At Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr. bets on big-time football, with a disgraced coach

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Colleges
At Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr. bets on big-time football, with a disgraced coach

By Kent Babb
August 29 at 10:31 AM

LYNCHBURG, Va. — On occasion Liberty University will invite members of out-of-state churches to speak at its convocation, and in January 2018, a man from Mississippi stood and stepped forward. ... “I’m humbled,” he said early in remarks to a packed arena that held more than 8,000 students, staffers and administrators, “and certainly unworthy.”

The new semester’s first convocation, a twice-a-week mandatory gathering at the Vines Center, had a theme: perseverance, though it might as well have been about pride. Hugh Freeze had, maybe without realizing it, just let it envelop and overtake him. ... Freeze was as damaged as he was accomplished, perfect for a place expanding as rapidly as Liberty, where resources outpace need. The Flames didn’t need a football coach at the time, but the controversial university president increasingly saw opportunity in flawed but dynamic personalities — especially when they helped advance his expansive vision for the school.

Freeze had spent five seasons as head football coach at the University of Mississippi, and using his Christian faith and the spread offense as the program’s bedrocks, his Rebels had gone to four bowl games, upset Alabama twice, entered the national rankings’ top five in consecutive seasons. This went on for years, along with a few other things, and he said that it was pride that eventually destroyed him: numerous NCAA violations, paying no mind to boosters who broke rules, Freeze using his university-issued cellphone to call an escort service.
....

Decades ago, when Falwell’s daddy ran the place, he was a lawyer and commercial builder. He hated himself. His advice and deals always had to be so careful, his personality so emptily risk-averse, so when Jerry Falwell Sr. died and the young man moved into the big office, he wanted to do things differently. ... “The lawyer side of me had to go away,” he says. ... He stalled construction of student housing on campus and went all-in on Liberty’s online program, thinking of ways to attract more customers, or what other universities might call “students.” He invested in music and athletics in part because those are good marketing tools, and when the time came to bet big, that’s what Falwell did.

“We’re not electing a pastor; we’re not electing a Sunday school teacher. We’re electing the president,” he says of Trump, and a moment later, he’ll launch into one of several meandering anecdotes that always end in a similar place: with a previously skeptical group conceding that, once again, Falwell was right. “He’s got rough edges, okay, but we need somebody who’s a fighter.” ... This can go on for a while.

“See, that’s the reason a lot of people supported Mitt Romney: ‘He’s such a good family guy,’ ” Falwell says. “What the heck difference does that make when you’re running a country? I mean, who cares?”
....

Kent Babb is a sports features writer for The Washington Post, focusing on the NFL, college sports, the NBA, and the intersections of sports with social, cultural and political issues. He joined The Post in 2012. Follow https://twitter.com/kentbabb

[underpants]

1. God knows they have enough money to start a big program

The expansion of the campus they’ve done over the last few years has been enormous. They’ve literally blocked out the horizon. The problem seems to be that they can’t recruit talent. Gee, wonder why.

[tanyev]

2. "What the heck difference does that make when you're running a country?"

Jerry, I’m going to guess that you (and your daddy) spewed a very different line of thought round about 1993-2001.