Not pictured: Francis Scott Key

In case you missed the football game last night (or the fashion show three weeks ago), the Maryland football team now has more uniform combinations than they do starting players.

They changed into top-secret uniforms after warmups and came out for the game against Miami dressed up like Francis Scott Key if he were competing on “American Gladiators.” Some thought it was as awesome as Apollo Creed’s American flag shorts, some thought it was just gross.

The Internet, as it usually does, was overwhelmingly negative about it. There were some positive comments, but they weren’t as funny and, let’s face it, the headline was written before we actually found these tweets.

Former Redskins defensive end Phillip Daniels spent most of his evening tweeting about the jerseys, saying that they “look like a bunch of throw up” and “if I was a #Terp I would rather have a leather helmet tonight.” He finished the evening with “Afraid to go to sleep. #Terps uniforms might get me. #Scary.”

Miami Heat forward LeBron James also sipped the Haterade, though it should be noted that he himself never actually wore a college uniform, opting to skip college and get right to losing NBA championships:

And now we’re all much smarter for having heard his opinion. Don’t worry — plenty of other, less famous people also weighed in.

From NESN anchor Randy Scott:

Crabcakes and awful uniforms: THAT’S WHAT MARYLAND DOES!

From Washington Examiner columnist Rick Snider:

If the #Terps change uniforms or helmets after warmups I seriously question their focus. It’s a football field, not a runway.

From NFL Network reporter Albert Breer:

Oh … My … God. What in the %$^ is Maryland wearing?!?! They look like crossing guards on peyote.

From CBS Sports reporter Mike Freeman:

Maryland’s uniforms look like a Dora the Explorer dress.

SportsCenter also compiled a few Maryland uniform tweets after the game (backed by anchor Linda Cohen’s cackling), and then anchor Robert Flores gingerly tried to ask coach Randy Edsall if he had anything to say to the uniform haters, but Edsall spent most of his time talking about “branding,” “pride” and “Kevin Plank.”

Oh, and Maryland won the game, too. Go Terps.

We made it almost the entire broadcast without incident, but then, just before the game cut to SportsCenter, the camera caught this kid:

Credit for the spot goes to Twitter user Ian Oland, who tweeted the pic after the game. If anybody knows who this is, please let us know — we’d like to ask him where he got the shirt, if it actually helps him pick up “fat bitches,” and if his mother knows he’s wearing that shirt in public.

''YAY COLLEGE PARK! YAY EARRINGS!'' (Photo by Orin Zebest)

This city attracts curious people of all stripes — they write books; they raise families; they drink beer. And, occasionally, they go out of their minds and generate police reports that are far, far outside the bounds of run-of-the-mill misdemeanors.

One such incident occurred last weekend: A very strange potential road-rage incident involving a 32-year-old College Park man, a car antenna and a few thousand volts of electricity. His alleged assault has inspired the blogger-brains at Campus Drive to look into College Park’s history of housing (and teaching) people who went on to be accused of off-the-wall crimes. Here are five of the weirdest.

5. Dick Bialczak, accused lightning lobber: A 32-year-old College Park attorney was arrested in the wake of Hurricane Irene Sunday, according to NBC Washington. Richard J. Bialczak is accused of following another motorist around until the man was forced to stop because there were downed power lines in the road. Police say Bialczak tried to ram the victim’s car toward the power lines, then got out, ripped off the car’s bumper and chucked the still-sparking power line at the victim’s car.

Not Bialczak.

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4. The English teacher with all the guns: Joanna Findlay was a well-liked UMD English instructor who made class fun, though students said she frequently turned class discussions to weaponry and gun rights. She called police last October to report a dispute with her husband, but the call was disconnected. When dispatchers called back, her husband answered the phone and said he’d been shot. Findlay was found in her driveway with blood on her clothes; her husband was inside, dead on a chair, in, of all places, the living room.

Findlay told police her husband shot himself when she found his stash of kiddie porn. Police charged her with second-degree murder anyway; according to records, she’s due back in court in November.

