A Maryland football game is a tough watch these days.
But the university is offering its students an incentive to attend its next home game — a semester of free tuition to stay through the fourth quarter of Saturday’s matchup with Illinois, according to WBAL-TV.
Maryland students will need to claim their tickets for Saturday’s game, scan them at the gate of SECU Stadium and then scan a QR code displayed on the video board to be entered in the raffle, which will award a student the equivalent of the value of undergraduate in-state tuition, roughly up to $8,000, for the spring semester.
The unique promotion is taking place when Maryland faces Illinois amid a brutal season for the Terrapins that has the football program at a dismal 2-5 (0-4 in the Big Ten) and cost head coach Mike Locksley his job.
The Terps have not won a Big Ten game since Sept. 20, 2025, when they defeated Wisconsin on the road.
Nevertheless, the promotion is reportedly not related to the rough season that Maryland has had and assistant athletic director for fan development and marketing, Rachel Palmer, told WBAL-TV that the idea was developed over the summer.
“We’ve tried a lot of things over the years, raffling off premium giveaways, contests and ultimately landed on this idea of a tuition raffle,” she told the local station about the effort to keep students in their seats through the end of the game.
“It is kind of a problem, I think, across the country, honestly, with college football,” Palmer added. “It’s a pretty long game and they have a lot of other things they can be doing. So we just want to make sure coming to SECU Stadium [and] supporting our football team for all four quarters is higher on their priority list, especially on Halloween.”
The five finalists will be brought down onto the field during the fourth quarter, and the winner will then be selected.
Maryland has averaged 42,264 fans for its four home games this season, which ranks 15th among the 18 teams in the Big Ten.
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