CFP Rankings: Boo Corrigan Discusses Liberty

The Liberty Flames were not included in the latest College Football Playoff rankings rankings despite being ranked in the top 20 in both the AP Poll and the AFCA Coaches poll.

Boo Corrigan is the College Football Playoff Selection Committee chair, as well as the Athletic Director at NC State. Corrigan was asked twice about the Flames during the committee’s weekly teleconference following the reveal of this week’s rankings. Those answers are below.

A lot of folks here are asking about the Liberty Flames. Obviously they won just knocking off Arkansas. Was there any discussion about Liberty being in as one of the top 25 this week, and given their strength of schedule, is there any avenue for them to get into the top 25?

CORRIGAN: “Well, we’re going to look at this week and then we’ll move on to next week as we get there.”

“But there was a good deal of discussion around Liberty and the win over Arkansas this past week. Strength of schedule does play into it, close loss to Wake Forest, win over BYU. But again, as we’re looking and evaluating everything that goes into it, we want to make sure that we get the right 25 teams, and believe it or not, we spend a lot of time on each group as you kind of go from 1 through 25, but Liberty certainly was talked about and a lot of respect for what they’ve done and what Coach Freeze has done this year.”

Liberty as an independent, you have ranked independent teams like Notre Dame this week, BYU in the past. Is Liberty’s strength of schedule and not playing as many power conference teams a factor in not having the Flames ranked despite an 8-1 record?

CORRIGAN: “It certainly is one of the factors that we take into account as we’re looking at the body of work, the teams around them and making sure that we’re doing an evaluation.”

“We did talk about them. We talked a good amount about Liberty. There’s respect for the job that they have done. The win over Arkansas at Arkansas, to be up 21-0 in that game and see how they played, it is a factor as we’re looking at it, and we’ll continue to evaluate as we move forward.”

Liberty’s remaining games are against UConn, Virginia Tech, and New Mexico State.