In the six months since COVID-19 tore across the country and effectively shut down the sports world, the 2020 college football season has teetered on the edge of existence. There have been moments we felt sure that there would be a fall season and others where that feeling wasn’t as confident.
Spring practice was cancelled across the country, including at Liberty where 10 of the 15 practices were lost. Now, as many campuses have welcomed students back, football teams have manufactured their own versions of on-campus bubbles to protect their players.
It hasn’t been a clear path along the way, as COVID clusters popped up throughout college campuses, leading to many schools sending students home as quickly as they arrived over the past month. Additionally, athletic departments across the country have battled the harsh reality of massive financial shortfalls, leading to layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs.
The FCS, Division II and Division III college football championships have been cancelled and 54 FBS programs have opted out of a fall 2020 season, including Power 5 conferences in the Big Ten and PAC-12. Fellow Commonwealth of Virginia FBS member, Old Dominion, also elected to forego a 2020 season despite their conference, Conference-USA, moving forward.
What remains is 76 FBS football programs ready to compete for the national championship and hopeful bowl slots, including the Independent Liberty and its reconstructed 10-game schedule. Liberty has navigated the twists and turns and now is six days away from kicking off its season against Western Kentucky.
“Getting to a point where we’re excited,” said Liberty head coach Hugh Freeze. “You kind of see the carrot at the end of the work.”
It’s been a long time since some of the football players started trickling back to campus in early June for non-voluntary workouts. Then, practice ramped up in early August. It’s been a grind, but we’ve finally reached game week.
“We’ve been very blessed with our COVID testing protocol,” Freeze said. “It’s been awesome, the results, hopefully that will continue. So far, we have been blessed the last few weeks to have great results in our testing protocols and hopefully that will continue as we pick it up to doing multiple per week.”
Like many schools and conferences have done, Liberty has begun testing three times per week, starting last week and into this week. We have seen other college football teams successfully pull off games, some have even played multiple games, giving Freeze even more confidence the Flames will actually make it to game day.
“I think all of us still have these lingering doubts, are we really going to get to do it, are we really going to get to do it? And then, when you see people doing it, it starts to feel real.”
Freeze has been steadfast throughout this process to focus only on the things which he can control and take it one day at a time.
There are still landmines ahead. Teams must be ready for last-minute schedule changes in case a future opponent is unable to play due to a virus outbreak. We saw it play out this weekend as Virginia and Virginia Tech elected to push their scheduled season opener this coming week until a later date. BYU and Army has also delayed their game next week due to an outbreak with at BYU.
Liberty is not immune to such troubles, although their approach thus far has proven effective. They have arrived at game week with their roster in tow and only three more rounds of COVID-19 testing between them and kickoff on Saturday at noon.
