Maryland Potluck I: Mostly Crab Stories

We’re going into Year Five of the Terrapins’ Big Ten adventure. The Maryland Terrapins, as did eastern counterpart rutger, enjoyed the softened underbelly of the East in Year One, but quickly learned that Randy Edsall (10-15, 5-11 B1G with Mike Locksley’s help) was more suited to low-major football and switched to defensive and recruiting ace DJ Durkin (who’s... 10-15, 5-13 B1G).

It’s too soon to write the book on Durkin, of course. And the Terrapins’ recruiting leapt to 4th in the B1G for 2017 and 5th in 2018, per 24/7, indicating that Durkin’s cooking with gas (and a little Old Bay) in College Park.

But my questions, fair panel:

[1] After 5 years, what will we be saying [future continuous tense, kids] has been Maryland football’s (not the university’s TV reach or the basketball team’s crippling mediocrity, but football-specific) biggest contribution to the Big Ten?

[2] And, in honor of that softened underbelly that the Terps found on their arrival, tell us about the best crab you’ve ever eaten. Where was it, why was it, and how would it have been better if you’d have put Old Bay on it? Show your work.

MNW: If Maryland makes it bowling this year, their legacy will, after 5 years, be having replaced Indiana as the 50-50 bowl team from the East. Already with losses to...well, I really only remember them losing to Boston College. But two bowl games in 3 years for Durkin, 3 bowls out of 5 overall? Sorry, Hoosiers, you better hope for a standings bloodbath, because Maryland’s scooping you on basketball mediocrity, 6-6 bowl game appearances, flashier uniforms, staying out at tailgating, being somewhere I wouldn’t go unless it was for football...

Also Brad Craddock was pretty cool.

Best crab I ever had was mounds and mounds of dungeness crab meat when I went to San Francisco during junior year of high school (to visit Stanford). The one great uncle on my dad’s side that made it out of Minnesota (hell, beyond about 20 minutes of New Ulm) is a patent lawyer working in San Fran and living in Marin County, and he and his wife rolled out the red carpet for us.

Andrew K: Crab story first: this one time I had some pretty good crab rangoon at a restaurant in North Carolina. The occasion was being close enough to the ocean that it was plausible it was fresh-ish. But normally, bottom feeders don’t agree with my delicate constitution. I was too young to party, so I didn’t mainline any Old Bay with it, but you see some interesting stuff in the Red Lobster bathroom on Saturday night sometimes. That’s all I’m saying.

I don’t expect Maryland to have the breakthrough season I think they’ve been waiting for, even though with the OL they have, this could really be the year we see it. Instead, I think their week 4 matchup will be looked back on as the beginning of the end of the Fleck era at Minnesota. Big win for the Terps according to me.

ziowa: The best crab I’ve ever eaten has been both the crab cake and crab imperial at G&M in Linthicum, MD when traveling back to Maryland for work.

DJ Carver: Maryland’s best contribution may be the conference’s last Lou Groza Award winner, although they have a chance to surprise a team this year with Canada’s offense.

The best crab I’ve ever eaten is hard to pinpoint and I’d rather go with all of the times we go over to my wife’s grandmas place and just sit outside with her family eating a bushel of crabs. Just throw some butcher paper or newspaper down and go at it. Go play some baseball with the kids when they throw the towel in and have a few cold drinks doing it.

Boilerman31: As far as my best crab experience, having Crab Cake and Eggs at Eastern Market in Washington DC is pretty hard to beat.

As to the other question, um, well...

LGHF: Coached tennis in Kents Hill, Maine back in 2003. Every weekend, because Maine is amazing, I would just kind of drive around, sometimes to the Ocean, sometimes out in the boonies...Crab at the Waterfront in Camden. It was raining, the sea was gray...Crab and lobster, some butter. My goodness.

GoForThree: I think all crab is mostly the same. Sure, some is fresher than others, but it’s all pretty good. So it’s hard to say that the one place is better than the other place since all they can really do is buy fresh crab and hope they serve you a good one.

That said, my one distinctive memory of crab is from Las Vegas, where my roommate from Wyoming was so drunk he returned to the table from the buffet line with an armload of crab legs and announced triumphantly that “this place has lobster sticks!”

Aaron Yorke: I just got back from vacation in the San Juan Islands, and I think the best thing I ate there was the miniature crab cakes we had for an appetizer one night. Pac-12 seafood is better than Pac-12 football for sure.

The biggest contribution we have gotten from Maryland football is its refusal to shake the hands of Penn State players, moving the program just ahead of Rutgers in the race to be Penn State’s first legitimate rival.

WhiteSpeedReceiver: I think Maryland’s biggest contribution to B1G football is the realization that they help other fanbases feel better about gameday atmosphere. A bunch of friends that went out there for the game in 2016 were flabbergasted to see that Turtle fans would stay out and tailgate en masse instead of going to watch the game. I get that socialization can be more fun than the game, I really do, but you should probably try to watch the football game after a football tailgate.

And as for crab, I think the best I’ve had was at Oceanaire. I don’t get out to the Maryland area often, and even then it’s typically for either a family wedding or funeral and I’m on a pretty tight schedule. Hopefully I can get out for a football game in the near future and get some real, good crab.

BigRedTwice: I don’t have a crab moment that stands out to me, as most crab that I have outside of a land-locked state seems pretty good to me. I will, however, declare my love to Old Bay. It’s friggin’ delicious. A go-to weeknight dinner for me is pan-seared tilapia generously seasoned with Old Bay.

My solidifying Old Bay moment came when I was doing research at the National Archives at College Park. I got a burger in the cafeteria one day and couldn’t figure out why there was Old Bay at that station. It was for French fries, and oh my goodness, is that delicious.

Uh, Maryland football. My impression of them is that they are a team Nebraska usually can beat (those are precious these days) and theor uniforms make everyone feel better about their team’s usually disastrous forays into alternate jerseys.

beezer07: 5 years from now, Maryland’s biggest contribution is going to be the number of players they put into the NFL, upping the number of B1G NFL players, obvs. Durkin seems to be recruiting well, and even if he can’t coach them up, they still have the talent that they could land in the pros. That’s a big deal for a slow, boring, unathletic conference.

My crab moment has to be the first time I had blue crab. We were camping at a nice sandy campground about 15 minutes from the ocean, and on our way back to the campground from the beach the first night, we stopped and bought a bunch of blue crabs, tossed em in a paper bag, and drove back to the campsite.

We waited too long to get back, so we had to cook by campfire light/car headlights, but we boiled them over the campfire, ate all the blue crab we could handle, and then split a 30-pack of Coors Light between the three of us. Good times.

Stewmonkey13: The best crab I ever had was probably a crab boil we did at a tailgate a couple years ago for the Maryland game. In Iowa we don’t get a lot of fresh crab, and we don’t feel like spending the money to get it flown in from the gulf to pass it off as local, either.

The best contribution the Maryland has given the conference is the opportunity to do a crab boil every few tears at a tailgate. Though, I’m not sure we need Maryland to do that, so.....

My goodness, what an excellent and tasty start to Maryland Week. Hit up our Maryland preview from ziowa and DJ Carver, let us know your answers in the comments, and stay tuned for more multi-colored goodness!