It hasn't been revealed what the alleged dispute was about, but it may have been a disagreement over what year Findlay last brushed her hair.

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3. The Semen Spritzer: University alum Michael Wayne Edwards, Jr. turned himself in to police last August in connection with a string of incidents at stores in which women had semen squirted on them out of a small bottle. Police found videos of some of the deeds on Edwards’s phone — including video of some incidents they didn’t know about. According to court records, Edwards pled guilty so some of the charges and is on probation until February 2014.

''Yeah, OK, pretend it wasn't fun for you, People Who Are Pressing Charges.''

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2. The woman who shot Andy Warhol: Radical feminist Valerie Solanas studied psychology at the University of Maryland in the 1950s, then, in 1967, wrote the SCUM Manifesto, which called for completely removing males from the Earth.

A year later, she shot avant-garde artist Andy Warhol in the chest. She spent three years in prison and died in 1988. If you’d like to check out that manifesto, you can actually check it out of McKeldin Library — it’s included in the script for “I Shot Andy Warhol,” a film based on her life, found in the stacks under PN1997 .I19 1996.

Conspicuously missing from the bookstore's ''campus authors'' section.

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1. The sword-murdering porn star: Stephen Clancy Hill was sent to jail after he threatened to kill his MATH111 teacher. When he got out, he moved to California and became a porn actor — one of the “worthless, D-list load droppers” in the industry, according to an LA Weekly cover story. The story has several interesting tidbits, including “monster hands,” a trend that has not caught on nearly as much as it should have:

Hill, whose screen name was Steve Driver, used to say his signature was “monster hands.” According to set photographer Gia Jordan, Hill “would wear these hands, like, from a Halloween costume. That was his shtick. He’d jack off on the girl with the hands and when he’d come he’d yell, ‘Monster hands!’

But when he was kicked out of his porn-warehouse digs, Hill snapped — and used a prop samurai sword to slash two workers and kill a third. In a police standoff on a cliff several days later, Hill was shot with a Taser and fell to his death.

Stephen Clancy Hill: Not creepy at all.

(Photo courtesy UMD Libraries)

Welcome back to the campus! While you were gone, nature made several half-hearted attempts to remind us that we could be obliterated at any moment, for no reason, by forces that we cannot stop and will only occasionally see coming.

First, the earthquake — a 5.8-magnitude quake last Tuesday that put a four-foot crack in the Washington Monument and, according to library spokesman Eric Bartheld, knocked 27,000 books off the shelves of McKeldin Library.

Bartheld said about 90 people — staff, students workers and volunteers from the university’s College of Information Studies — got the books off the floor in 24 hours. The building was declared structurally sound and open again by Friday, except for sections of the fourth and seventh floors with damaged shelving units.

About 700 books were also damaged, Bartheld said, “which is a very low number all things considered.”

Reportedly NOT how shelves are supposed to look. On the 7th floor of McKeldin Library. (Photo courtesy UMD Libraries)

And then, you may have heard, there was a hurricane. College Park got more rain in 24 hours
from Hurricane Irene than it normally does in the entire month of August, according to data from weather-tracking agencies — on the campus, several trees were uprooted and two gentlemen took off all their clothes in the ODK fountain.

National Weather Services data from Sunday reveals the area saw 4.90 inches of rain on Saturday and into Sunday morning. An average of more than 101 years’ worth of College Park rainfall data from the Southeast Regional Climate Center shows that August is typically the rainiest month for the area and averages 4.52 inches of precipitation total.

Though power was out in many spots throughout the city, the area was spared from the conditions that, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, killed at least 21 people between Florida and Connecticut.

And, if you believe the Farmer’s Almanac (which everyone does), we should be home free from weather disasters. We’re in for “colder-than-normal winter temperatures,” according to the long-running publication’s completely random guesses, but it will be a “kinder and gentler” winter than the one that brought us Snowmageddon.

