Yet Another Pundit Says Maryland Basketball is a Top 10 Job

The recent coaching search extravaganza opened up a pretty interesting discussion: just how good of a job is Maryland?

We had dozens of answers, and most of the early responders said it's an awesome job. Most fans never really realized just how good of a job Maryland (apparently) is, so the news was a bit of a happy shock. Then came the Sean Miller, Brad Stevens, and Mike Brey (!) denials, and we were sort of lost. If Maryland was truly elite, so goes the thinking, how could they fail to grab coaches from Arizona and Notre Dame, let alone Butler? 

Each of those situations had some strange circumstances, particularly with Brey, whom I'm not sure ever had a real chance at the job. For that reason I'm sticking to the initial assertion that Maryland is a legitimate top 10 job, or maybe 15 at absolute worst.

I'm not really sure anyone disagrees with this assessment, but I now have some very powerful backup in that department coming from The Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy, who posted his top ten coaching jobs in the country yesterday. Maryland checks in at #9 on the list, right behind Duke. The school they're right ahead of? Arizona, which might help explain why Sean Miller didn't sacrifice a great situation for a very minor upgradge. UNC, for the record, is the top job.

Again, there's no box here that Maryland doesn't check. They have great local talent, good history, great facilities, strong conference affiliation, a rabid fanbase, decent money, a large media market, and perhaps most importantly in the future, the support of Under Armour. The only negative may be College Park itself, or perhaps the academic requirements stemming from the Bias days. Past that, it's as good as you get.

My own list would differ slightly, taking Duke off, bumping Maryland up one, and maybe sliding in Louisville, based solely on the facilities, money, and fan support, or Georgetown, which has tradition and a great talent base.

Now that the dust has settled on all this and we can take a more objective look at it (which, admittedly, might still not be objective), what are your thoughts on it? Is Maryland a top 10 job? Top 5? Top 20? Should this post be a poll? Does this even matter anymore? Does anyone disagree with me? With nothing else going on today, now's as good a time as any other to have this discussion.