The Liberty Flames entered the College Football Playoff rankings for the first time ever on Tuesday night.
The 11-0 Conference USA leaders have one regular season game remaining before facing New Mexico State in the Conference USA championship.
Shortly after Tuesday's rankings were revealed, College Football Playoff Selection Committee chair Boo Corrigan met with members of the media on a teleconference to discuss the committee's latest deliberations.
When asked what pushed the unbeaten Flames into the top 25 this week, Corrigan had this to say:
"They keep winning games, and the value of winning games...they've scored a lot of points, averaged a lot of yards, obviously the strength of schedule has been an issue from the beginning. But at the end of the day you can only play the people that are on your schedule, and I think as we looked at it more and more and the value of winning and the value that the committee puts on that, it became a determining factor with Liberty coming in at No. 25."
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To Corrigan's point about strength of schedule, four of the 12 teams on Liberty's 2023 schedule have six wins or more this season. The Flames are currently #46 in ESPN's Football Power Index. However, they're also the only G5 team yet to lose a game and one of just six unbeaten teams in FBS.
Until Tuesday, it seemed like a sure thing that the winner of the AAC would receive the New Year's Six bid. However, now that Liberty have cracked the Top 25, just two spots behind AAC leader #23 Tulane, that may not be the case.
Liberty face UTEP on Saturday on CBS Sports Network at 6:30 PM ET in their regular season finale.
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