College Football

Et cetera McDaniel breaks ground on stadium McDaniel College broke ground Friday on an $8million stadium project to be named for trustee and alumnus Kenneth R. Gill and designed by architect Marshall Craft Associates of Baltimore. Construction on the two-story, brick-and-concrete multipurpose stadium is set to begin this month with a targeted completion date for the first home football game on Sept. 15. Gill, who graduated in 1961 and played football for the Green Terror for four seasons, made gifts totaling $2.25 million toward the project and served as chair of the Stadium Project Committee, which raised more than $7.7 million in cash and pledges.

Brian Gaia won't be with his Gilman football teammates when they sign their national letters of intent Wednesday morning. He'll be getting ready to take on the world. The All-Metro lineman has been in Austin, Texas, this week preparing for Wednesday night's International Bowl, which pits the United States Under-19 team against a World Team of players from 20 countries, including American Samoa, Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Japan and Mexico. The players, however, will take a little time out of their busy schedule for a national signing day breakfast celebration, during which Gaia plans to sign with Penn State, a program he remained committed to through the uncertain ramifications of the Jerry Sandusky sexual-abuse scandal and the firing of legendary coach Joe Paterno.

The majority of Mike Madaras ' young life has been spent preparing to become a Division I offensive lineman. The Good Counsel tackle's father played on the O-line, and coached his son to play the position in youth football. There were never any illusions in Madaras' mind of being anything other than a lineman. “His dad did a nice job getting him ready,” said Falcons offensive line coach Tom Crowell . “He was schooled in the wing-T blocking. So as a young kid, he came in very excited about being a lineman and we just built from there.

With some new revelation breaking almost daily in the tawdry scandals that have soiled the great sports programs at Penn State and Syracuse, it might be easy to overlook this uplifting little piece of college football news. Senior fullback Alexander Teich will not be selected in the first round of the next NFL draft and he will not become an instant millionaire for trying to carry a ball past a chalk line, but he did get the offer he was looking for upon graduation from the Naval Academy.

Morgan State (5-5, 4-3 MEAC) vs. Hampton (6-4, 4-3) Time: 1 p.m. Where: Armstrong Stadium in Hampton, Va. Radio: 88.9 FM Series: Norfolk State leads the series, 36-22-2 What's at stake: Morgan State will look to end a two-game losing streak with its regular-season finale against MEAC foe Hampton. The Bears fell at home last week 47-14 to Delaware State, which clinched its first-ever MEAC title. Morgan State controlled its conference destiny two weeks ago, but has had troubles on the defensive end. The Pirates are coming off a 42-6 win against Delaware State last week.

No. 8 Towson (8-2, 6-1 Colonial Athletic Association) @ Rhode Island (3-7, 2-5) Time: Saturday, 12:30 p.m. Site: Meade Stadium, South Kingstown, R.I. Radio: 1570 AM Series: Rhode Island leads 6-5. What's at stake: Towson looks to close out its impressive regular season with a win over Rhode Island and at least a share of the CAA championship. If the Tigers beat the Rams and New Hampshire defeats Maine, Towson will win the conference title outright.

Et cetera 3 Towson freshmen earn CAA weekly football honors A trio of freshmen from the No. 10 Towson football team — tailback Terrance West (Northwestern), kick return specialist Derrick Joseph and cornerback Tye Smith — have been named as winners of Colonial Athletic Association weekly awards, conference officials announced Monday. West was named the Offensive Player of the Week for the second consecutive week, while Joseph was honored as the Special Teams Performer of the Week and Smith was the Rookie of the Week.

Nobody asked me, but ... do we really need to redevelop Owings Mills Mall into a retail "town center"? How about we just decide that the whole thing was a big mistake, knock it down, tear up all that pavement and turn the area into a park, with exotic things like trees and grass and deer and stuff? How about doing a facelift along Reisterstown Road instead, supporting the small businesses that are already there and encouraging new ones? Anyone for a charrette on this? • People who opposed the Baltimore Grand Prix keep sending me I-told-you-so cards.

"Of course we're going to riot," Paul Howard, a 24 year-old aerospace engineering student at Penn State University, told The New York Times. "What do they expect when they tell us at 10 o'clock that they fired our football coach?" The coach in question, as we all know, is Joe Paterno, the decades-long patriarch of Penn State football. Mr. Paterno was fired by the board of trustees for his part in a reprehensible non-response to the alleged rape of a 10-year-old boy in the locker room showers.

McDonogh defensive end Roman Braglio grew up lifting hay bales on his father's Woodstock farm. Now the 6-foot-4, 240-pound senior uses that strength as one of the area's top defensive linemen. With 16 sacks and 72 tackles, Braglio leads the No. 8 Eagles into Saturday's 96 t h meeting with No. 1 Gilman. Despite Sunday's 48-42 triple-overtime loss to No. 2 Calvert Hall, the Eagles have clinched a berth in the first Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A Conference football playoffs.