College Football: Why Liberty is paying $1.32 million for Old Dominion game
By Zach Bigalke
3. If they didn’t pay an FBS school, they’d have to pay an FCS opponent
The Flames have won eight league titles in the past decade under head coaches Danny Rocco and Turner Gill. Yet Liberty has also made the NCAA football tournament just once, under Gill in 2014, and was bounced by Villanova in the second round. They don’t quite fit the traditional mold of a team making the jump to FBS football. Thus, it was incumbent that they make as big an impact as was feasible in their introduction to the top ranks.
That meant Liberty was going to be spending for an opponent one way or another for its home opener. No FBS program is immune to such an expenditure when trying to set up non-conference games in a given year. Thus, Liberty effectively had three options.
One, it could look the fool and try to court a Power Five school to Lynchburg. There would have been plenty of rejections, most private but some surely getting leaked. If they eventually ended up finding someone to take the bait, it would most likely be a lower-level Power Five program for which they would grossly overpay.
Two, Liberty could pay one of the FCS schools it just left behind to come to Lynchburg. To gain any legitimacy, they couldn’t bring in any mere scrub candidate. The school would probably be left overpaying for the privilege of playing a team like James Madison or Youngstown State. The Flames would probably end up paying to be an underdog on their home turf. A win would offer only limited gains, coming as it would against an FCS opponent, and a loss would do greater damage to their opening campaign.
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So Liberty went with the third option, paying to play a Group of Five school at a market rate. The $1.32 million is around what Power Five schools pay Group of Five opponents to visit their stadiums. As a rising power in Conference USA, $1.32 million could even be a bargain if the Monarchs have another double-digit win season.