Last Thursday’s Big South football media day in Charlotte provided me with an opportunity to gather far more information than what appeared in last Friday’s News & Advance. So we’ll go back to something that I thought worked well on the blog last year: Media day dispatches.

There’s no better place to start than with the home team, Liberty. Quarterback Mike Brown was in attendance at the Crowne Plaza, and these sorts of media opportunities are old hat now to the senior from Charlottesville. He was making his third appearance at the Big South rouser.

Photo credit: Les Schofer/Liberty University

Some notes:

—Brown was in full-on cliché mode in regards to Liberty’s approach to the season, and that’s not a bad thing. He talked about taking things one practice at a time, one game at a time, etc., etc. The Flames have been right on the cusp of making it to the FCS playoffs in each of the last three seasons, but they’ve had one poor performance that ended up costing them. In 2008 it was a stunning loss at Presbyterian. In 2009, it was a defensive meltdown at Stony Brook. Last year, it was an ugly first-half performance at Coastal Carolina.

“I don’t know what it is,” Brown said. “I can’t really put my finger on it. We’ve had that one game, every year. What’s the cause of that? I’m not sure. I wish I knew. It would be an easy fix. We’ve had that one game. If we can eliminate that and fix those problems, I think we’ll fare a little bit better.”

For the Flames, that means really tightening the focus on each opponent, something that shouldn’t be a problem in September. Liberty will play its toughest non-conference schedule of the Danny Rocco era this season, opening at North Carolina State before hosting 2010 playoff team Robert Morris and perennial CAA power James Madison. They’ll round out the four-game gauntlet with a trip to defending Patriot League champion Lehigh, which won a game in last year’s playoffs. Lehigh is the Patriot favorite again.

—When NFL scouts come to visit Liberty during the fall, they’re not allowed to have contact with players unless they are seniors. Expect the scouts to be out in force this season as the Flames have two legitimate draft prospects in Brown and receiver Chris Summers.

For Summers, the process will be fairly straight forward. He’s a 6-foot-5 receiver with good hands, and that’s what he’ll be scouted as this season. With Brown, it’s not so simple. He’s a 6-foot quarterback who has also showed tremendous skills as a receiver and a runner. He’s not a prototypical drop-back passer type, though he does have plenty of arm strength. For Brown’s sake, he should probably hope Tim Tebow performs well with the Broncos this season, because Brown and Tebow have similar skill sets, though I don’t think Brown will need to have his throwing mechanics overhauled like Tebow did.

“It’s definitely a factor,” Brown said of the attention he’ll get from scouts this year. “But as I said, my main focus is taking it one day at a time. Just focus on the game at hand, the task at hand, and let all of the other stuff take care of itself. I’ll handle that other stuff when the time comes. That’s how I’ll approach it.”

—Brown hasn’t really gotten an indication yet from the coaching staff on what the quarterback rotation will look like this season. Rocco said last spring that he wanted to get Tyler Brennan more involved in the offense for two reasons. For one, Brennan is talented and could probably start for any team in the conference right now. Two, Rocco would like to find a way to keep Brown fresher throughout the season, because Brown took so many hits last year as the Flames’ primary thrower and ball carrier.

Having a revamped running game can only help in that regard, and the Flames’ trio of tailbacks all have something to prove this season. Rocco said when he went back to look at film from last season that he was surprised at just how well SirChauncey Holloway ran down the stretch, and he took that momentum and had a strong spring. Korrey Davis, the former Heritage standout, will be out to prove he’s not a bust after a disappointing 2010 season in which he picked up some early turf toe and never got on track. And then there’s Aldreakis Allen, who led the team in rushing as a freshman in 2009 before missing last season due to a violation of school rules. Even before Allen’s troubles, there was some concern that he didn’t run hard enough, and that he was prone to injuries at the end of his freshman year.

“He’s a lot stronger, a lot bigger, and there’s just more muscle to him now,” Brown said of Allen. “He’s much more mature as a person. He’s becoming more and more mature every day as a player. He’s working on his skills. He stays in the weight room. He’s always working. I think that year off was a real eye-opener for him. I’m really, really looking forward to seeing what he does this year.”

—Rocco said the Flames are entering camp fairly healthy. DT Asa Chapman had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee in the offseason to clean up some cartilage, but he’ll be ready to go. LB Mike Connolly has bounced back from reconstructive knee surgery after tearing his ACL last season.

We’ll be back at it tomorrow with a dispatch from the team picked second in the Big South race, the Stony Brook Seawolves.