The entire Maryland football drama is in no way over after the university pulled an about-face and fired head coach DJ Durkin on Wednesday.
We’re going to hear a whole lot more about what happened behind the scenes at College Park moving forward. For now, it reportedly includes a fight breaking out between players after Durkin was briefly reinstated as the team’s football coach earlier in the week.
“A source close to the athletic program who did not have permission to speak about the situation confirmed that there was an altercation,” Luke Broadwater of The Baltimore Sun reported Thursday. “Multiple sources close to the team also confirmed that they had been alerted to the altercation.”
We already know that several players were not happy about Durkin’s reinstatement. He had been away on administrative since August after a former player, Jordan McNair, died following a workout during the spring.
This adds an entirely new layer to the drama surrounding the program. And the scene itself was seemingly pretty bad.
“Matthew Barber, a 21-year-old backup punter, who has spoken out against the culture of the program, says he was assaulted at the end of practice Tuesday by a fellow player who supported Durkin,” the report noted.
Barber had been seen as the whistleblower who first went to investigators. Obviously, this one Maryland player was not too happy about that. “My jersey was bloody,” Barber says. “I had blood all over my hands.”
This isn’t good optics at all for the fledgling football program. And it tells us a story of the entire drama surrounding the Terps not being anywhere near over.