FlameFans Featured: The Larry Blair Effect

The legend of Larry Blair is still fresh in my mind. As a freshman, I watched him help lead the Flames to their second NCAA tournament birth, in which they would eventually fall to a red-hot St. Joseph’s team. As a sophomore, junior, and senior, Larry Blair was the face of the Liberty men’s basketball program,and in some pretty mediocre and disappointing seasons, put up numbers that will no doubt eventually lead him into Liberty’s Athletic Hall of Fame. There was something special about Larry, and though the teams he went on to lead certainly underachieved, there was always a glimmer of hope because he was on the court.

Over the past years, we’ve watched the Larry Blair Effect play out with Liberty athletics. This takes place in two stages.

First, we do something great to see hope. Second, we encounter a setback and spiral out of control.

During the 2003-2004 basketball season, Liberty was pretty good. Led by seasoned veterans Gabe Martin, Ryan Mantlo and Louvon Sneed, it was the freshman duo of Larry Blair and David Dees who led the charge into the postseason. I remember like yesterday standing front row in the Vines Center, chanting “Just a Freshman” as Blair dropped 23 on Coastal in the quarterfinals of the Big South tournament.

But then David Dees transferred. It was said he didn’t want to play “Robin” to Blair’s “Batman.” With Dees transferring and Gabe Martin graduating, Liberty went on to obscurity, having decent seasons the following years, but never really reaching full potential.

It wasn’t until Ritchie McKay’s first run did the cycle reset itself. McKay brought in probably the best recruiting class Liberty has ever seen, led by Seth Curry. While it wasn’t overnight success, we started to see great things. We beat UVA, we came close to beating Clemson at their place, we knocked off George Mason after their Final Four run, and Seth Curry was sure to break every record set by Karl Hess, Larry Blair and whoever else ever donned the Liberty colors. We even were invited to a postseason tournament and won a game. I remember a friend texting me, saying “We’re the next Gonzaga.”

But then setback happened. Curry transferred. Others followed suit, including our head coach. Under Dale Layer, we spiraled out of control, the only moment of hope being a wild run in the BSC tournament followed by a close loss to North Carolina A&T in the NCAA tournament play-in game. Even then, we did something great and we saw some hope. But reality quickly settled in.

The Larry Blair Effect has even crept into our football program. For years, Liberty was the laughing stock of FCS football, save maybe Savannah State. Countless losses and blowouts led to the hiring of Danny Rocco. Rocco changed football on the mountain. And for the first time in a long time, Liberty football was headed in the right direction. Co-championship after co-championship, we never got into the playoffs under Rocco. Enter Turner Gill. Gill recruited some great athletes to play at Liberty and something great happened. Not only did we beat #1 Coastal for Big South championship, but we went into Harrisonburg for our first playoff appearance and dealt a seriously embarrassing blow to the ego of our rival James Madison.

Though our setbacks last year happened with defeats against Gardner-Webb and Monmouth, we’re still in a season of reasonable hope. We’ve been doing pretty good against FBS teams, we’re still getting good recruits and we’re still looking to turn the corner in football and become the powerhouse that Josh Woodrum prematurely espoused us to be. But with the FBS realignment not looking in our favor and the emergence of Charleston-Southern, we’re only one setback away from spiraling out of control.

Basketball on the other hand is still in the early stages of the Larry Blair effect. We’re on the edge of something great. We see hope in a program that is still coming through the ashes.

These hopes and shattered dreams do not fall on Larry Blair literally. It’s a euphemism for what some would call “Typical Liberty,” and that’s probably a more accurate term. As I drove home in the ice and snow today listening to Liberty defeat High Point, my mind went back to watching Larry Blair as a freshman and what kind of hope we all had for what our basketball program would become.

My senior year, two of my friends and I sat beside Larry Blair’s parents in Rock Hill as Liberty lost Larry’s final game to Winthrop in the first round of the Big South tournament. When I asked Larry’s mom if he ever thought about transferring, she was quick to say yes. But what made him stick it out was hope. He was confident that he and the coaching staff were going to turn things around after a few disappointing years. Many people didn’t like Larry, but he stuck it out and stayed committed to Liberty, even when he had the opportunity to play in better conferences against better competition.

Through good times and bad times, hopes and letdowns, may that type of Larry Blair Effect take hold in all of Flames Nation. And please, someone put him in the Hall of Fame already.

Submitted by: 

Will Matthews is an Ethics student at SEBTS, a graduate of Liberty University (’07), was the first Sparky mascot, and writes blogs about Theology and Wrestling at theoluchador.wordpress.com. He often tweets at @DidLibertyWin