Stop platforming Liberty University
Stop platforming Liberty University
Other college athletic departments could just schedule anybody else instead.
The latest episode of the Vacation Bible School Podcast is up. We’d planned to cram the story of Joseph in with Exodus, since it explains how the Israelites wound up in Egypt, but we wanted to appreciate the Bible’s first story that feels like a story. We also review the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, along with the true canonical depiction: Veggie Tales’ The Ballad of Little Joe.
Elsewhere, we’re also close to wrapping up a full draft of The Sinful Seven, guaranteed to be the weirdest college football book of all time. Preorder for 99 cents or whatever!
And now for something that has nothing to do with the Bible.
Liberty University, an accredited botnet designed to make Jerry Falwell Jr. feel good at real estate, has ambitions of becoming Venom Notre Dame. They say this themselves all the time.
A recent New York Times article featuring Liberty University’s ‘football crusade’ has helped to advance Liberty’s mission as the school looks to achieve success on a national scale, in the likes of powerhouse Notre Dame.
‘We have received extremely positive comments from Liberty alumni, fans, and athletics administrators from all over the country,’ said Jeff Barber, Liberty’s director of athletics. ‘It gave them a deeper understanding of our mission and our accomplishments to date. Athletics will shine the light on the university's mission.’
Hmm.
The money-changing Liberty’s institutional homophobia and authoritarian hypocrisy are well-known, as are Falwell’s passionate bootlickery, conspiracy theories, and bizarre dealings.
His racism is also back in the news, with his latest celebration of blackface humor contributing to “at least a half dozen” Black staffers leaving their jobs and 35 prominent Black alumni calling for him to step down.
Also leaving are three of the most promising athletes in school history, each of whom chalked their exits up to school leadership, rather than to coaches or teammates.
“Due to the racial insensitivities shown within the leadership and culture, it simply does not align with my moral compass,” said Atlantic Sun All-Freshman guard Asia Todd.
“I pray that I am able to be provided with a opportunity at a new school that respects my culture and provides a comfortable environment,” wrote cornerback Tayvion Land, the highest-rated football signee in school history. He cited the “racial insensitivity displayed by leadership at Liberty University.”
“Due to the cultural incompeten[ce] within multiple levels of leadership, it does not line up with my code of ethics,” wrote Tre Clark, a starting cornerback as a freshman.
At no other school has a team statement against racism …
… felt like such an act of defiance. (Not an exaggeration — the school’s Office of Equity and Inclusion tried to post a Black Lives Matter tweet backed up by scripture, but an admin deleted it.)
Falwell has long relied on a replacement-level Cornered Victim Of Haters/Losers gimmick, and it’s gotten him this far. So any motions toward enlightenment (Falwell shared that statement by the basketball team, fwiw) must be cloaked amid lack-of-virtue-signaling. Rest assured he intends to learn nothing.
To a man with such a bruised-dick temperament, a man fulfilled only by monetizing the most depressing parts of Leviticus, this exodus will be little more than another sign the fallen world is out to get him … as long as the school’s online enrollment continues to grow, increasing the girth of the camel he’ll one day have to ram through the eye of a needle, and as long as Liberty continues to raise recognition by associating with universities that reside in our physical reality.
Hey, other colleges with football and basketball programs, this is where you come in.
If Liberty wants to become Young Earth Notre Dame, it’s worth remembering what made Notre Dame Notre Dame in the first place: scheduling football games against anybody, anywhere.
Before 1913, the Irish were nothing special, beating up Kirksville Osteopath, the Illinois Cycling Club, Chicago Dental Infirmary, and various high schools. But as Notre Dame tells it:
The first item on [new head coach and AD Jesse Harper’s] docket was upgrading the football schedule -- provided it came with sound business practice to complement it.
Because it was getting blackballed by the other Midwest powers, the Notre Dame football schedules become extremely unattractive and, hence, unprofitable.
One of Harper’s first moves was to write to the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY., for a game. Army originally offered Notre Dame $600 for travel expenses, but Harper was able to haggle for $1,000.
