Rob Ambrose has spent the past few days on the road recruiting, so the Towson University football coach hasn't read or heard much of what has been said about the hiring of Randy Edsall at Maryland.
What Ambrose believes, from the eight years he spent on Edsall's staff at Connecticut, is that the Terps have someone who can build on the success achieved by former coach Ralph Friedgen during his 10 seasons in College Park.
Told that a majority fans Maryland fans seemed disappointed that athletic director Kevin Anderson hired Edsall rather than bringing in former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach and his high-scoring offense, Ambrose said, "There's glitz and glamour, and then there's substance, and it's no secret to anybody in the country that [Edsall] is a [darn] good football coach."
Ambrose, who served as Edsall's offensive coordinator during his last three years in Storrs, also thinks the perception that Edsall's offense is dull and unimaginative, playing a more grind-it-out style than Leach's "Air Raid" attack, is not accurate. Ambrose points to the fact that when the Huskies had Dan Orlovsky, now a backup to Matt Schaub with the Houston Texans, Connecticut had one of the top offenses in the country. In 2004, Orlovsky's senior year, the Huskies were 19th overall.
"He's a former defensive coordinator, so he's a little defensive-minded," Ambrose said. "But he understands his personnel, what they can and cannot do, probably better than anybody else that I've ever been around. In the end, it is always going to be about winning. You can be as tricky as you want to be, but if you don't win, you don't have a job. The teams that are the most successful are the teams that have a really solid running game and everything builds from there offensively and defensively."
Ambrose also thinks that Edsall will be even more successful as a recruiter at Maryland than he was at Connecticut.
"Being from one of the smallest states in the Union, you have to go out of your area to recruit and the Mid-Atlantic region has always been one of Connecticut's primary recruiting areas," Ambrose said. "There's always been a strong Connecticut-D.C.-Baltimore-Northern Virginia connnection. Being from Glen Rock (Pa.), Randy knows the area and he knows the high school coaches. I think it's going to be an easy fit."
Ambrose said that given what Edsall accomplished in 12 years at Connecticut — taking a program from Division I-AA to a BCS bowl game (the Huskies lost to Oklahoma last Saturday after winning the Big East) — has been unappreciated by many.
"When I first got there, we worked out of trailers," Ambrose recalled. "It's kind of like building a really big house. You're in a constant state of construction, a constant state of education. Whenever you got one thing squared away, you had to go right to work on something else. The reputation of Connecticut in the next 20 years will be a national one because of the work that was done in the past 12 years."
Ambrose said he has spoken briefly to Edsall since he was hired at Maryland, but he knows they will catch up at some point.
Then there's the little matter of Sept. 4, when Edsall will make his coaching debut for the Terps at Byrd Stadium against a first-time opponent — Towson.
"Being a Towson alum, it's monumentous that we are actually going to be on the same field with Maryland," Ambrose said. "Being a D-I school for 20 years, to finally have the opportunity, we're finally moving in the direction that everybody always felt was good to get their attention. So that alone is exciting enough. Randy and I have been on the same field together for many years, and that's not strange. Normally we're wearing the same colors. I haven't really spent much time thinking about it while I'm recruiting, but I know everybody else is having fun with it."
Any thought of moving to College Park as Maryland's offensive coordinator?
Ambrose chuckled.
"Towson being my alma mater, and now having the tools and the direction to get things done, with an administration that supports us completely, I'm more focused on this than I would be on anything else," said Ambrose, who went 3-19 in his first two seasons at Towson, including 1-10 last season. "There's a lot of work left to be done here."