Request: Can We Please Get Wale to Maryland Madness Now?

So, cool story: Rick Ross, rap superstar, is going to perform at Memphis' Midnight Memphis Madness. As someone who doesn't like Ross' music, that's still pretty cool. It also gives me a chance to provide a platform for yet another of my favorite causes: making Maryland Madness less lame.

A number of things should happen, including actually moving the event back to midnight and renaming it Midnight Madness. (No duh it's Maryland's, they invented it.) Putting it in Cole would be pretty sweet as well, though I'm not sure as to the viability of that. But given that the impetus of this post was Ross performing at Memphis, I think you can guess the big request: can we please get Wale?

There were rumors of it happening last year, but they proved to be unfounded. Really, there's no better time to bring in D.C.'s biggest rapper. He did Georgetown's event last year, so there's no local competition. He's been name-dropping prominent Maryland athletes. He's a semi-Maryland fan. And hey, Mark Turgeon brought in Soulja Boy for his first Maroon Madness at Texas A&M back before Soulja Boy became a punchline (that time existed, right?), so apparently he's up for this type of thing. (Also, the fact that Soulja Boy is a better musical guest than anyone Maryland's brought in so far is pretty sad.)

Last year's event was pretty bad and the year before that was even worse. Maryland Madness is spiraling downward. I know the money problems are bad, but this is a primo event, both for fans and for recruiting purposes. (If you still doubt the importance of things like Madness and uniforms in recruiting, check out Archie Goodwin's reasoning for cutting Baylor from his list.) Given the direction the department has headed in recently, I'd expect them to make an attempt at saving it.

And think about it: between the jerseys, the recruiting class, Danny O'Brien, and Wale, Maryland would have to be the most swaggertastic school in the ACC, right? Now we just need to go back to the Dirty Terps.