Team of Destiny: The 2001 ACC Champion Football Team Returns

Twenty years ago, expectations around the Maryland football team remained tepid at best. 

The team had been to just one bowl game in the past 15 seasons and had undergone wholesale changes again with hiring a new coach and a mostly new staff. With the school still riding high after the Maryland men’s basketball team reached the 2001 Final Four, fans were ready to skip the fall and just get prepared for the winter. 

It wasn’t until the team got on the field that opinions and attitudes changed. 

The Terps were fast, they were tough, and they were good. First-year head coach Ralph Friedgen and his team put together a dream season, going 10-2 and winning their first ACC championship since 1985. 

“That team really knew what they wanted, and they went out and got it,” Friedgen said. “I’ll always remember the tenacity, perseverance, and toughness that they showed. It was a great bunch of kids.”

In the late winter months in 2000, Maryland made a sentimental decision to hire Friedgen as its new head coach. As a former offensive lineman on the team in the 1960s and an assistant under famed coach Bobby Ross in the 1980s, Friedgen held a deep reverence for the university and the program. 

After spring practices came and went, Friedgen traveled down to the Isles of Palms in South Carolina for ACC Football Media Day, ready to gush over his team to anyone who would listen. 

But nobody cared for what the Maryland coach had to say.

The media flooded the other tables, wanting to hear from Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden and Georgia Tech head coach George O’Leary. Friedgen sat there for hours, and not a single question ever came his way. 

College football fans and media fawned over the Florida State Seminoles, Clemson Tigers, and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, believing them to be the class of the ACC. The AP preseason poll agreed, ranking all of those teams and predicting the Terps would finish in seventh place in the conference.

Friedgen understood the hype around the other programs, including his former Yellow Jacket team, but was dismayed at the lack of attention paid to his players. He knew they had talent, and his players were ready to show it. 

“We knew that those polls don’t mean anything,” quarterback Shaun Hill said. “We were very, very good about not looking ahead either. Just taking care of what was in front of us. We took a very near-sighted approach, and I think that was one of the keys to having such a successful season.”

When Friedgen first got to see his team take the field in the spring, he was excited about the team’s prospects. There were the typical growing pains that come with every team, but everything was fixable. 

The now-retired coach was big on the importance of competition in practice and installed designated days where his players would actively compete against each other. One day, Friedgen made his players play a goal line stand against each other, and for an added layer of incentive, the losing team would run while the winners could go home. 

That day, the defense lost and had to run gassers across the field and back, but the effort wasn’t up to Friedgen’s liking. A couple of players were lazily jogging, so Friedgen made them run more. He was testing his players, and one of them passed with flying colors. 

E.J. Henderson was entering his fourth season in College Park as a redshirt junior and was tired of the poor effort that his teammates gave. Friedgen remembers Henderson going up to each player individually and demanding them to give their best. 

It was then that Friedgen knew he had found one of his leaders. 

“Henderson said something to each one [of the players who weren’t running],” Friedgen remembered. “All I know is that they started running after that, and I said, ‘That’s my leader.’”

The team relied on its established veteran guys like Hill, Henderson, and players like Aaron Thompson and Randy Starks to help ease the transition with the addition of veteran -- but new to Maryland -- offensive and defensive coordinators Charlie Taaffe and Gary Blackney.

Hill was a junior college transfer and was somewhat of a known commodity, having played in six games the previous year and throwing six touchdown passes. Even with the small sample size, the Terps were high on their signal-caller.

“He was a junior college transfer from Kansas, and his father was a coach,” Friedgen said. “He had gained a lot of instincts about playing football and was really a winner. I wish I could have coached him before he was a senior. I only got him for one year.”

Before the 2001 season started, Friedgen asked his players to list out their goals and was disappointed with some of the answers, believing his team needed to set their goals higher. 

“The goals of that team were to win six games,” Friedgen said. “That was because winning six games meant you were bowl eligible. To be honest, that was kind of a disappointment.”

The Terps began the season on a torrid run, winning conference games against North Carolina and Wake Forest and defeating local rivals West Virginia and Virginia. Sitting at 5-0, the team was just one win away from bowl eligibility, and the next team on the schedule was Friedgen’s old Georgia Tech team. 

It was a primetime Thursday night matchup on ESPN with the No. 22 Terps traveling to Atlanta to take on the No. 15 Yellow Jackets. 

Maryland jumped out to a 14-0 lead, but Georgia Tech came back to take a 17-14 lead late in the fourth quarter. Needing a drive, Friedgen’s trust in Hill paid off as the quarterback engineered a perfect two-minute drill with a nine-play, 51-yard drive punctuated by a 49-yard field goal from freshman kicker Nick Novak.

In overtime, Maryland got the ball first but settled for another Novak field goal. Thankfully for them, the defense was up for the challenge. It was none other than Henderson, who recovered a fumble early in the first quarter and returned it for a touchdown, who ended the game as he recovered yet another fumble, securing the win. 

When Friedgen spoke to his team in the locker room, he told them it was time to change their goals.

After going 3-1 over their next four games, the Terrapins were in a tie for first place in the ACC, and all they needed to do was defeat NC State, and the conference title was theirs. 

However, everything that could go wrong seemingly did. 

The Terps were sloppy, and costly turnovers found them trailing 19-16 with under a minute remaining. With the defense coming up big against Georgia Tech just a month prior, it was Hill and the offense’s turn to win the game. 

Hill led the offense 54 yards down the field in nine plays, and with 49 seconds remaining, they did the unthinkable. An eight-yard pass from Hill found the hands of Guilian Gary in the end zone for the game-winning score, making Maryland the first team since Florida State joined the conference to win the ACC championship outright.  

From a preseason afterthought to ACC champions, the Terps earned the right to play in the Orange Bowl, where they ultimately fell to the No. 5 Florida Gators. Despite the bitter ending, it was a magical season for Maryland and one that just proves that greatness can come when you least expect it.

Running back Bruce Perry was named the ACC Offensive Player of The Year under the tutelage of then-running backs coach and current head coach Michael Locksley. 

Since parting ways all those years ago, the players have all gone on to their separate lives, with some of them playing professional football, others becoming media personalities, and most of them just living as normal members of society. 

Now, Locksley and the program welcome them back with open arms, and the red carpet rolled out. The group is excited to be back in College Park together, ready to see one another and relive the glory days of their improbable run to immortality. 

“I’m looking forward to seeing the guys,” Hill said. “I don’t have any social media, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing all of the guys. Just catching up and seeing what they’re up to.”