If you have been around Liberty University for any period of time, you know the importance of Saturday’s game between Liberty and BYU. No, not for the 2022 football season, but for what the game represents for Liberty. Make no mistake, it is the biggest home game in school history.
Ever since the school was founded in 1971, the founder, Dr. Jerry Falwell, Sr., often referenced Brigham Young and Notre Dame as models for Liberty as an Evangelical Christian University. Falwell, who passed away in 2007, cast a vision for Liberty to one day be able to compete on the football field against BYU and Notre Dame.
“The difference between mediocrity and greatness is vision,” Falwell said in one such occurrence. “My dream was to raise up a world-class university that would compare favorably with what Brigham Young and Notre Dame provide for Mormon and Roman Catholic young people, a world class university; academically excellent, athletically competing at the highest level in the NCAA. A tall order, but that was my vision.”
Those two programs have become household names in the Division I athletic world. Each of them have been relevant nationally for a long period of time. For Liberty, that has not quite been the case yet. Of course, both BYU and Notre Dame have been around more than 100 years longer than the young school in Lynchburg that just recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Liberty fielded its first football team in 1973 as a member of the National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association (NCCAA). In 1975, the school transitioned to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and played its first full varsity schedule that season.
It wasn’t until 1980 that Liberty even joined the NCAA, doing so at the Division II level. In 1988, the Flames joined Division I at what was then known as the I-AA level. Not until Feb. 16, 2017 was Liberty granted access into the highest football playing level in college, when the NCAA approved its request to enter the FBS.
Over the past four years, under the guidance of head coach Hugh Freeze, Liberty has soared to never before seen heights. The Flames have reached and won its first bowl game, doing so each of the past three seasons, knocked off its first FBS top 25 opponent, and have been ranked in the top 25, finishing No. 17 at the end of the 2020 season. Even this week, Liberty is receiving votes in both major top 25 polls.
Still, there is plenty of room for growth for Liberty to become a household name and a relevant football program on the national level. Liberty’s Athletic Director Ian McCaw has stated in recent years that the Flames have the fastest growing football program in the country. Saturday’s game against BYU will mark another step towards that direction.
“This opportunity should be exciting,” Coach Freeze said of this week’s game. “It should be one that is welcomed. It is a great, great challenge, but yet one that we should be excited and embrace with faith and belief that we’ve done something well to make a game that it has some significance in a lot of people’s minds by playing such a great program like BYU at our home, being in this position.”
This won’t be the first time Liberty and BYU have met on the gridiron. The two schools face each other during the 2019 season in Provo, Utah, a 31-24 win for the Cougars. Saturday’s game will mark the first time BYU has played Liberty in Lynchburg. This could also be the last time the two play any time in the near future as both teams move from being an Independent to joining a conference next year, BYU going to the Big 12 and Liberty to Conference USA.
Freeze is embracing the opportunity that Saturday’s game presents with open arms.
“We are walking in the fulfillment of a vision that started from nothing, really, other than a belief,” Freeze said. “To be able to walk in that, I know that Dr. Falwell would be just ecstatic to see the crowd, the atmosphere, and everything that’s going to be on Saturday afternoon here playing a team that he had such high regard for, as do I, in BYU. Hopefully we embrace that part of it also.”
It won’t be an easy task for the Flames on the field Saturday. BYU has spent much of the first half of the season ranked in the top 25 until dropping their last two games against Notre Dame and Arkansas, to fall to 4-3. Still, Freeze says, they will be one of the toughest teams Liberty has faced this season. It’s a team that is not afraid to play anyone, anywhere as they have already played Oregon and Baylor in addition to the Fighting Irish and Razorbacks.
Liberty drew its first crowd of more than 20,000 fans since 2019 this past Saturday for Homecoming against Gardner-Webb. There is a chance this week’s game could be a record crowd at Williams Stadium, besting the previous mark of 22,551 fans for a game in 2015.
In addition to a large expected crowd, there will also be a national spotlight on the contest with it being televised on ESPNU.
“Everybody get ready,” said Freeze. “It’s going to be an exciting day, hopefully beautiful day. I haven’t seen the weather, but we need the students, the fans, we need all the help we can get to be there to give us enough energy to hopefully make it an exciting 4th quarter. So, come on out. It’s going to be a great day of celebration of kind of where the vision has come that Dr. Falwell cast many years ago.”
