COLLEGE PARK - Ralph Friedgen played many roles for the University of Maryland football team in his younger life. As a player, he switched from quarterback to linebacker to the offensive line. Then he went from a graduate assistant coach under Jerry Claiborne to offensive line coach and finally offensive coordinator under Bobby Ross.
Friedgen will now get to play another role, one that he will have for the first time in his 28-year career.
Head coach.
After emerging as the leading candidate last weekend to replace the recently fired Ron Vanderlinden as the Terps' coach, the 53-year-old Georgia Tech offensive coordinator agreed yesterday to terms of a six-year deal.
According to Jack Reale, his Atlanta-based agent, Friedgen will be paid a base salary of $175,000 as part of a package worth between $700,000 and $800,000 annually.
It marks the first time a Maryland alumnus will coach the Terrapins since 1968, when Bob Ward was the last of Friedgen's three coaches and the only one to award him a varsity letter. It has been a long journey since then for the son of a high school coaching legend in Harrison, N.Y. Yesterday was a day that Friedgen thought might never come.
"I almost resigned myself to it," said Friedgen, who left Maryland with Ross after the 1986 season. In the nine years since, he sandwiched two stints as an assistant at Georgia Tech around five seasons as offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers.
"I probably suffered the same stigma that a lot of guys. ... No one ever knew who I was. That probably changed when I got back from the NFL."
It changed because Friedgen had helped coach the Chargers to the 1994 Super Bowl, after winning a share of the 1990 national championship at Georgia Tech. Not that Friedgen was a household name. Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow recalled some conversations she had with current Maryland players early in the search process.
"I asked whom they had in mind, and they said, `Could you interview the guy at Georgia Tech; you know, the guy who coaches the offense?' " Yow said at yesterday's campus news conference. "Well, the guy from Georgia Tech is now the guy from Maryland, the man who will return Maryland to national prominence."
Yow said she contacted Reale the night she fired Vanderlinden after four losing seasons. That was 10 days ago. The list of available big-name coaches dwindled quickly after Ross, another client of Reale's, and former Auburn coach Terry Bowden said they were not interested. That's when Friedgen's candidacy soared.
It came four years after Yow did not even interview Friedgen for the job that went to Vanderlinden.
"Ancient history," Yow said yesterday.
"The timing wasn't right before," Friedgen's wife, Gloria, said last night from their home in Atlanta. "Now, it is."
After Yow visited Friedgen in Atlanta on Sunday, his name was at the top. Things moved from there. Friedgen came to the campus Monday, meeting with Yow and other administrators while looking at the facilities. He stayed Tuesday, talking with members of the committee and Maryland president C.D. Mote Jr., while his wife went house hunting. They flew home Tuesday night, talked it over with their three daughters, and Friedgen agreed to the offer yesterday morning.
Reale credited Yow with getting the deal done.
"She's one of the top, most insightful and decisive athletic directors I've ever dealt with," said Reale. "She really had a vision at what the task was at hand. She was forthcoming and cooperative in getting this deal done quickly."
Said Friedgen: "She will do what it takes. She is very focused."
What it will take for Maryland to turn around quickly and become, as Friedgen hopes, "a Top 20 team year in and year out," is the kind of financial commitment that none of Friedgen's predecessors, Ross included, ever had.
Friedgen's package, which also includes a $100,000 bonus for taking the Terrapins to a bowl game, is $500,000 above what Vanderlinden was reportedly making.
Friedgen believes he will have the wherewithal to put together a top-level staff. When asked if he was concerned about the budget he would have to hire his assistants, Friedgen said, "It really wasn't an issue. ... It's a good situation. It really is."
Friedgen said that he anticipates putting "the nuts and bolts" of his staff together quickly, since recruiting has already begun and home visits to prospective recruits begin tomorrow.
Among potential assistants Friedgen might talk with is former Terp Brian Baker, a Baltimore native. Baker coached at Maryland and Georgia Tech with Ross and is now a defensive line coach with the Detroit Lions.
Unlike his immediate predecessor, Friedgen is not making any bold predictions about winning the Atlantic Coast Conference championship or telling fans that this will be the last time they are home for the holidays rather than at a bowl game. But with seven home games and 16 returning starters next season, Friedgen is cautiously optimistic about turning things around quickly.