Maryland (red and) white pride, manufactured by Under Armour. Go Terps!

The wind was blowing the rain hard, the tiny droplets stinging the faces and arms of the half-dozen people huddled in front of Commons 7. Water rushed down the road past the Mowatt Lane parking garage. Trees swayed dramatically. A Jimmy John’s delivery man dropped a sandwich off at Commons 5. Those guys are better than the Post Office.

Farther up Preinkert Drive, we saw lightning flash to the northeast, and four men in full-length yellow coats and hoods wandered in front of Caroline Hall looking like characters out of Despicable Me.

It was like this, except windier and more ominous.

Two men stumbled, soaked, past Shoemaker Hall and yelled after us. They wanted to know where Hagerstown Hall was. Wolper told them it was far, really far, and asked why they wanted to know.

They were freshmen, on their way home from a frat party. They just moved in, they said, and had no idea where they were. Just walk that way, we said, and stop if you get to the Comcast Center.

McKeldin Mall was a swamp. Parts of the sidewalk were submerged in three inches of (very cold) water, and the grass was matted flat where water was steadily flowing into a drainage grate. There were, as we’d hoped, students at the ODK fountain — about a dozen men, most in the fountain, most in their underwear. Several clothed gentlemen, seniors, they said, sat on the nearby wall drinking Natural Light, talking about how the storm had “been a disappointment up until now.” The wind gusted harder, and a tree branch blew in front of the giant spotlight shining on the fountain. One of them yelled, “come on, Irene,” for what was probably the 50th time that night, then two guys got naked in the fountain and ran from one end to the other. The beer-drinking men looked away.

We walked toward the Stamp Student Union, Wolper talked about how writers for the entertainment section never get to do Things Like This. The staircase between Stamp and the Nyumburu Cultural Center was littered with branches.

Walking up stadium drive, the rain started to hurt. The wind made it hard to walk up the hill, and the massive light pole overlooking the soccer practice field swayed and clanked loudly enough that we didn’t stick around to watch it.

We walked past a man running towards Ellicott Hall with a destroyed red and white umbrella. On LaPlata Beach, between LaPlata and Cumberland Halls, three shirtless students were running in circles on the astroturf. We asked them what they were doing. “Enjoying the hurricane, motherfucker,” one said. Another, named Leo, said the storm “could be better.” They wandered off, with no destination, into the dark.

On the sidewalk leading up to the North Campus diner, what was at one point a metal trash can lay on its side next to the sidewalk. It weighed at least 80 pounds and offered no evidence of how it got there. Maybe it was that guy with the umbrella.

Walking towards the Denton Community, we spotted the first and only females we saw all night. There were large branches lying on the ground in the picnic area in front of Elkton Hall, and two 20-foot pine trees had been ripped out of the ground next to the apiary. We looked for the bees. We didn’t find any bees.

Near the alumni center, we passed a group of three men. They were yelling; one fell off a curb.

You fellows enjoying the hurricane, I asked.

“Absolutely,” one of them said.

Where have you been, we said.

“…Absolutely,” he said.

We moved on.

The trek calmed down after that — a front-end loader drove through Lot 1, a tree was uprooted in front of Knight Hall. A Diamondback photographer was in front of the ODK fountain talking about all the mysterious white vans he’d spotted roving the campus and about the strange men wearing yellow coats in the shadows. (We found some more yellow men walking away from Woods Hall; they said they were with Facilities Management and were checking buildings for flooding and making sure drains were clear.)

We got back to find out that power had gone out of a large portion of South Campus and that, rather than Prince George’s County having 30,000 people without power, it was now 114,975. But the worst seemed to be over, and the Sunday forecast predicted College Park to be mostly sunny and 80 degrees.

As I write this in the dark on a dying laptop, it’s still raining hard, and there have been several noises that sounded like explosions outside of Commons 7. Everyone’s smoke alarms are beeping with startling volume, which seemed annoying until College Park Patch tweeted about a tree falling on a house on Dartmouth Avenue.

