A victory over No. 7 JMU would give LU a major cause to celebrate

It’s been seven years since a team ranked in the FCS’ top 10 has made the trip to Lynchburg to face Liberty. That fact alone makes Liberty’s game Saturday night against No. 7 James Madison huge.

Then there’s the respect factor. The Flames have won 20 games in the last two-plus seasons and they’ve captured consecutive Big South titles. In national FCS circles, though, those accomplishments ring a bit hollow. To many who follow the sport at the national level, Liberty is a nice little program that has had the run of a very pedestrian conference of late.

There’s some merit to that thought. Under fourth-year coach Danny Rocco, Liberty is 0-3 against opponents from the powerful Colonial Athletic Association, with two losses to William & Mary and one to Towson. Against teams from the eight FCS “auto bid” leagues in Rocco’s tenure, Liberty is 5-5, with two of those victories coming against Southern Conference bottom feeder Western Carolina.

So Saturday’s game will be a defining moment for Liberty’s program. If the Flames beat a Dukes team a year removed from a run to the FCS playoff semifinals, they’ll gain nationwide respect and put themselves in perfect position to make a run at the school’s first playoff berth.

If they lose? Well, there will be plenty of new message-board fodder for those who believe Liberty just isn’t good enough to compete with elite FCS teams.

“You know, if it wasn’t for my son, I probably wouldn’t even know what message boards are,” Rocco said. “But my son does update me daily on all that chatter that’s out there, and all the disrespect. I’m sure our players are a little more tuned into that, at this stage of the game, than I am.

“But you know, you have to go out and play and win. That’s the reality of it. That’s the uniqueness of being the coach and the uniqueness of college athletics. It’s really the only way to silence the critics and the non-believers. It’s the only way to do it.”

Liberty’s players claim they don’t pay attention to the talk. (“Not at all,” quarterback Mike Brown said.) But there’s no doubt the Flames play with a little extra motivation when they face elite FCS teams. No national FCS pundits picked Liberty in last season’s finale against then 12th-ranked Elon, yet the Flames won that game convincingly, ultimately costing Elon a spot in the FCS playoffs.

James Madison has plenty at stake Saturday, too. The Dukes already have one loss (at Maryland) and face a brutal stretch of CAA games, when they meet Richmond, Villanova, Delaware and William & Mary in a five-week span in October and November. A loss Saturday to an upstart Liberty team could be crippling to the Dukes’ playoff chances.

Plus, JMU coach Mickey Matthews has some experience with this sort of thing, having taken his team to Conway, S.C., in 2005 to meet a Coastal Carolina program craving the same sort of national respect Liberty seeks now. Coastal won that game 31-27, jumpstarting a nine-win season.

“I think Danny’s done a great job,” JMU coach Mickey Matthews said. “He inherited a program in trouble that didn’t have a lot of players.

“He’s done a great job recruiting. We’ve noticed them in the recruiting process, and we had never come across them before.”

Saturday’s game marks the start of a four-game series between the programs. Liberty will visit Harrisonburg in 2010 and 2012, and JMU will return to Lynchburg for a 2011 game. The teams haven’t met since 2003, when JMU won 48-6 in Harrisonburg, and Liberty hasn’t won since beating the Dukes 34-31 in 1992 in Harrisonburg.

“I think we need to play local games,” Matthews said. “You notice that Villanova plays Pennsylvania and Temple, and they get good crowds. I think when we play Virginia teams that it really helps everyone’s crowds. I know the last time Liberty came up here, they brought a good crowd to Harrisonburg. I think any time you can play those people, it helps everything.”

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