It may only be February, but that doesn’t stop some from looking ahead to the 2022 college football season. The day after the Super Bowl, Action Network’s Brett McMurphy has released his ‘Never-Too-Early’ Bowl Projections, and he has the Liberty Flames projected to make a fourth straight bowl game.
McMurphy has Liberty pegged into the Camellia Bowl against Middle Tennessee with the Flames a 6.5-point favorite. This game is played in Montgomery, Alabama at the Cramton Bowl. Liberty defeated MTSU, 41-13, on Oct. 9 this past season at Williams Stadium in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The Flames finished the 2021 campaign with an 8-5 record and won a third straight bowl game with a convincing 56-20 win over Eastern Michigan in the Lending Tree Bowl. Liberty is just one of five FBS teams in the country who have won a bowl game each of the last three seasons, joining Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana.
In its third year of full FBS eligibility, Liberty earned a third straight bowl victory. The Flames, who also won the Cure Bowl in 2019 and 2020, join Appalachian State as the only teams to win bowl games in each of their first three years after transitioning to FBS from FCS. Liberty has now won eight or more games for the 13th season in program history, including all three years under head coach Hugh Freeze.
Liberty will open the 2022 season at Southern Miss on Sept. 3. The Flames’ home opener is the following Saturday on Sept. 10 against UAB. The rest of the most anticipated home slate in school history includes Akron (Sept. 24), Gardner-Webb (Oct. 15), BYU (Oct. 22), Virginia Tech (Nov. 19), and New Mexico State (Nov. 26).
