Football is a welcome distraction for Maryland

It’s commonplace for college football coaches to fret about outside distractions undermining focus on the season.

But as Maryland prepares for Saturday’s opener against Texas, acting coach Matt Canada indicated that concentrating on football has been a welcome distraction for his players who are still grieving the death of 19-year-old lineman Jordan McNair and dealing with the fallout from his death.

“The players are excited to focus on football,” Canada said. “We are going through a grieving process as an entire program. We’ve been there for two months now – dealing with the loss of Jordan. … We are leaning on each other through that process, trying to be there. Some days everybody has a good day or a bad day. So we are trying to pick each other up when someone is having a bad day.”

The program has been struggling to cope since McNair died in June, two weeks after collapsing after conditioning drills. He had difficulty completing a series of 110-yard sprints. The family has indicated that his death has been attributed to heatstroke.

The university placed head coach DJ Durkin and at least two other staff members on administrative leave pending an investigation into an ESPN report that said the program fostered an “environment based on fear and humiliation.”

“When we get to play football, it hasn’t been challenging getting the focus on that,” said Canada who had only been the team’s offensive coordinator seven months when he was named acting coach.

For the Terrapins, this is a game about overcoming an odd variety of obstacles.

Canada, 46, hasn’t been a head coach before but has been the offensive coordinator at Butler, Indiana, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina State, Pittsburgh and LSU. His challenge is preparing the Terrapins to play a Texas team that is ranked 21st in the Amway Coaches Poll. The game is local, but will be played at FedExField, the home field of the Washington Redskins.