The 1945 Maryland Terrapins football team was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

team that represented the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

as a member of the

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly k ...

during the

1945 college football season The 1945 college football season was the 77th season of intercollegiate football in the United States. Competition included schools from the Big Ten Conference, the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the Big Six ...

. In its first and only season under head coach Bear Bryant, the team compiled a 6–2–1 record (2–2 in conference), tied for fifth place in the conference, and outscored opponents by a total of 219 to 105. Bryant, then 31 years old, was hired as Maryland's head coach in early September, approximately three weeks before the season began. Bryant had served in the Navy for the prior three years. He had been an assistant coach of the

1944 North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters football team The North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters represented the United States Navy, U.S. Navy pre-flight school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the college football seasons of 1942 college football season, 1942, 1943 college footbal ...

and was scheduled to be the team's head coach in 1945. However, the Navy announced in late August that the Navy's Pre-Flight schools would not field football teams in 1945. Bryant brought 20 number of players from the disbanded North Carolina Pre-Flight with him to Maryland. No Maryland player were named to the 1945 All-Southern Conference football team selected by coaches and sports writers for the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

. In January 1946, after only four months at Maryland, Bryant resigned his position to become head coach at Kentucky. According to one report, Bryant did not get along with university president

Curley Byrd Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd (February 12, 1889 – October 2, 1970) was an American university administrator, educator, athlete, coach, and politician. Byrd began a long association with the University of Maryland as an undergraduate in 1905, and ...

. In one incident, Byrd reinstated a player who Bryant had suspended for a violation of team rules.

Schedule

References

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Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

Maryland Terrapins football seasons Maryland Terrapins football