A Sea Of Red

Falwell's Football Dream

After the death of its founder, Liberty U. tries to keep his gridiron vision going

By STU WOO

Lynchburg, Va.

The morning after Jerry Falwell's death, Jeff Barber called a meeting of Liberty University's athletics department.

A gargantuan task lay before Mr. Barber, the university's athletics director: How would he and his department respond to losing Mr. Falwell, Liberty's beloved founder and chancellor, and the biggest champion of its athletics program?

To most people, Mr. Falwell was the fiery and often controversial evangelical preacher who ignited the religious-right movement when he founded the Moral Majority more than a quarter-century ago. But he was also the ambitious chancellor who dreamed of fielding a football team that could compete with the likes of the University of Notre Dame.

Falwell's Football Dream
After the death of its founder, Liberty U. tries to keep his gridiron vision going
Lynchburg, Va.

The morning after Jerry Falwell's death, Jeff Barber called a meeting of Liberty University's athletics department.

A gargantuan task lay before Mr. Barber, the university's athletics director: How would he and his department respond to losing Mr. Falwell, Liberty's beloved founder and chancellor, and the biggest champion of its athletics program?

To most people, Mr. Falwell was the fiery and often controversial evangelical preacher who ignited the religious-right movement when he founded the Moral Majority more than a quarter-century ago. But he was also the ambitious chancellor who dreamed of fielding a football team that could compete with the likes of the University of Notre Dame.

When The Chronicle sat down with Mr. Falwell last November in the chancellor's office at Liberty, he spoke passionately about his desire to get his football program into the elite ranks.

The previous fall, after Liberty's team, which plays in Division I-AA, finished with a 1-10 record, he fired the head coach. The athletics director resigned shortly after. In their places Mr. Falwell hired two energetic young men who he believed could turn the football team into a household name.

Even though Mr. Falwell will not be around to see it, university officials remain committed to making his vision a reality. "We have decided we want to make sure that his dream comes true," says Mr. Barber, "and to do that we have to hitch up our pants and get to work."

Lighting the Fuse

For Mr. Falwell, a lifelong sports fan who was captain of his high-school football team and played college basketball, sports was more than recreation. It was Liberty's ticket to fame.

When he founded what was then called Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971, one of his goals was to eventually have the institution's athletics program playing at the highest level at every sport. The success of the program has been bittersweet: Liberty is playing in the top division in every sport — except football, Mr. Falwell's favorite.

Having a top football program, Mr. Falwell said, would increase the university's visibility and attract more young people to Liberty. By playing on national television and graduating players who could serve as Christian ambassadors in the National Football League, he hoped to have a greater platform — or pulpit — from which to spread Christianity.

In the past two years, Mr. Falwell, perhaps more aware of his mortality after suffering heart failure in May 2005, had been working fervently to move the football program to the next level. After the disappointing 2005 season, he hired Danny Rocco, who was then associate head football coach at the University of Virginia and who had coached for the University of Texas at Austin and the New York Jets, as head coach.

Mr. Falwell also hired Mr. Barber, then senior associate athletics director at the University of South Carolina. Professors say Mr. Barber, with his warm smile and friendly manner, has quickly won over many faculty members by keeping them informed of his overall plan for the university's athletics program.

Liberty has also taken big steps to improve recruiting. This year the university opened a new football operations and training facility, which cost $10-million to build and equip. Mr. Falwell called the football facility "equal to anything in the state of Virginia" and several potential recruits at a game last November echoed his words.

So far, the results have been good for Liberty. Last year Mr. Rocco guided the team to a 6-5 record — tied for the biggest win improvement in Division I-AA — and was selected as the Big South Conference's Coach of the Year. In addition, the billionaire donor who financed the new football building, Arthur L. Williams, has pledged to pay for a new 36,000-seat football stadium when it is necessary.

"The fuse is lit," Mr. Falwell said in November. "We're ready to explode next year."

The Liberty Way

From 1990 to 2006, most of the football programs at the dozen or so universities that jumped from Division I-AA to I-A have achieved considerable success since the move. (The NCAA changed those division names to Division I-Championship Division and Division I-Bowl Division, respectively, in December 2006.)

Boise State University is perhaps the best example. It has been to seven bowl games since becoming a full I-A member in 1996 and capped off an undefeated season in January by upsetting the University of Oklahoma in a Bowl Championship Series game.

