Virginia Cavaliers @ Maryland Terrapins Football Preview

Call this the Schizophrenia Bowl. Call it the Jekyll And Hyde Bowl. Call it the Yo Yo Bowl. However you want to label this weekend’s ACC clash between the Virginia Cavaliers and the Maryland Terrapins, be sure to emphasize the fact – and it is a fact – that these teams have split personalities and cannot be trusted to exhibit only one side of their pigskin selves.

Virginia and Maryland have been all over the map in 2011. The Cavaliers’ inconsistency, though, has been held and dealt with at a much higher level than the Terps’ mood swings. Virginia’s up-and-down autumn has involved a lot more ups, and as a result, young coach Mike London has his team at 5-3, one win away from securing bowl eligibility and making a giant leap forward in the shadows of Monticello. Virginia has been a thoroughly frustrating program over the past several years. Even when the program was winning eight games under former boss Al Groh, it regularly found ways to lose games it should have won. Groh exited after the 2009 season, leaving a diminished program in London’s hands. UVA endured the hard knocks of a full-fledged rebuilding year in 2010, but now in his second season as the head of the ‘Hoos, London is finding his stride. Two emphatic performances from his team’s running game – against Georgia Tech and Miami – have led to divisional wins that have substantially boosted London’s stock as a head coach. Those twin takedowns of the Yellow Jackets and Hurricanes have also turned heads in the ACC and given Virginia a new reputation on the gridiron. Virginia is now a team that has thrown aside its former identity as a doormat. When the Cavaliers go to College Park, Maryland, this weekend, they’ll walk into Byrd Stadium as the unquestioned favorite.

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