Former Nebraska football quarterback and assistant coach Turner Gill is back in the FBS as his Liberty Flames have made the jump from FCS.
Former Nebraska football head coach Tom Osborne saw his coaching tree get an FBS branch back this weekend. On July 1, the Liberty Flames officially became members of the highest division in college football.
That promotion also means a promotion of sorts for its head coach Turner Gill. Gill played quarterback and then coached under Osborne during the tail end of Osborne’s coaching career.
He also coached under Frank Solich when he took over the reigns. When Solich and the rest of his staff were fired, Gill went his own way and eventually got head coaching gigs at Buffalo and then Kansas.
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He couldn’t make his time with the Jayhawks work and was fired in 2011 after going 5-19 in two seasons. In 2012 he took the head coaching job at Liberty and has posted six straight winning seasons for the Flames.
His team joins the FBS as an independent this season and will be eligible to go to a bowl game in 2019. It’s incredibly unlikely they will be bowl eligible next season.
It’s also unlikely the streak of winning seasons is going to this year. It is an interesting coincidence that he is rejoining the ranks of the FBS coaches the same year another former Cornhuskers’ quarterback is taking over the reigns in Lincoln.
Obviously, 2018 is expected to go better for the Huskers than it will for Liberty, though it’s possible that if the Flames pull off a few upsets here and there they could finish with a better record.
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While Gill’s bunch will take on Auburn and Virginia this season, they also play quite a few Sun Belt conference teams with a couple of FCS schools mixed in. At the very least, what Liberty does this year will be another interesting storyline for Nebraska football fans to follow.