At least it’s supposed to be nice tomorrow.

This is what rain looks like.

Sunday, 2 a.m.: Sorry for the delay — just got back into Commons 7 after a walking tour of campus. It appears all South Campus Commons buildings have lost power, and a fire truck is currently parked in front of Commons 5 — we spotted firefighters going up a stairwell; a student is reportedly stuck in the elevator. Power has gone out on College Avenue, according to a Twitter follower, and the University Club apartments lost power at about 1:15 a.m. As of about 1:30 a.m., the north campus dorms had power.

Even so, reports of glitchy electricity seem to be the only problems. Full report on what we saw around the campus soon, assuming battery power lasts until the power comes back on, but it seems that, for now, the worst is some uprooted trees and a relatively routine power outage.

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Sunday, 12:23 a.m.: Facilities Management has told reporter Nick Foley that the entire campus currently has power.

In addition, the rain and wind has gone up from “it is raining” levels to “oh dear I’m scared to look out the window.” Venturing into the torrent with editor Jon Wolper.

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Sunday, 12:15 a.m.: After losing power several hours ago, the Courtyards apartments have regained electricity. After briefly going out just before midnight, power has also returned to Commons buildings 3, 6 and 7. Power also went out in Commons 4 but has also returned; no word on the fate of Knox Road, or of reports that lights are flickering on North Hill and in Washington Hall. We’ll get in touch with facilities management and get back to you. If anybody has a friend on North Campus, it would be great to hear from them about what’s going on up there.

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Saturday, 11:58 p.m.: As far as we know, the power has just gone out in Commons 3, 6 and 7, and, according to a Twitter follower, a large section of Knox Road. For some miraculous reason the wireless Internet is still up and running (backup generators?), so we can keep blogging until laptop and phone batteries die. Anyone else lose power? Hello?

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Saturday, 9:30 p.m.: Reports of power outages in College Park are starting to trickle in — Diamondback reporter Nick Foley has confirmed that all of the Courtyards apartments have lost power, and Twitter users have reported outages near Metzerott and 35th Avenues and near Mom’s Organic Market on Rhode Island Avenue.

It’s not clear what caused the Courtyards outage or when it will be fixed, according to Jack Baker, the director of operations and maintenance for the university’s Department of Facilities Management.

Elsewhere in Prince George’s County, 21,500 customers are now without power, according to the Washington Post, and Gov. Martin O’Malley said in a 9:40 p.m. press briefing that power is down for 158,000 Maryland residents. He also said someone with the Maryland State Police had spotted a tornado touch down in an “unpopulated area” in Wicomico County.

“At this point, the storm is approaching,” O’Malley said, warning that there would be “trees flying around … and power lines coming down.”

An expert at the briefing took the microphone and said that hurricane conditions would be limited in Maryland to the Eastern Shore, but before he could elaborate the Internet feed of the briefing cut out and was replaced with footage of a bill signing ceremony from April.

The campus around 9 p.m. didn’t look to be in particularly bad shape: There isn’t any flooding to speak of on south campus, and we haven’t received any reports of damage elsewhere. McKeldin Mall was a bit swampy, but there was only light rain and wind gusts, nothing like the winds blowing television reporters around the roads in Ocean City.

But that could change in the coming hours, and the winds are picking up — Ocean City is projected to get it much worse than Prince George’s County, but the storm isn’t going to be past the area until around 2 a.m.

As always, if you see anything people should know about, comment here or tweet at us at @theDBK.

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Saturday, 6:20 p.m.: The Washington Post is reporting 10,000 homes in Prince George’s County are already without power, and the worst rain and wind won’t arrive in the D.C. area until between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m.

So charge up your phones, guys — it looks like the possible “isolated power outages” predicted by the National Weather Service are coming to fruition before the worst part of our weather even arrives. There are also about 726,000 people without power in Virginia and North Carolina, where the storm is currently moving, Dominion Virginia Power spokeswoman Daisy Pridgen told WUSA9.

