The Liberty Flames are moving up to the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2018 and continue to add opponents to their future football schedules.
On Wednesday, they announced the addition of 13 additional games. Opponents include Bowling Green, Marshall, NC State, Southern Miss, Troy, UAB, and UMass.
Of the seven opponents added, four are for home-and-home series, one is a four-game series (one game was previously announced), and two are single games on the road.
Listed below are the future opponents officially announced today by Liberty:
Bowling Green
Oct. 3, 2020 – Liberty at Bowling Green
Sept. 2, 2023 – Bowling Green at Liberty
Marshall
Oct. 14, 2023 – Liberty at Marshall
Oct. 5, 2024 – Marshall at Liberty
*Note: Liberty will receive $0 for their trip to Marshall in 2023. Marshall will receive a $500,000 guarantee for the game at Liberty in 2024 (per MU release).
NC State
Nov. 21, 2020 – Liberty at NC State
Southern Miss
Oct. 24, 2020 – Southern Miss at Liberty
Sept. 3, 2022 – Liberty at Southern Miss
*Note (8/22/2017): Southern Miss will receive a $500,000 guarantee for the game at Liberty in 2020. Liberty will receive $0 for their trip to Hattiesburg in 2022 (per copy of contract obtained from USM via a public records request).
Troy
Sept. 11, 2021 – Liberty at Troy
UAB
Oct. 2, 2021 – Liberty at UAB
Sept. 10, 2022 – UAB at Liberty
UMass
Nov. 2, 2019 – Liberty at UMass
Nov. 28, 2020 – UMass at Liberty
Nov. 6, 2021 – UMass at Liberty
I suggest the 2021 @Troy game is the second piece of a home-and-home (2018 Troy@Liberty).
Liberty is playing New Mexico St twice a year in 2018 and 2019. I have never heard of rematches scheduled during a season for football.
NMSU and Idaho had them scheduled before they got picked up by the SBC.
Ummm…that $0 game that Liberty scheduled at Marshall strikes me as…odd.
Liberty is well aware no conference is interested in taking them anytime soon
So how exactly are they expected to keep up without an affiliation? Diminishing returns and all…
Who got picked up by the SBC? Liberty by no means has been picked up by the SBC. The SBC doesn’t want those kinds of problems.
Coastal Carolina
They are scheduling a lot of P5 games with at least marginal paydays. Auburn comes to mind over $1 Million for LU. For the most part they are using P5 money to pay for their G5 games. The net budget hasn’t changed all that much.
Which is something very strange and just isn’t done in FCS transitions. How the hell do you make any of this work knowing you won’t have a conference affiliation, a stadium size that won’t even approach 30,000 for some time still, no chance of getting a bowl tie-in, and scheduling series with programs where you’re literally in the hole with?! ($500k w/Marshall) Any other straight-up program tried this and the program would be wiped out financially and the AD drawn and quartered.