To be clear, I was mentioning possible reasons, not endorsing playing Liberty or any of the reasons, just speculating on what the athletic department may be thinking.

But with that said. Liberty is located in Virginia, and while they are private and their mission is not the same as VT. They do, employ people who live in Virginia, provide some economic benefit to Lynchburg and Virginia. So VT may be thinking about those factors when choosing them as an opponent.

Personally I would have liked us to have kept Penn State as our OOC opponent, but that was not an option.