Jerry Falwell Jr.: Religious 'bigotry' kept Liberty out of FBS conference

Written By Ron Clements
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Liberty football is in its first FBS season and will play as an independent once the school is a full FBS member in 2019.

School president Jerry Falwell Jr. has called out school presidents from Conference USA and the Sun Belt Conference for keeping the Flames out because the school is a Christian university.

"Most college presidents are open-minded, most of them supported us, but there are some who are just plain religious bigots,"  Falwell told USA Today . "And when somebody like me has a political opinion they don’t support, they can’t hide or contain that bigotry, and it’s just sad."

Liberty has the largest student enrollment in the country with some 15,000 students on campus in Lynchburg, Va., and another 95,000 students enrolled in online courses. The cash-flush school was considered by both the Sun Belt and CUSA, but Falwell believes Liberty was denied membership "purely" for religious reasons. 

"We were told by people who were in the meetings the reasons they gave were all related to Liberty’s Christian evangelical mission and one of them brought up something my dad said in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks as a reason," Falwell said. "When three presidents said we weren’t gong to support Liberty, no matter how qualified or how good they’d be for the league, they canceled a visit and we complained.

"For a public college president to (deny) a school as a member of a conference based on religious mission is illegal. It would be like opposing a school because it’s a historically black institution. We called governors and attorney generals and various states where these schools were located. One attorney general wanted to go after one of the presidents, but I said, we won't get in a conference through legal action so we didn’t encourage them to do that."

The Flames were a member of the Big South as an FCS team and the school's other athletic teams will remain in the Big South while the football team plays as an independent. Liberty football began in 1973 and got its first win over an FBS team to open the 2017 season by knocking off Baylor. 

Liberty coach Turner Gill told Omnisport in August there are no immediate plans to join an FBS conference, and if it does happen, it would "have to be the right fit."