Absolutely nobody showed up to watch Maryland play its college football game on Saturday. The crowd resembled that of a Tuesday night contest between two Conference USA teams with a sub-.500 record.
Not even a chance to win free tuition could fill the student section!
The college football game was played in a mostly empty stadium. The Terrapins’ next head coach will need to inject life into the program.
Maryland offered free tuition to students at the college football game.
It has been more than two decades since the Terrapins won 10 games in a single season. They have finished with a winning record in only three of the last 10 years.
Mike Locksley was hired as the head coach in 2019. He inherited a team that had not made a bowl game since 2014 and immediately turned things around during his second full season at the helm. Maryland went 7-6 in 2021 and 8-5 in 2022 and 2023.
And then it all came crashing down in 2024.
Locksley was fired last week after a 4-8 record in 2024 and 2025 and a 2-5 start in 2026. On-field results have been poor. Recruiting has been worse. There are no signs of life in College Park.
Knowing that its fanbase would not want to show up at noon on Halloween Saturday to watch the game against Illinois, the administration got creative. Maryland sold three tickets for the price of one and offered any student who stayed for all four quarters a chance to win free tuition for the spring semester. Eligible students must attend the game, scan a QR code on the video board during the game to officially enter the raffle, and stay until the fourth quarter to find out who wins.
The opportunity to win free tuition, worth approximately $13,000, did not make a huge difference in terms of attendance. Fans who did not have the chance to win tuition were even less inclined to show up.
The crowd was empty.
SECU Stadium holds a maximum capacity of ~46,000. It did not come anywhere close on Saturday. The Terrapins ran out of the tunnel to a mostly empty stadium.
Maryland football enters to a very sparse crowd at SECU Stadium pic.twitter.com/MgBIbHWR5h
— Alexander Dacy (@alexanderdacy) October 31, 2026
The crowd at kickoff was not any better.
A fanbase that wanted its coach to be fired did not show up to support its team after it got its wish.
With Maryland football fans, there's never been much correlation between "I'm not showing up again until the coach is fired!!" and "When I get my way and the coach is fired, I'll show up and give them some energy."
— Jeff Ermann (@Jeff_Ermann) October 31, 2026
Via @lawrenceterp pic.twitter.com/GHLVKIAdht
Even the student section was practically nonexistent.
The University of Maryland enrolls 41,000 students. Only a few thousand showed up for the tuition raffle, if that.
Those who were not selected left as soon as possible.
Will the Terrapins one day return to relevance? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!