Six years ago today was quite possibly the longest day of my life.
The day before we upset Elon at home. As the clock ticked down, I climbed the barrier of the student section ready to storm the field with a few thousand of my closest friends. We celebrated on the 50-yard line with the rest of the team. We’d saved our season and had the signature win we’d been missing all year. All that was left was waiting until the next night to see if the NCAA Playoff Committee would include us in the 16-team field.
The NCAA did a strange thing that year: they scheduled the selection show for 7PM on the next night.
We had to wait all day to find out if we were going home for Thanksgiving or if we’d be playing the next weekend.
Sunday was an off day for players that year but Coach Rocco held a team meeting early that morning. He told the team they’d done everything they could and now it was in the hands of the committee. We wouldn’t know until later that day what would happen.
The players left the meeting to get treatment, watch film (you know, just-in-case), and ultimately kill time until 7PM.
I spent most of the day in the office of our Video Coordinator, Danny Wenger. We looked at every possible scenario. We tried to figure out what our chances were and who our biggest competition was. Players and coaches would stop by to ask for details so they could mentally prepare for what was coming that night. In reality, it came down to us and two other teams for one spot: William & Mary and Maine.
Players started rolling into the Donor Room of the Football Operations Center around 6:30 that evening. Fans and other people in the Liberty community arrived just before the show started. The mood was tense. We’d been here a year before and our name didn’t get announced.
The show began and we all waited. And waited. And waited. As the show went to commercial before its last segment, Coach Rocco smacked his hands together and walked out of the room. He saw what the rest of us didn’t:
Maine appeared in the Bottom Line just before the show faded out.
Rocco came back in the room for the final segment already knowing our fate was sealed. In his mind, he was crafting his statement to the team.
That night I saw gladiators cry. I remember Mike Godsil in tears realizing his career was over. Guys like Nick Hursky, Colin Dugan, and Brock Smith hugged each other one final time. These men had gone from 1-10 as freshmen to 10-2 as seniors and suddenly it was over.
A lot has happened over six years. There was Stony Brook in 09 and the monsoon in Conway in 2010. We had the Asa debacle in 2011 and a new coach in 2012. The heartbreak at homecoming in 2013 was a new kind of low.
When Alex Catron lined up on Saturday to take a field goal to break our hearts once again, all the anguish of the past six years came rushing back. Sitting on my knees next to the couch with my laptop on the table, my heart raced with nerves. I clinched my teeth as Coastal snapped the ball. I clinched even harder as Catron’s foot hit the ball. When Chima Uzowihe reached up to block the kick, I jumped up and screamed.
We did it.
We broke the curse.
We redefined “typical Liberty” if only for a day.
Today there will be another meeting in the Football Operations Center to watch the NCAA Playoff Committee announce this year’s bracket. There will be a lot fewer tears and a lot more cheers. For the first time in school history, our football team will gather to watch the selection show guaranteed a spot in the field.
This feels a lot better than six years ago.
Jonathan Carone was a graduate assistant with the football team in 2008. He currently lives in Knoxville, TN and plans to be in the stands next weekend at the first every Liberty Football playoff game. You can read more of his writing at ThisIsntHighSchool.com.
Great story! I didn’t watch the game because I was afraid of the outcome, so I cleaned house for our church small group meeting while my 19-year old son, a Liberty sophomore and one of the equipment management interns for the team, yelled updates at me from upstairs. When I heard that Coastal was lined up to kick what was probably going to be the game winning field goal, I went upstairs to watch with him, wanting to show some solidarity with the Flames after a well-fought but ultimately futile contest.
Then they blocked the kick.
I yelled so loudly, and my son, all 6-3 and 260 pounds of him, was rolling his chair across the floor so vigorously, that my wife and daughter downstairs heard all the commotion and thought I’d fallen and hurt myself (that such a thing would be their first assumption is a story for another time)! I kept repeating to myself, “They blocked the kick! They blocked the kick!”
I’m a relative newcomer to the Liberty sports scene, having arrived on campus as an associate dean and assistant professor back in 2011, and I quickly became a Flames Club member and season ticket holder for the football team. Even in that short period of time, I’ve experienced the feeling that most long-time Liberty fans have lived with, that of being a bridesmaid but never the bride. Whenever the stadium announcer would exhort us to cheer for “your six-time Big South champion Liberty Flames”, I would smile ruefully and think of how desperate we must be to hang our hat on all these co-championships without a playoff appearance. I watched them wilt so many times in the fourth quarter, losing big games that would have put the program in the spotlight. I saw them fall to in-state rivals – James Madison, Old Dominion, Richmond. I saw them hang in there with FBS programs like Wake Forest, Kent State and North Carolina, only to break down late in the game, sometimes in spectacular fashion. The Coastal Carolina double-overtime loss last year was brutal.
But I cheered for my six-time Big South champions. I always cheered.
I’ll be honest. When I heard that Josh Woodrum was out, I thought our season was done. The only way I thought we could win is if we outscored Coastal Carolina, since I didn’t think our defense could stop a team that was averaging around 40 points a game, and our special teams, the kickers being the possible exceptions, were shaky. I didn’t think Stephon Masha could hold his own against the #1 FCS team in the country, so the likelihood of us outscoring the Chanticleers was virtually non-existent.
Then they blocked the kick.
Amazingly, our defense held Coastal’s offense to 14 points, the first time they finished under 30 points in a game all season, we gained over 455 yards on offense, and it was a special teams play that clinched the victory. I’ve never been more glad to be wrong.
I don’t know how far we can get in the playoffs, and a lot of people will be monitoring Josh Woodrum’s health in the next few days. I hope our bid was enough to get us a home playoff game, because I’ll be there to cheer on our SEVEN-time Big South Champion Liberty Flames as they play the first playoff game in their history. GO FLAMES!
Jon,
I was there on the field with you in ’08 against Elon. And I watched in complete confusion on Sunday to not hear our name. Saturday was one of the most exciting games I have ever watched, and I cannot wait to be there next Saturday in Harrisburg to #BeatJMU!