Maryland fired Mike Locksley on Wednesday. The only real question left is why it took an extra year. The record made this obvious a long time ago. The delay is the scandal, and it belongs to athletic director Jim Smith.
Start with the part nobody's arguing about: Locksley went 4-8 in 2024 and 4-8 again in 2025. His Maryland teams went winless in Big Ten play for 12 straight games dating to last season, and his tenure included a 13-game losing streak against power-conference opponents. Call it 39-54 overall with the 2015 interim stint folded in, 38-49 and 16-47 in the Big Ten without it. That coach wasn't getting this program where it needed to go. Fans who feel relieved today are right to.
Now the part that should make Maryland people furious: Smith took over as athletic director in May 2025, looked at back-to-back 4-8 seasons, and brought Locksley back for a ninth year last November anyway. Then he did it again mid-season. After Maryland got dropped 54-3 at home by UCLA in late September, Smith said the two were "aligned on the work in front of us," and the department signaled that would be his final word on it. A 51-point beating under your own roof is the breaking point at any serious program. Smith treated it as a reason to issue a loyalty statement.
Nothing new moved him. Maryland opened this year beating Hampton 62-0 and UConn 38-14, then lost five straight: Virginia Tech, that UCLA humiliation, Nebraska, No. 5 Ohio State, and then Rutgers. The Rutgers loss is the one that did it. Maryland led 23-13 at halftime, then got outscored down the stretch and lost 37-30. Maryland fired Locksley because the losing finally got loud enough to embarrass everyone.
You could see the panic in the sequencing. Locksley axed his defensive coordinator, Ted Monachino, on Sunday. Three days later, Locksley himself was gone. It's a program flailing, and a boss who waited until the water hit his own chin.
Locksley has a real defense: this is a hard job. Maryland hasn't won a conference title since the 2001 ACC or had a 10-win season since 2003, and it has now fired four straight full-time head coaches. Locksley also won three straight bowls and beat Hugh Freeze's Auburn 31-13 in the 2023 Music City Bowl, so the ceiling he found is real. But "hard job" explains a 4-8 season. Keeping a man through two of them, and a 54-3 loss, falls on Smith. The buyout tells you what the hesitation cost: roughly $9.94 million, half of it due in a lump sum within 60 days, on top of a wasted recruiting cycle and a dead-man-walking autumn.
Aazaar Abdul-Rahim, a D.C. native in his second stint on staff, takes over as interim with the Terps on a bye before Illinois. The names already floating for the full-time job run from Memphis's Charles Huff to Wake Forest's Jake Dickert to retreads like the Kelly cousins and Urban Meyer. All of that is unsettled, and it should stay that way for now. The one thing that matters about the search is this: it's Smith's first real hire, after years with the Braves and running Ohio State's alumni association. The DMV is loaded with talent. The man who once sold the Jets enough to earn a head-coaching interview knew how to recruit it. Maryland's next coach has to actually develop that talent.
Locksley lost his way out of this job, and he owns every number of it. But if you're angry about why it took until late October 2026 to admit what back-to-back 4-8 seasons already proved, aim it at the man who kept finding reasons to wait.
