The elder Falwell, who was both famous and polarizing as a conservative political figure and televangelist, long envisioned the university he founded as a potential religious/athletic power in the same vein as Notre Dame and Brigham Young.
But until his death, Liberty had neither the resources nor the academic reputation to even be a candidate for a major athletic conference.
What changed? In 2007, the school collected on Falwell’s $29 million life insurance policy, clearing its entire debt. Then, thanks to an external degree program developed and accredited in the 1980s—”course work mailed in boxes with videotapes of lectures,” Falwell Jr. said—the school was well positioned to take advantage of the explosion in online education.
Liberty now has roughly 12,000 students on its physical campus and 95,000 online, putting the school in a good enough financial position to rebuild almost everything, including a new high-tech library, music school, health sciences building, a school for osteopathic medicine, student recreation space and 252-foot tower attached to a student center. It even has a year-round, artificial “Snowflex” ski slope atop a nearby hill, the only one of its kind in the United States.
But Falwell Jr. acknowledges the university is still battling an image problem attached to its early days and some of the political backlash that surrounded his father, particularly within the academic community given that school presidents ultimately decide who gets invited to their conferences.
“The perception is that we’re primarily a small Bible school, and the reality is we’re a liberal arts university with engineering, medicine and nursing,” he said. “A lot of people think religion is our No. 1 major, and in reality it’s ninth.
“One of the (Sun Belt) presidents made the comment, he said, ‘Yeah, Jerry, all you have to do is show people Liberty’s not Oral Roberts; it’s Baylor.’ We’ve moved toward that goal much faster than anybody thought.”
Not that Liberty is running away from its religious roots. Students are still required to go to convocation three times a week, curfew is enforced at midnight, alcohol isn’t allowed on campus and there are no coed dorms.
It’s also true that Gill, who kept a Bible on his desk when he was coaching at Kansas and Buffalo, was hired in part because his religious beliefs align with what the school espouses.
According to the person with direct knowledge of the Sun Belt’s thinking, the school’s religious mission “never came up” in discussions among athletic directors and presidents, nor did controversies surrounding the elder Falwell.
Especially in these times, where some FBS schools may be weeded out on finances alone, Liberty’s future is likely to be evaluated strictly on its athletic merits.
“I tell people Liberty is better than what they think it is and different than what they think it is,” said Barber, who spent 10 years as an associate athletics director at South Carolina. “We have a lot to offer a conference.”
Bill Carr, a prominent college sports consultant who did Liberty’s FBS feasibility study, said it is already more prepared than the other schools who recently made the jump.
And Liberty isn’t going to stop spending until it does happen. Because for all the work Falwell Jr. has done remaking the campus and the school’s academic image, he knows nothing would be a game-changer quite like the opportunity to play a Baylor or BYU on ESPN.
“My father used to say there were two universal languages all young people understood—music and athletics—and to build a world-class university those two components have to be a major part of it,” Falwell Jr. said. “Athletics isn’t our mission, but it has the potential to shine a light on our mission like nothing else ever can.”
Dan Wolken writes for USA Today.
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