At Falwell’s College, They Stress Fundamentals

Some time around the turn of the century, Jerry Falwell hopes that the football team at his fundamentalist Christian college, Liberty University, will be able to knock the bejabbers out of Notre Dame.

In the name of the Lord, of course. It’s not enough for the leader of the Moral Majority to simply field a competitive athletic program at Liberty. If Liberty fields the best athletic program, Falwell reasons, then maybe the Flames’ success will enlighten the world to his new fundamentalism.

After all, look at the attention focused on the Mormon Church since Brigham Young University became a national football power.

Said Falwell: “We feel that through athletics we can glorify Christ and capture the attention of America’s young people in a very significant way.”

The ultimate goal is for Liberty to become to born-again Christians what Notre Dame is to Roman Catholics and BYU is to Mormons.

“Our dream is to get first refusal on most of the blue-chip evangelical athletes,” Falwell said.

Once they start doing that, they figure it’s only a matter of time before they’re among the country’s elite, and the nation will have no choice but to sit up and take notice. Eventually, they’ll get Notre Dame on the schedule, and won’t those unsuspecting Catholic boys be shown a thing or two?

Said football Coach Morgan Hout: “Right or wrong, the majority of the American public doesn’t pick up a newspaper to read about somebody’s English department, or history department, or math department. They want to read about football, or basketball.”

Falwell is building his dream on 4,700 acres atop Liberty Mountain. The nondescript campus, under constant construction at a cost of about $12 million a year, has been cut out of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and overlooks Lynchburg, “City of Churches.”

The school, formerly Liberty Baptist College, was established in 1971 with 143 students attending classes at Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. The enrollment today is almost 7,000. By the turn of the century, Liberty will have about 50,000 students, said Falwell, who calls Liberty the nation’s fastest-growing university.

And by that time, the school will have a full-fledged NCAA Division I athletic program.

The football team, which will compete in Division II for two more seasons, will move up to Division I-AA in 1988 and will begin playing Division I-A teams in about 10 years. The basketball team will move up to Division I for the 1988-89 season, and the baseball team will begin its third season in Division I next spring.

Only born-again Christians are accepted as faculty members or students at Liberty, which is the centerpiece of Falwell’s $100-million operation. Applicants must profess orally and in writing to “know Christ as their savior.”

As might be expected, the rules governing the students’ conduct are strict. Even staunch Christians might have trouble dealing with some of them. Administrators say, however, that the rules are no more stringent than those at the military academies, and Hout is fond of saying that the rules make Liberty “a lot like Brigham Young, except that here, at least, we can drink coffee and Cokes.”

Still, there are a lot of things Liberty students can’t do.

Smoking, drinking alcohol and premarital sex are forbidden. Spending the night with a person of the opposite sex is punishable by expulsion. Freshmen and sophomores can only double-date, and interracial couples of any age must have permission from their parents to date.

Rock ‘n’ roll music is out, of course, and so are disco, country-and-western and even Christian rock. Students aren’t allowed to go to movies off campus. On campus, films and television are censored. Soap operas are taboo. Students must be in their rooms by 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and by 11:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

The dress code requires men to have their hair cut above the ears and collar, and to wear ties in all academic buildings until 4:30 p.m. Beards are not permitted, and neither are tennis shoes. Women must wear dresses or skirts. Sunbathing is permitted only in a designated area, and “proper” attire must be worn to and from that area.

Clearly, Liberty is never going to make Playboy’s list of top 10 party schools.

“It’s an adjustment,” assistant basketball coach Dale Hatcher said. “Not everybody can fit in and make it here.”

And the rules, in this case, are not made to be broken. Said Kim Graham, recruiting coordinator for the football team: “I’ll tell a kid, ‘Look, if you’ve got to go to a movie and it’s going to affect your life style if you can’t go, then go someplace else to school.’ ”

Added Graham: “We feel like the school helps the kids not only learn how to make a living, but how to live.”

The students don’t have to ascribe to Falwell’s archconservative political views, but they must agree not to protest against them. Participation in unauthorized demonstrations, riots or petitions is cause for expulsion.

