Interview with Danny Rocco

Danny Rocco enters his fourth year at the helm of the Liberty Football program this Fall. The three-time Big South Coach of the Year takes time out of planning Liberty’s 3-peat and sits down to answers your questions from Facebook and Twitter.

There are some great in-state programs. Is LU looking to play James Madison, Richmond, and William & Mary on a regular basis? Doing so would create some great in-state rivalries!

I think that’s definitely one of the things we want to be able to do. When we first came here, we talked a lot about the state of Virginia – recruiting well in the state of Virginia, and winning a lot of the recruiting battles in-state. We’re really pleased with the progress we’ve made in those areas. One of the things we’ve been able to do is to play two of those in-state teams every year. The way it’s set up with VMI in our conference we’ll play VMI every year. Then we want to be able to play either Richmond, William & Mary or James Madison. We start a four-year series with James Madison coming up this season, so we’ll have VMI and James Madison for the next four years. We’re looking to try and reach out to either William & Mary or Richmond when the James Madison series ends, so we will always have a strong presence in our home state.

As a former Flames player and co-captain, I am so glad to see us playing teams like West Virginia this fall, it gives us more national exposure. Will LU be playing at least one NCAA FBS (formerly Division 1-A) team each season from now on, and are we trying to set up games with Virginia Tech and Virginia?

I do think that part of what we’re trying to accomplish here is to gain more national prominence, and in order to do that we’re going to have to reach out and play some FBS programs like we’ve been doing. This year we have West Virginia, and that’s obviously a big game for our program, for our University, and an opportunity to get our name out there on a more national level. We do have games on the horizon with N.C. State in 2011, plus we’ve got Wake Forest in 2012, Virginia in 2013 and 2014, and we are in discussions with Virginia Tech right now. So there really is a pretty strong push to play a BCS program, if not every year, eight out of 10 years, and to have those schools be ACC or Big EAST schools, or schools from our region that can help us in our perception and in our recruiting.

Where do you see the program progressing this year?

That’s probably a harder question to answer. What I’m looking for is consistency. I’m looking for a program that is consistently in a position where we are competing to win our conference championship and competing to get into postseason play. We lost an awful lot of talent from last year’s team. We had 22 seniors, I believe 14 of which earned all-conference honors, so the team has a whole new look to it this year than we had a year ago, new faces and new names. We are young, but we are talented, so I am hopeful we can continue to go about there and represent a program that is competing on a consistent level for a conference championship and a program that is working towards becoming one of national prominence.

What is the most difficult part about building depth in a program

The toughest thing about building depth at the FCS level is the limited number of scholarships. We just don’t have the volume or numbers of student-athletes to work with that others have at the FBS level. So that’s really the biggest thing up front, just the numbers game you have to play at this level. The second thing is you have to count on a lot of your non or partial scholarship players to contribute and develop in your program. Sometimes when a kid is paying his own way or picking up the majority of his bill it’s harder to keep that student-athlete in your program motivated because of a lot of reasons – they have personal concerns, financial issues that they have to deal with, and after two or three years in the program sometimes it’s hard for them to continue to make that commitment. The reality is it’s a huge commitment to be a student-athlete at this level and to be a football player in this program. So it really comes down to basically a numbers game. But we do a really good job in season and out of season team building and strength development, so I really think we’re doing a nice overall job of development of the student athletes that we have.

Do you think Tommy Beecher and the other big name transfers can come in and immediately impact the program?

I don’t think there’s any doubt that these student-athletes that have transferred into our program will have an impact on our season. I think each kid’s story is uniquely different. Sometimes we have a tendency just to classify or throw an umbrella over the tag “transfer student”, and you think the expectations for all these kids are going to be the same, but it’s all uniquely different. You look at Tommy Beecher, he is a fifth-year student, so he’s a mature player, he’s got some experience and he’s got some history of competing at a high level. Freddie Brown, a wide receiver that came into our program from South Carolina, is also a fifth-year player. Both Freddie and Tommy are graduates of the University of South Carolina, so there’s a little more age, experience and maturity there. Some of these other guys that have come into our program we’re very excited about – Ronald Hobby, Marquis Jenkins, and others – well they’re younger players, so a younger player is less apt to be prepared physically and mentally to make an early contribution or impact. That doesn’t mean as the season progresses they won’t have significant roles in our program. I do think this influx of transfer students has helped our program in the past and will continue to be a part of how we put our team together.

Do you ever see the team transitioning to NCAA FBS like Dr. Falwell dreamed about?

I do. It was part of Dr. Falwell’s vision and dream. It was communicated to me that way the day Dr. Falwell hired me. But I think the exciting thing is not necessarily the fact that we’re going to do it one day, its how we’re going to go about doing it. It’s a process that there really is no timeline for right now, we’re continuing to put our program in the best position we can be in to compete and win in the Big South Conference and to compete and win in our home state against the FCS competition. I think that when our program is ready for such a transition then there will be some more legitimate discussion about that. But again when I come in here every day and go to work, my focus is on this year’s schedule and getting this team ready to be prepared for the day that those opportunities may become available for us.

The Big South Conference’s football division is still rather new. If Liberty football is progressing faster, do you think Liberty will need to find a new conference?

The thing about the Big South Conference that’s encouraging to me is its growth. We’ve added a number of teams here in the last several years, with Presbyterian and Stony Brook coming in, which giving our conference a lot more credibility. With an automatic bid coming in to play here into the FCS playoffs in 2010, I think that our conference will have a much better foundation with which to build upon. I really think this is a good time to be in the Big South Conference, and hopefully we can continue to have success in inner conference games and against FBS opponents. All of our teams are playing big games outside the league this year in terms of games against FBS opponents, so the league’s going to take on more of a national appeal here, as we start to compete against these other programs.