But things haven't been rosy for all the newer members of college football's elite division. The State University of New York at Buffalo's move to Division I-A in 1999 has been a "fiasco," says Mark E. Shechner, an English professor at the university and an outspoken critic of the football program. Last season the Bulls had a dismal 2 and 10 record. The previous year, they won only a single game. Buffalo, he says, should act as a "cautionary tale" to other universities looking to jump into top-division football.

But Charles R. Fourtner, a professor of biological sciences at Buffalo and the faculty representative to the NCAA, said the move was worth it. "You get more publicity out of a sports program than anything I can do in science," he says.

But Mr. Falwell was nothing if not ambitious. He planned to first establish a successful I-AA program before moving to I-A. That, he said, should solve the attendance problem.

Last season Liberty averaged about 11,000 fans per home game in a stadium that can seat only 15,000. When the team can fill its stadium, Liberty will begin work on the new 36,000 seater that Mr. Williams has pledged to finance.

But to win games, a football team must recruit good players. When a university is a fundamentalist Christian institution with some of the strictest house rules in the nation, recruiting can be a challenge.

Every university has rules, but Liberty's, called "the Liberty Way," are designed to govern even some seemingly minute details of a student's life. The 46-page handbook, found on the university's Web site, tells students how they can dress (no torn jeans, short skirts, or anything "related to counterculture"), what movies they can watch (no R-rated films), what music they can listen to (mostly Christian music), and how far they can go with a romantic partner (holding hands — given, of course, that it is a heterosexual coupling).

The Liberty Way describes some requirements that might be expected at a conservative Christian university (no tobacco, alcohol, or illicit drugs), as well as some that might raise eyebrows (random drug tests for every student).

Mr. Falwell acknowledged that with those rules, the university's football program was at a competitive disadvantage when it came to recruiting.

In an era when some universities have tried to lure recruits with strippers and free alcohol, Mr. Falwell said there were many high-school athletes who wouldn't even give Liberty a look.

But he believed there were enough football-playing evangelical Christians out there who would love the chance to play there. He noted that Notre Dame and Brigham Young University had both managed to field top football teams, despite their religious affiliations.

Plans to Move Forward

Though the mood of the athletics-department meeting on the morning following Mr. Falwell's death was understandably somber, Mr. Barber used the opportunity to challenge his colleagues to honor their departed leader.

"Even though we lost a guy that started the mission of our athletics department and believed in it more than anyone else, we're not going to flinch," Mr. Barber says, adding that he and his staff will do whatever it takes to become the athletics department Mr. Falwell dreamed about 36 years ago.

Mr. Barber acknowledged that with the focus on improving facilities to attract better athletes, one of his biggest concerns is fund raising. "It'll give us some new challenges," Mr. Barber says. But after speaking with donors in the past few days, he says that several of them wanted to ensure that Mr. Falwell's vision would be realized. "In some ways, it will be a rallying point," Mr. Barber says.

Another concern, Mr. Barber says, will be simply convincing the university that the goal of having a top football program is worth pursuing. "Some people will wonder if the university will continue at the same pace, if people will still be committed," he says.

He believes the answer to that question is yes. He says Liberty's new chancellor, Jerry Falwell Jr., who was previously vice chancellor, intends to carry out his father's vision, and Mr. Barber himself says he is determined to turn Liberty's athletics program into one of the best in the nation.

"I feel more accountability, I feel more determined," he says. "I wanted to get it done for him while he was living and was not able, and now I feel more determined than ever to make sure his dream comes true."


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http://chronicle.com
Section: Athletics
Volume 53, Issue 39, Page A31

yeah i saw that, so i just paid the $6.95 and posted it.

In addition, the billionaire donor who financed the new football building, Arthur L. Williams, has pledged to pay for a new 36,000-seat football stadium when it is necessary.

Last season Liberty averaged about 11,000 fans per home game in a stadium that can seat only 15,000. When the team can fill its stadium, Liberty will begin work on the new 36,000 seater that Mr. Williams has pledged to finance.

JDUB wrote:i'm pretty sure the football stadium doesn't hold 15k, unless they're counting standing in the grass

Cider Jim wrote:JDUB, maybe they are already counting the new temporary sky boxes!