Let’s look at this for what it is, instead of constantly complaining about someone else’s bank account.

Mike Locksley got a contract extension from Maryland that will pay him an average of $6.1 million annually.

For winning 15 of his past 26 games.

“As the boat moves forward,” Locksley said earlier this spring, “the waves behind us have no bearing on us moving forward.”

This extension isn’t about the waves behind the Maryland boat, it’s why rock it in the first place?

Before you lose your collective minds and run to Twitter to screech about coaches making millions and players making squat (that’s another legitimate argument for another time), let’s ask a fairly pertinent question: What else was Maryland to do?

Locksley clearly is showing progress on the field, and he’s consistently recruiting better than anyone ever has at Maryland. He’s developing players and moving them to the NFL, and if you’re extending his contract, the belief is it’s only a matter of time before there’s a breakthrough season. Maybe even this season.

And more than anything: Locksley loves Maryland and would be thrilled to plant and grow and never leave. How many coaches, in this age of always looking for the next big gig, want to stay at Maryland and build?

Before Locksley, the Maryland job was a stepping-stone or a tombstone. Now there’s hope for the first time since Ralph Friedgen — the last guy who wanted to stay and loved the place — won 31 games from 2001-2003.

There’s hope because Maryland has a quarterback (Taulia Tagovailoa) who can take the Terps past the 8 wins of 2022 and into games that matter in November. There’s hope because Locksley is keeping blue-chip recruits in the DMV area — most recently, 2023 Edge blue-chips Neeo Avery and Dylan Gooden — and he’s developing 3-stars into NFL players.

The latest: 3-star CB Deonte Banks, a DMV area project who signed with Locksley in Year 1 and last week was selected by the Giants with 24th overall pick of the NFL Draft. He was the 854th-ranked player in the 247Sports composite in 2019, and the 76th-ranked cornerback.

That’s development.

“It shows the trajectory of what our program can be,” Locksley said. “A lot of those guys weren’t the names you heard about on signing day when they came out of high school.”

That’s how Maryland goes from an afterthought in the Big Ten to hope with the expanded Playoff on the near horizon. Because when the Playoff expands to 12 teams in 2024 — and the Big Ten eliminates divisional play —  the Terps’ road to the Playoff suddenly gets easier. Yes, easier.

The 2024 and 2025 Playoffs will have 6 at-large bids. The format for the new Playoff contract, which begins in 2026 and is currently under negotiation, could be drastically different — and could include all 12 at-large bids.

That’s a greater target to shoot for — and more attainable as a member of 1 of the 2 super-conferences — than the 4-team Playoff.

“The culture we have built is what will allow us to hopefully maintain some of the characteristics it takes to build a winning program, to build a championship program,” Locksley said. “The players that have left have our program left a huge imprint on the way we need to do things.”

While you may point to Maryland’s 7-11 Big Ten record in the past 2 seasons — a metric that was clearly used as the launch point for the extension — I look at players. I look at recruiting and developing players, and how success at that vital area will eventually pay off with a breakout season.

So will the recent additions to the coaching staff, 2 hires as co-coordinators with plenty of prove-it motivation: Kevin Sumlin and Josh Gattis.

Sumlin will coach tight ends, and Gattis will coach quarterbacks, and they’ll both work with Locksley on the offense, the very thing that made Locksley attractive as a head coach candidate. The game has changed, and stressing defenses with an elite vertical passing is at a premium.

A decade ago, Sumlin was among the top offensive coaches in the game, and at the forefront of the spread infiltrating college football as head coach at Houston and Texas A&M.

Gattis won the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach in 2021 at Michigan but was fired at Miami after 1 season. He was critical in recruiting and upgrading the Michigan roster and developing quarterbacks Cade McNamara and JJ McCarthy.

In the age of offense, Locksley doubled down. Which is no different than what Maryland just did with Locksley.

“There’s a sense of urgency,” Locksley said. “We still haven’t scratched the surface of what our football program can be and where we want it to go.”