Coach Randy Edsall.
Terrapins football coach Randy Edsall is going through the ESPN “car wash” in Bristol, Conn., on Tuesday. If you turn to any sort of ESPN platform during the day, there’s a chance you could run into Edsall talking about Terps football. Same with the other coaches in the ACC.
Edsall spent about 20 minutes Tuesday morning answering questions in a coaches live chat. Here’s a link to it, and he’s the first one, so his answers aren’t hard to find.
But here are a few of his answers to the most interesting questions. Some of these questions, if applied to other programs, could be quite polarizing, so it’s interesting to see how they apply to the Terps.
Phillip asked Edsall about the program’s biggest difference from Year One to Year Three. Edsall’s answer fits in to the idea that a coach needs to have his players in a program for it to really take shape in the way he wants.
The biggest difference is I think now we have created a atmosphere of the players really controlling the team. There is more leadership on our team. And now they understand the level of expectation we have. The players are holding themselves to a higher expectation personally and collectively, they’re holding each other to a higher standard on the field, off and in the classroom.
Edsall was also asked about his team’s social media use. We’ve seen all the pitfalls that can befall athletes at all levels thanks to Twitter and the like, and we’re in the midst of the “Summer of Johnny Manziel,” with the Heisman winner’s every move being documented and dissected by nearly everyone with an Internet connection.
They have total freedom with social media, but there is education that goes with social media. We’re always educating our players of the benefits and the problems that social media can create. We monitor what our players are doing on social media, so we can help them eliminate situations that could be very embarrassing to them, their family, the program, the school. It’s part of our society. It’s something that will be here forever. But the more that we can do in educating them in using social media to their benefit, that’s part of our responsibility as being a coach and as a program.
With the move to the Big Ten Conference looming, the Terps will be competing with the likes of Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State not only on the field, but also off in terms of the facilities players have access to.
That’s something that we know we have to upgrade and we’re going to. We’re in discussions and talks right now. We’re putting together plans and renderings of new facilities. We know that for us to go and be on a competitive scale not only where we are in the ACC but moving forward to the Big Ten, we have to upgrade the facilities. We look forward to the continuing of that process and getting a shovel in the ground.
And of course, new uniforms! After seeing a new set practically every game last year, Edsall said we’ll see just one new combo out there.
I think everybody will be really thrilled and excited and blown away when they see what we have this year.
We’ll have more on Edsall from the ESPN “car wash” as the day progresses.
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