What are your long term goals for Liberty football, meaning what sort of program do you see Liberty being in five or 10 years time?

Again, the word and discussions we’ve been having here as I go into my fourth year are leading toward national prominence. I think we have leaped over a number of different hurdles and pushed through several different obstacles as we have taken this program forward from a 1-10 season in 2005, to win back-to-back conference championships, to having our first 10-win season in school history, to finish the season last year as the No. 14 ranked team in the nation. Now as we start looking to the future, we need to be consistently competing in that Top 20 in the country and putting ourselves in the position where any given year we could have a breakthrough season where we really get on the national scene. I think the next three to five years is when we’re looking to reach those goals. My ultimate plan is to win a national championship. Obviously there are some more steps to be taken before we can claim that dream.

What is it going to take for Liberty to make it into postseason play? You were snubbed last year, do you think adding quality Division I opponents, win or lose, will get it done?

I think that’s a school of thought that a lot of people adhere to. I don’t necessarily adhere to that, a loss is a loss. Again, we’re playing these NCAA FBS opponents for reasons other than trying to get into the playoffs. I don’t think that helps our cause. Now, if you go out and win one of those games, then it certainly helps your cause. The history though in our league is that those have not been games that our conference has won so it really hasn’t helped our resume at all in terms of being attractive to the committee. I think the biggest thing right now is that we have the conference’s automatic bid coming in 2010. With that being said it’s on the horizon where our conference champion will have an automatic bid to the playoffs and we won’t have to rely on the committee and the particular agendas or biases of people on the committee in reference to our league.

What do you look for when recruiting new players?

There are a lot of things that we look for in recruiting our student-athletes. We have a profile and a system in place that has been in place with me for a number of years. It’s something I had borrowed from Coach Tom Coughlin when I was coaching at Boston College. We’ve used it at a number of different places, such as University of Texas, University of Virginia. Basically it has a number of different areas that we focus on. First and foremost we have to focus on their ability to play the game of football, their athleticism and their skills. We have a numbering system that we use that allows us to come up with a grade that we attach to every student-athlete. That grade has a number of different tags that help define the student athlete’s character, his academic standing, his willingness to work, and his fitting in here at our university. So we have a nomenclature if you will that allows us to communicate with a numbering system and lettering code that really help us define a player, so when you hear the number and see the code you have a really good understanding of what type of person you are looking at and the player that you are recruiting.

Do you think you can win the Big South Championship again this year?

We certainly believe we can. This will be the most competitive season to date. As we start this season, there has been two or three different programs that have been picked to win our conference in different publications, meaning this is the first time there hasn’t been a slam dunk preseason favorite in several years. As many as four or five teams I think have a legitimate opportunity this year to shoot for the conference championship, so this will be a very exciting year and we’re certainly one of those teams. I’m an old-school boxing fan. The thing I like about boxing is you can’t be the champ until you beat the champ, so whoever wins the conference championship this year will have to do it through Liberty, and that gives us a great opportunity to defend our crown and to try to attain a third consecutive conference championship.

You’re in your fourth season as head coach. When you took over this team did you really expect that you would make such a meteoric 180 following the 1-10 season in 2005?

Well, I don’t know if I could have written the script any better in terms of how it’s all played out. Again, I really have no control over the playoff situation. That’s all a committee sitting down and making a decision, so when you remove that from the equation all I can try to do is try to build a program, win with character and unity, and win games, and to go from 1-10 to 10-2 is about as legitimate a turn around as you can have. I really believed it was possible to be done in a short period of time, and I’m very happy we’ve been able to make that kind of progress in the short period of time, and I think it really comes down to our young people, our student-athletes who bought into what we were teaching and coaching, and bought into the program. It is a very tight and united group and that has allowed us to continue to build our program and sharpen the sword as we get into our 2009 season.

What would you consider to be the most challenging aspect of the schedule this fall?

The schedule this year is really broken down into two very distinct phases. The first is a phase of non-conference games, and during this phase, we have some very challenging games. We start off at West Virginia, in an opening game which is obviously a big challenge. It certainly had our attention through spring and through summer camp here. But we have some other really big games early in the season. We have North Carolina Central at home right after West Virginia, which is a big game for us to make sure that we can maintain the type of energy and enthusiasm that we take with us into Morgantown. Then we go to Lafayette, and Lafayette beat us last year pretty handedly in a game where we didn’t play very well, so there’s another huge game. Then we’ve got james Madison the following week, which is a perennial Top 10 program ,so the beginning of the schedule is as tough as we’ve had since I’ve been here. Then we have the open date, and then we get into conference play. Conference play is always uniquely its own schedule, so we need to be in a position coming out of non-conference play to have some confidence and cohesiveness on our football team and to be healthy so that we can make a run at conference play.

Which freshmen could potentially see playing time this year?

A lot of times when you look at the freshmen it’s a function of two things: Who’s ready and what needs do we have. I’ve been saying this for years, a lot of times the best freshmen on your football team you end up redshirting and when you get four years into their career you find out that that’s true because we don’t have a need at certain positions. But right now it’s looking like at the running back position SirChauncy Holloway and Aldreakis Allen will see playing time this year, as long as they can stay healthy. Malcolm Boyd and Jay Weatherington, we’re going to try and get them some work here early in the season at the offensive guard positions. On defense, Demetrius Ward, at the linebacker position, has set himself up pretty good for some playing time. We’re looking really hard at Kevin Fogg at wide receiver as a candidate for some playing time. Some of these young freshmen have got injured during camp and are banged up, and it’s really too early to make that call, but I do think that we’re going to have six or seven guys step up this year to help our program and have an opportunity to earn some playing time.