Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen is likely to give his team the week off after playing 12 games in 13 weekends.
Friedgen, though, could be busy in a lobbying effort with bowl games.
Maryland is 8-4 overall, and at 5-3 after Saturday's defeat of N.C. State tied for third in conference record among the ACC's dozen teams. Nine of them are bowl eligible.
"I think we're in a pretty good position," Friedgen said. "We'll have a chance to go to a couple upper-echelon bowls. We'll just have to wait and see."
Friedgen would seem to be an advocate of complete fairness is the bowl process, which most folks realize doesn't entirely exist. But he rattled off the four bowls in the middle of the ACC's selection process --- Champs Sports (Orlando), Sun (El Paso), Meineke Car Care (Charlotte) and Music City (Nashville) --- as the neighborhood he believes Maryland belongs in.
"We’d love to go to any of those bowls that are in that area," Friedgen said. "Not that we wouldn't go anywhere else, but that's where I think we’re deserving of going."
Friedgen's advocacy two years ago did little to help Maryland avoid a long trip to the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho. But in 2006, plenty of behind-the-scenes work was done to vault the Terrapins into the Champs Sports Bowl --- a far warmer destination than they otherwise would have dealt with.
A big part of Friedgen's belief Maryland warrants a spot higher than the tail end of the selection process --- such as the Military Bowl at RFK Stadium on Dec. 29 --- stems from Saturday's victory. It was Maryland's first defeat of a ranked team in more than two years.
"If we hadn't won, we would have had to take whatever bowl was interested, and we'd have been happy to go," Friedgen said. "But we did win yesterday."
And so Friedgen, who wants not only exposure for his program but also an appropriate pay-off for his team, will spend some time this week making calls in anticipation of the Dec. 5 bowl announcements.
"We need to go to one of those bowls that are third or fourth-ranked bowl in the conference as I see it," Friedgen said. "I'll try whatever I can try. I think our kids are deserving of that. I'm going to do all that I can to see their effort and what they've done during the season is rewarded."
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