Thursday, February 16, 2017 started for Coach Gill as any other day in February does for Division I college football coaches. It was a day full of meetings in preparation for the upcoming 2017 football season. Gill was in a meeting Thursday afternoon shortly after 2pm when he received a text message that would drastically change the plans he had been working so diligently on for the 2017 season.
The text came from Liberty Athletic Director Ian McCaw, simply asking Gill to give him a call. Gill left the meeting he was in and returned to his office where he called his new boss. A jubilant McCaw on the other end gave Gill the news he had been waiting on for over 5 years since he was hired as Liberty’s head coach in December 2011.
“We’ve been approved for FBS,” McCaw stated. “We’re going to get together at 4:30 and want you to be around at that time.”
Gill is 35-24 in 5 seasons at Liberty
Gill quickly scrambled together a meeting with the coaching staff at 4 to give them the news. “I was still gathering up information and talking, and trying to make sure what I was saying to them was appropriate. I just told them that we had just been approved to be FBS Independent.”
The staff obviously had plenty of questions. Gill told them he was still gathering information, and McCaw would give more details at the 4:30 meeting. “I told them to text all the players and let them know what was going on. So, we actually (told all the players) by text. I didn’t actually have a meeting because the players were already going to be lifting at 4:30. Everything was happening fairly quickly and fast, and with today’s technology, you push a button and you can kind of tell everybody what’s going on.”
It was December 15, 2011 when Gill was announced as the new head coach at Liberty University. In his introductory news conference, President Falwell, Jr. announced Liberty would be conducting a feasibility study to determine if the Flames should make the move to the FBS level. So, it’s been something Gill has been eyeing since day 1 of his tenure at Liberty.
“I really thought it was going to happen, I just didn’t know when,” Gill said of the FBS move. Even when the list of teams moving from FCS to FBS kept growing, Gill kept the faith.
Georgia State and Georgia Southern got invites from the Sun Belt. Old Dominion and Charlotte, with their brand new start-up programs, got invites from Conference USA. Then, the Sun Belt took Appalachian State, and, perhaps, what felt like the death blow at the time, Coastal Carolina accepted an invite to the Sun Belt.
With no other conference realignment on the horizon, it felt like Liberty had been passed over for good, but Gill remained steadfast.
“I knew it was going to happen. I just held to the faith in God and the people that were involved in trying to help to get this all done, but man can only do so much. You’ve got to have some intervention with God, and, yes, we tried all the conferences, per se, and all those things. I always say God didn’t allow it, it wasn’t the right time.”
But now? Is now the right time?
“This was the right time to do it for Liberty, being an independent,” Gill said. “A lot of times we can try to explain it, but you can’t explain it because God’s involved in everything that happens. Everything that happens or doesn’t happen, He always intervenes. I always had confidence and knew it was going to happen, just didn’t know if it was going to be 1 year from when I got hired or if it was going to be 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. It was going to happen.”