If you lose power but want to stay updated, WTOP radio is accessible by calling (202) 380-9977 on any phone.

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Saturday, 5:15 p.m.: The rain is coming down pretty hard and the winds are beginning to pick up, but nothing terrifyingly out of the ordinary in College Park. Not the weather that has so far killed two people in Virginia and three in North Carolina, according to reports, but the worst is most certainly still to come for us. College Park Patch editor Shannon Hoffman is already reporting Metzerott Road near Paint Branch Trail is blocked to traffic.

Flooding appears to be a growing concern: Though the county’s tropical storm warning has not changed, the flash flood watch for Prince George’s County was upgraded to a flash flood warning with an immediate urgency by the National Weather Service shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday. The warning states that flash floods have been detected by the National Weather Service in the warned area, which also includes Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s counties. From the warning:

“Most flood deaths occur in automobiles. Never drive your vehicle into areas where the water covers the roadway. Flood waters are usually deeper than they appear. Just one foot of flowing water is powerful enough to sweep vehicles off the road. When encountering flooded roads make the smart choice. Turn around, don’t drown.”

There you have it: Stay out of your damned car. The delineations between the different hurricane/tropical storm categories are based on wind speed, not rainfall, and the rainfall associated with this storm appears to be through the roof — Hampton, Va. has so far gotten almost 13 inches of the clear wet stuff. But in case you are for some reason wondering, Metro is still operating on schedule, and WUSA9 is reporting that tomorrow should actually turn out to be a nice day — 84 and partly cloudy, if you believe the report given around 5:40 p.m.

If you see anything people should know about, comment here or tweet at us at @theDBK. We’ll be here all night.

via Flickr user Jim Linwood

The university community was told to expect a massive, horrifying debacle, but according to a warning put out Friday night by the National Weather Service, Prince George’s County shouldn’t be expecting hurricane-force winds and has only a 55-percent chance of seeing tropical-storm level trouble at all.

The county, which was omitted from the hurricane warning issued for parts of Virginia and Maryland, should expect “gusty northwest winds” and potential flash flooding through Sunday, but will likely be spared from the brunt of the ugliness.

Sustained winds are predicted to max out at 30 to 40 mph, with gusts up to 55 — a far cry from the 89-mph “sustained wind gusts” that university President Wallace Loh warned the community about Friday afternoon. The weather service alert warns that “minor damage could occur to older mobile homes,” and “residents should move loose items indoors, such as garbage cans and outdoor furniture, as they will be blown around.” Not exactly the kind of weather that makes you stock up on water.

In addition, though South Campus Commons management warned residents Friday evening that it’s likely “we will lose power … and the outage may continue for days,” the weather service alert says only that “isolated power outages will be possible.”

We’ll have to wait and see what actually shows up Saturday afternoon, and the weather service cautions that “small changes in the forecast track will have implications on all elements of the forecast,” but this latest report indicates College Park may only be dealing with the outer edges of Hurricane Irene.

''Hey you. On the beach. You're a moron.'' -Everyone

It’s been widely reported that the Eastern Shore is going to get whacked the hardest by all this Irene business, and Ocean City was hit with a mandatory evacuation order late Thursday. And Gov. Martin O’Malley is having none of this crap about you not leaving because you’re on vacation.

“It is the height of stupidity and the height of selfishness for any citizen to stay in Ocean City and put a burden on and risk the lives of first responders by being foolish, being stupid, or being selfish,” O’Malley said Friday, according to Gaithersburg Patch. “This is a mandatory evacuation order… People need to get off the island of Ocean City and not be a burden to their fellow citizens or to first responders who are going to have plenty of other important work to do.”

It looks like the tough love might have worked, too — WUSA9 reported late Friday night that the evacuation went “almost flawlessly,” and “more than 150-thousand tourists and locals have streamed off the barrier island as Irene prepares a backhanded slap.”