For a second consecutive season, the Liberty Flames are going bowling! And for a second consecutive season the Flames will be in Orlando, Florida in the Cure Bowl. No. 22 Liberty (9-1) has accepted an invitation to the Cure Bowl where the Flames will take on No. 12 Coastal Carolina (11-0).
The game will be played on Saturday, Dec. 26 at noon on ESPN. This year’s game will be played at Camping World Stadium in Orlando. Last year’s game was played at Exploria Stadium.
This marks the second ever bowl game for the program and the first ever for the Chanticleers. It’s also a rematch of the game that was expected to be the regular season finale on Dec. 5 in Conway, South Carolina with College GameDay scheduled to televise from Brook Stadium ahead of the game. Of course, that game was cancelled as the Flames had an increase of positive COVID cases that week leading up to the game.
Liberty and Coastal Carolina met on the gridiron every year from 2003 through 2016. During both school’s time in the Big South, the conference championship went through one of the two programs. In 2017, Coastal began their move to the FBS and Sun Belt Conference and the series came to an end. The series is currently tied at 7-7, but Saturday will be the first between the two as FBS members.
The Flames finished the regular season at 9-1 under second year head coach Hugh Freeze with wins over ACC programs Syracuse and Virginia Tech and earning the program’s first ever national ranking at the FBS level. The Flames are currently ranked at No. 23 in both the Coaches and the AP Top 25 polls this week. The Chanticleers are No. 12 in the CFP Top 25 this week. Coastal is No. 9 in the AP Top 25 and No. 11 in the Coaches Top 25.
Liberty will be looking to improve to 2-0 all-time in bowl games following the Flames’ win a year ago, 23-16, over Georgia Southern in the Cure Bowl.