A sign alongside the road that leads through campus reads, “Radar Patrolled,” and after a few hours on campus, you get the feeling that it’s not a joke.

All of this would seem to be a major hindrance to recruiting, but Liberty has managed to attract some blue-chip athletes since it first fielded an athletic program in 1973.

Among them have been Fred Banks, an All-American wide receiver who is now playing for the Cleveland Browns; former Dodger first baseman Sid Bream, who was traded last season to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Cliff Webber, a fourth-round draft choice of the Boston Celtics last spring who is now playing in the Continental Basketball Assn.

Kelvin Edwards, a wide receiver on this year’s football team, will play in the Blue-Gray all-star game Christmas Day at Montgomery, Ala.

Said Gerald Thomas, a freshman basketball player from Canoga Park: “If I went to a secular school, and somebody saw me praying in the hallway, it would lift some eyelids. Or if somebody asked me to go to a frat party, it would put me in an uncomfortable position. Why go to a lions’ den when you can go where the Lord wants you to go?”

Liberty, which fields teams in 14 sports, has won several National Christian Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships, including one in basketball and six straight in wrestling, 1976-81. The baseball team finished fifth in the NAIA World Series for three straight years before moving to Division I, where it has a winning percentage of .571 in two seasons. In 1984, the football team led Division II schools in four passing categories, and Banks led the nation with 77 receptions.

Because of budget restrictions, the football team basically recruits in only three areas: Virginia, central Florida and the Atlanta area--the former because it is Liberty’s home state and the latter two because of large Baptist populations in those areas. Eventually, Graham hopes, the team will recruit nationally, aided by a network of pastors.

Falwell believes that his high visibility gives Liberty an advantage over other schools in the recruiting wars. He books as many as 25 speaking engagements a week, traveling an average of 8,000 miles in a seven-day period. One of his two television shows, “Jerry Falwell Live,” reaches 35 million homes. A Moral Majority newspaper has 1.2 million subscribers, and a fundamentalist magazine has a subscription of 70,000.

Falwell, who played football, basketball and baseball in high school and says he once turned down an offer from baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals, keeps a close watch on the athletic teams as Liberty’s chancellor. Working his schedule around the school’s athletic events, he says he attends every home football game, about 75% of the home basketball games and about 50% of the home baseball and soccer games.

“I go in the locker room before every game and pray with the kids,” Falwell said. “I’m not the coach, but after he finishes I step up a little bit with the players and they consider me as one of the coaches. I spiritually motivate them, and they know that I know what they’re doing. I know the price they’re paying. I know what it cost them, and they also know that I know the game, and I’m able to encourage them.”

Although he wants his coaches to be aggressive in their efforts to build Liberty into a national power, Falwell said he has no fear that overzealousness might lead to an abuse of NCAA rules.

“Every one of our coaches would be committed Christians,” he said. “We’re certainly far from perfect, but I do not think that we would have a coach who would knowingly allow any kind of NCAA violations.”

He proudly tells how Al Worthington, athletic director and baseball coach who pitched for 14 years in the major leagues, once refused to play for the Chicago White Sox because the White Sox had a scout with binoculars hidden in the scoreboard, stealing signs from the opposition.

However, in an interview at the Radisson Hotel here, Falwell didn’t mention that he himself was barred from giving the valedictorian’s speech upon graduation from this city’s Brookville High School because auditors discovered that he and other athletes had obtained free meals for a year by using counterfeit lunch tickets.

“It is very important that we win,” Falwell said. “It is not all-important. But I believe that you can develop a winning program and still maintain all the principles on which the program is based.”

Next fall, the Flames will become the Eagles, a nickname the school believes is more in keeping with the concept of liberty. Soon after, they hope to take flight.

“We’re in this to win and we want to win big,” Hout said.

So, they’re serious about playing Notre Dame?

“Eventually. It will happen,” Hout said. “Dr. Falwell says he may be in a wheelchair, and (Notre Dame’s) Father Hesburgh may be on a cane, but that’s the level we’re hoping to attain.”

Lord willing, of course.