After a less than picturesque jaunt down Route 1, marked by run-down Days Inns and countless sanitarily deficient fast-food empires, the University of Maryland offers a much needed infusion of greenery.
Numerous lawns litter the campus--perfect locales for playing catch with your best friend, tossing a Frisbee on a lazy Friday afternoon or having a picnic with your girlfriend after church.
On a recent trip there, I was particularly impressed with the grassy area in the middle of the university's fraternity row. With the greek organizations' mansions stretched out in the shape of a horseshoe, the lawn acts as the focal point of that area of campus.
Enticed by its natural beauty, I asked my friend to drive me around fraternity row. Though I did not want to, because of my distaste of everything Terrapin, I envied the university's greeks because of their fantastic living conditions.
As we waited at the stop sign at the end of the horseshoe, a Maryland student walked behind our car, and for no other discernible reason other than his noticing a "Duke University" decal on our vehicle's rear windshield, he thunderously stomped the trunk with his fist, and exclaimed, "F YOU, YOU MUTHAF**S!"
Then, after we fled to safety by darting into heavy traffic, I realized what Maryland students normally use their pristine green lawns, especially fraternity row's, for: full-scale riots.
The most mind-bending fact to emerge from the night of March 31, 2001 was not that the Terps managed to squander a 22-point lead in the NCAA semifinals, but rather that they were able to wreak up to two million dollars worth of damage that evening. Cable lines, a couple of people's legs and any previously held shred of national respect disappeared in the blaze.
As a native of Maryland's fraternity row told The Washington Post last year, "When we beat Duke, we riot, and when we lose to Duke, we riot. The police should accept it."
Don't worry, young looter, the police do accept it. Major Cathy Atwell weighed in on the situation by coming up with this gem for Maryland's student-run daily, The Diamondback: "I deplore these things, but when I compare what happened last night to what could have happened, I think things went very well." Did the Bay of Pigs go very well too, Ms. Atwell?
Now, allow me to clarify my perspective on this issue.
While, as a sports junkie and a Blue Devil, I follow the basketball team closely and celebrate heartily after a big tournament victory, I am not the guy who will start off each cutesy cheer at Cameron or who will paint his naked body blue as a sign of devotion to the team.
I can also see how others would hate Duke. We almost always win, we receive a large chunk of the key calls and we recruit the country's best prep stars every year. We have uncanny similarities to the New York Yankees.
Despite my non-Greg Skidmore approved view of the Duke basketball team, though, nothing incites my ire quite like the pathetic groaning of the Terps.
And my bile has exponentially risen since my visit to College Park.
Whereas some of my fondest collegiate memories consist of venturing to other campuses, in Maryland, I found myself being sucked in by the existing whirlpool of self-loathing, bitterness, and delusion.
Virginia has its links to Thomas Jefferson and its quaint college town, Michigan has the Big House and State Street and Maryland has its suffocating inferiority complex.
Exploring the dimly lit and off-white-washed student center, I stumbled upon a copy of The Diamondback.
Brendan Glaccum wrote a commentary after his Terps escaped Charlottesville with a four-point, comeback victory about Virginia's receiving too high of a national ranking. He explained that the Cavaliers could only win at home because of the aura swirling around University Hall. Then, because he could not help himself, despite its irrelevance to the topic, he veered away from the UVa commentary to rant about how Duke's fans are overrated.
"Please stop jocking Duke," he begged. "They're not that clever."
Brendan, point taken, but who asked you, pal? Stick to the story.
From Brendan, to the trunk-pounder, to the numerous other people who angrily scoffed at us after discovering our Duke affiliation, College Park, next to its neighboring metropolis, Washington, D.C., easily houses the most bitterness-induced desperation per capita in the nation.
And frighteningly, the rivalry with Duke is just now approaching a fevered pitch.
With five classic matchups in the last season and a half, I doubt that anyone would question that the Duke-Maryland rivalry looms as the nation's most intense right now; nevertheless, Maryland has not replaced North Carolina because of its having superior talent to the Heels.
Au contraire, Monsieur NaivetZ
They will all agree that this is not an ordinary college basketball rivalry, this is a war--one in which Jason Williams and Juan Dixon lead the aerial assault, and Carlos Boozer and Lonny Baxter shoot volleys at each other from the trenches.
Unfortunately for Maryland, though, the victors of war write the history books.
Greg Veis is a Trinity junior and associate sports editor of The Chronicle.
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