Jerry Falwell Jr. helped make Donald Trump a winner, now he and Huge Freeze are trying it with Liberty football.
USC running back Markese Stepp has worked hard on his receiving game as he tries dispel notions that he’s simply a ground-pounding battering ram.With so much at stake for Liberty football, there can be no rest on the Sabbath. Inside the immaculate indoor training facility, which Jerry Jr. approved for $29 million, the players gather for a team meeting before practice.
“I just wanted to see you, men,” Freeze says. “Because it’s driving me crazy not to be with you. I miss the heck out of you.” With Freeze’s body attacking him from within, Jerry Jr. put the full weight of his clout into motion. He flew a specialist in from Arizona on his private jet, a story that Jerry Jr. would later connect back to his support of Trump.Freeze does not share with his players the political twist of how their school’s president helped him, but he wants them to know something important about the place they’ve chosen for college football.The first day of classes is in full swing as Jerry Falwell Jr.
The next generation brings more of an edge. Jerry Jr. has a salt-and-pepper beard, wears a suit with no tie and carries a casual posture at the head of the table. He answers all types of questions with no apologies, his words pouring out raw and unfiltered. But when asked about what football can do for Liberty, he defers to the man sitting next to him.
In 2016, highly successful and beloved coach Art Briles was suspended with intent to terminate, and President Ken Starr was demoted. McCaw then resigned, stating he felt it was in the school’s best interest to promote “unity, healing and restoration.” “I voluntarily resigned from Baylor because I didn’t believe in the narrative that this is a football problem,” McCaw says. “It was a campus-wide problem that had been going on for decades. And I felt it very unfairly scapegoated Art Briles in terms of how it was handled. I just felt I couldn’t be a part of it.”
McCaw coaxed Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and North Carolina to play series that included a game or two in Lynchburg. The Orange, on Saturday, are first up. At Mississippi, Freeze could come off like the pastor of a megachurch, but his teams routinely stockpiled top talent, and speculation was rampant around the South that the Rebels’ tactics were not above board. Freeze’s critics were vindicated when an NCAA investigation found that his assistant coaches and some boosters were providing impermissible benefits to players.
Freeze felt he had apologized enough to Mississippi and the football world, but he had not owned his mistakes to the larger community of believers. With Jerry Falwell Jr. on stage watching and McCaw nearby in the audience, Freeze took the mic from Nasser and began. As absolution found him on that stage, Freeze couldn’t have imagined he had just completed a very public job interview. In the months that followed, McCaw kept in light touch. And after the 2018 season, when football coach Turner Gill surprised Liberty with his decision to retire, McCaw had one man at the top of his wish list.Ask Jerry Falwell Jr. about any reservations he had about Freeze, and he brings up Trump.
Jerry Fallwell Sr. and Jerry Falwell Jr. attend one of the first Liberty University games together in 1973. After that, hiring Ian McCaw and Hugh Freeze to be the brains and the face of Liberty’s athletic department didn’t seem very controversial.At a lunch event for athletic donors, the most invested Flames fans are happy to discuss what Liberty is and isn’t. The Syracuse game is two weeks away, and there is a feeling that the opponents might have the wrong impression.
When Liberty hired Freeze, Dolan and his wife, Kristi, a 1989 Liberty graduate, were cautious. But then they found the video of Freeze’s convocation testimony. Tight end Chris Barrett makes a catch as the Liberty University football team practices at its indoor practice facility. Today, Liberty has 100,000 online students, among the top enrollment figures nationally. Falwell Jr.’s goal was to have a $1-billion endowment, but he says it has already hit $2 billion.In a phone interview from his hospital bed, Coach Freeze says that, while of course he wants to win, he feels differently than he did during his rise at Mississippi.
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