With Texas and Oklahoma officially accepting invitations to the SEC, additional conference realignment is at the forefront of everyone’s minds in collegiate athletics right now. Liberty is no different. Liberty Director of Athletics Ian McCaw was a guest on The Sportsline on WLNI earlier this week. Among several topics discussed, McCaw discussed Liberty and its realignment possibilities.
“We are very happy as an Independent,” McCaw stated. “It has worked out extremely well. The program has thrived. We have a lot of great assets. We have a television contract with ESPN, we just announced that extension on Monday for the next five years. We have an ESPN bowl agreement which is really desirable. We have our schedules built out through 2026. We are in a really good spot as an Independent. It’s very sustainable for us.”
“As a faith-based school, we’ve really modeled our program after Notre Dame and BYU,” McCaw continued. “Those are two programs that have the blueprint of playing Independent football and done extremely well. We are in a great position. That being said, if an FBS conference opportunity came along and was offered to us, we would need to carefully evaluate it. It would have to be very desirable though because our current situation is a very good one.”
When Liberty was still a member of the FCS and Big South Conference, the Flames flirted with the Sun Belt Conference. The Sun Belt remains an option for Liberty as one of the Group of Five conferences, as is the Conference USA and American Athletic Conference. Based on McCaw’s comments, Liberty may not desire a conference home at some FBS level conferences.
That is certainly understandable as Liberty has seen tremendous growth as an athletic program over the past several years. Under head coach Hugh Freeze, the Flames have appeared in and won two straight bowl games and are coming off a 10-win campaign in 2020 when Liberty finished the season ranked in the top 25. Under head coach Ritchie McKay, the men’s basketball team has won three straight ASUN Conference championships and qualified for the NCAA Tournament each of the past three seasons.
“We feel like we are the fastest rising athletics program in the country,” said McCaw. “Look at the progress that Coach Freeze has made, it’s remarkable. The success of men’s basketball with three straight conference championships, kind of the comprehensive success we’ve talked about throughout the whole program, 10 conference championships this year. People recognize Liberty as a program on the rise, and then you combine that with our facilities and our resources, I really believe, long-term, Liberty could become a Power Five program. We have the infrastructure to do that. We are still growing. We still have a ways to go, but, in terms of the trajectory of this program over the last few years, I don’t know that any school in the country can match it.”
For now, Liberty will have to wait to see what the next dominoes to fall will be after Texas and Oklahoma have joined the SEC. There will certainly be additional dominoes to fall, and Liberty is well positioned to take advantage. Until then, the Flames will have to continue to show improvement on the playing field beginning this Fall on the football field.
