Football looks to make Washington trip worthwhile

After an afternoon practice Saturday, Terrapin football nose tackle A.J. Francis recalled some sage advice his father had once offered:

"Life sucks," Francis said. "The only thing you can do is get better."

The Terps are taking that advice as they begrudgingly prepare for the Military Bowl on Dec. 29 against East Carolina. After the team's 8-4 season and third-place finish in the ACC, players and fans alike believed the Terps warranted better than the conference's eighth-ranked bowl.

But after last year's 2-10 fiasco, they're willing to take what they can get.

"I'm happy we're going to a bowl. Temple has the same record as us, [and] they're not going to a bowl at all," Francis said. "So at the end of the day, do I think we got robbed, considering we got tied for third place with a team we beat [N.C. State], and they got to the third-place bowl? Yeah. But at the end of the day, life sucks. So you've got to play the cards you're dealt."

When the Terps defeated the Wolfpack in the final game of the regular season, their eighth win seemed enough to send the Terps to one of the ACC's more high-profile bowls.

But instead, it's the Wolfpack headed to the Champs Sports Bowl in Orlando, Fla., while the Terps mull over their travel plans to RFK Stadium, a venue only 10 miles from the campus.

Several players took to Twitter to vent their anger with the selection in the days after the announcement. Even Athletics Director Kevin Anderson admitted his displeasure with the process.

But with the grim reality of their postseason destination now inescapable, the Terps are anxious to prove that they deserved plane tickets, not Metro farecards.

"Some people are disappointed, ... but those guys are over it," quarterback Danny O'Brien said. "I think it's going to be a big reason why we're going to have a chip on our shoulder all next season, which I think is going to end up being a positive. So I think there's going to be a lot more positives than negatives going into this game, definitely."

The team can at least take solace in the fact that its bowl bid likely had little to do with what happened on the field this season. Rather, what happened — or didn't happen — in the stands hurt most. Poor attendance at Byrd Stadium was a constant all year, and even a solid turnout for the Terps' loss to Florida State in mid-November wasn't enough to erase the images of empty seats from bowl officials' minds.

"It's something we can't control — obviously, you want fans in the stands. But for whatever reason, it wasn't like that this year," O'Brien said. "Hopefully, it's something we can learn from as a university and kind of promote ticket sales next year, so we don't let this happen. But bowls are real political, and that's definitely something that factors into it. Hopefully, from here on out, the attendance will keep increasing with us winning. You can't expect fans to come after 2-10 seasons."

What the Terps (8-4) can control is how they play against East Carolina (6-6), a Conference USA team that's as dangerous offensively as it is porous on defense. The Pirates rank 118th in the country with 43.4 points allowed per game, but their 319 passing yards per game are seventh in the nation.

"Basically, what you've got to do is make them one-dimensional, and they're already pretty one-dimensional," Francis said. "But they run for 126 yards a game even though they don't really run the ball that much. That's because teams get so worried about stopping the pass that they forget that they can just hand the ball off."

Even if it's not exactly where the Terps wanted to spend part of their postseason, players admitted playing so close to home can be advantageous. The team will be able to practice in its own facilities and maintain a routine similar to the one they've had all season.

It's certainly not where they wanted to be playing. But in Washington, the Terps have a chance to reach an impressive historical benchmark just one year after arguably the worst season in school history.

Of the "117 years we have [had] football here, we've had 13 teams that have won nine games or more," coach Ralph Friedgen said. "So that would be an accomplishment for this team. We'd be in the top 10 percent of all the teams in the history of Maryland."

schneider@umdbk.com