobs. And James Madison’s Bob Chesney did, too.
That doesn’t mean a quality assistant or FCS coach couldn’t have proven to be a really good coach one day. But in doing the math (when you already don’t really have the money to pay Locksley and staff’s buyout), were you better off with young but talented players in a prove-it year for the coach OR with a lottery-ticket coach and no real talent on the roster?
The decision made sense. And Locksley indeed has his back against the wall. He’ll be up against it early in the season (ironically, probably starting with when they face James Franklin and Virginia Tech). He has to make it work with this group or he’ll be gone.
But it’s also a prove-it year from new athletic director Jim Smith. He inherited a revenue sport mess. The school that is allegedly a basketball school hasn’t been to an Elite Eight since 2002 and has been to just two Sweet 16s in the last two decades. The football program is essentially nonexistent.
Smith has one year to prove that the football job would be one an actual coach might want if Locksley can’t get this turned around next year. Additional financial commitment is good. Smith (and everyone in his or her right mind who cares about the program) would prefer Locksley be the one who gets the job done. But if he doesn’t, Smith needs to make it clear throughout the sport that coaches of value should want the job.
And in the meantime, maybe just at least ask if Cignetti really loves the thrill of a challenge.
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