It's (Belated) Atlantic Week!

Leading off: my deepest apologies to our Rutgers and Maryland readers for giving the official OTR Atlantic Week a bit of a short shrift by starting it up midweek. I could pretend that this was intentional as a dig at their collective last place in the rivalry standings. Or maybe a metaphorical reference to their shortened history in the most B1G, most venerable conference in the land.

But alas, it's really just your intrepid editor-otter not getting his shit together. Mom in town, World Cup threads, all of my fucking home appliances dying in some concerted conspiracy, etc. Regardless, I dropped the ball. But also, fuck you, you shitass old microwave. Anyway. With that out of the way, we march onward and eastward to highlight conference members #13 and #14!

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Is this rivalry a real thing?

In a word? No. In several words? No, not really. But when everyone pairs off at the high school dance, it's best to not get too picky. They've played each other every year since their arrival to the Big Ten in 2014 and since then, per Scott Dochterman's recent piece at The Athletic, "their football teams have the two worst records in league play: 29-73 for Maryland, 22-84 for Rutgers. They reported the two lowest football ticket sales totals among the Big Ten’s 16 public schools." So perhaps not a grudge match rivalry in the traditional sense, but they're certainly competitive with each other.

Let's get some numbers.

Yep. Maryland 12, Rutgers 9. 9 of those games were pre-B1G. As conference rivals, they're Maryland 7, Rutgers 5. Rutgers has won the last two; Maryland had the previous 3. Fairly even! As c0-members of the Big Ten East, both sides could reasonably look to this game as a winnable divisional matchup.

Where'd you two come from again?

Long before Kevin Warren added a few West Coast schools, shattered the venerable Pac-12 to pieces, and peaced out to go move the Chicago Bears to an Indiana slag heap, longtime commish Jim Delaney added Rutgers and Maryland as a play to expand the conference into the DC and New York media markets. Ta-da, Rutgers and Maryland. While Rutgers was in that odd collection formerly called the Big East, today called The American, Maryland was a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Both schools were looking for more money to address long-standing financial woes. With that, the 14 team B1G was born.

You folks got a trophy or some hardware?

Nah. Per above, this isn't really a proper rivalry. But they both hate Penn State, which is something! And there have been a few proposals over the years that were pretty entertaining. Back when sports blogs were fun and lighthearted affairs, Testudo Times proposed that the winner of the matchup would get to keep Delaware. And then there was the Old Oaken TV Set to mark the reason for the season (TV rights, obvs). The twosome could have staked a claim to some nautical-themed trophy, but since the addition of the 4-PAC, it doesn't really hit the mark. Over a decade into the thing, I suppose if one had been in the offing, it would have happened by now.

Alright, with that silliness as preamble over, we'll get to the real ballknowing analysis from the crew here at OTR. Stick around for recaps of last year's seasons, predictions for the coming year, and whatever else we can scrounge up in the Sports Content Mines.

Thanks for reading, all. We'll dial this thing in by the 9th week (probably). As always, it's a work in progress.