With penny-pinching practices such as taking 14 cleats for the 18-man Notre Dame team on the railroad trip, plus packing their own meals from the student-dining hall, the trip ended up costing $917 -- an $83 profit.
In a span of 27 days in November, Notre Dame pulled watershed road upsets against Army (35-13), Penn State (14-7), Christian Brothers in St. Louis (20-7) and Texas in Austin (on Thanksgiving Day) for a remarkable 7-0-debut campaign. As a coach, Harper proved to be an innovator with a passing attack at Army that awed the eastern media and aided Notre Dame’s place on the football map.
The coup: swooping in to replace Yale on Army’s schedule, long among the toughest in football. The Irish won after a 24-hour railroad trip.
Notre Dame-Army was played at West Point until 1923, when it moved about 50 miles from Army’s campus. The Cadets wouldn’t travel to Notre Dame until their 34th meeting.
By that time, the Irish had claimed five national titles and — full circle — become the team the up-and-comers dreamed of scheduling. Add some enthusiastic self-mythologizing, and voila: Notre Dame had become Notre Dame.
Now Liberty is explicitly following the Notre Dame plan as closely as it can. Gross!
Normal University X, do you wanna keep enabling Liberty’s branding?
The following FBS* universities have agreed to lend credibility to Falwell in the form of football games over the next decade, via fbschedules.com:
Akron
Appalachian State x2
Arkansas
Army x3
Ball State x2
Bowling Green x2
Buffalo
BYU
Coastal Carolina x2
Duke x3
Eastern Michigan x2
Florida International x2
Georgia Southern x2
Marshall x2
Miami (Ohio) x2
Middle Tennessee x2
NC State
New Mexico State x7
North Carolina x3
North Texas
Old Dominion x3
Ole Miss
South Carolina
Southern Miss x2
Syracuse x2
Texas State
Troy
UAB x2
UCF
UConn x3
UL Lafayette
ULM x2
UMass x8
Virginia x4
Virginia Tech x6
Wake Forest x3
Western Kentucky x2
Do you feel good about letting your school boost Falwell’s profile?
Unless they’re paying you very many pieces of silver, it’s not even gonna be some windfall. Liberty’s enrollees are 90% online, and their home attendance was only 18,272 per game in their best season ever, a shade below UNLV, which has won one bowl game since 1994. Your stadium won’t be any fuller, you won’t gain any particular attention for beating a newbie independent, and you’re probably not a rival of theirs anyway (New Mexico State, you are the exception — no one need cancel the Las Cruces-Lost Crosses Bi-Monthly Big Melee).
Oh, and Liberty employs Football Jimmy Swaggart at head coach. And that coach’s boss was the guy in charge at Baylor during The Baylor Scandal. And that guy’s boss is one of the worst Jerry Falwells of all time, which is saying a lot.
Remember: institutions can only become powerful if people let them.
By scheduling Liberty, you’re sullying yourselves to benefit the grift prince’s fake-it-’til-you-make-it trollfarm. For what?
Would it feel better to just schedule NC A&T or Old Dominion instead, perhaps the Methodist Terriers of Wofford, even the Presbyterian Golden Hurricane of Tulsa? I bet it would.
* Schools from the lower level of Division I, take Liberty’s money and then beat them — the Deist ancestors are counting on you, JMU.
Also, I misspoke. The story of Joseph has a little to do with Liberty.
For one thing, it depicts women as liars, temptresses, and people whose suffering exists to inspire more suffering. There’s some theocratic prosperity gospel going on, too.
But the story of Joseph is about a group of 12 individuals who learn to value each other, something akin to an FBS conference. There are none of those that value Liberty.
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One of the truest things Bill Walton has ever said was when he said UCLA playing basketball against Liberty in 2018 the worst day in UCLA athletics history.
This article inspired me to write an email to my alma mater, Ball State's, AD and head of football ops urging them to reconsider playing Liberty in the future. Thank you for writing this Jason