At first blush, the news item that Maryland has announced plans to buy an iPad for every one of its roughly 500 athletes at a cost of about $300,000 seems like just another case of temporary insanity caused by the recruiting arms races.
But when you realize this is the same Maryland athletic department that announced it was bolting as a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference for the big payday of joining the Big Ten because of its crippling department debt, which prompted it to drop seven sports programs, the insanity seems more than temporary.