Friday Features: West Florida Looks to Continue Historic Playoff Run
By Chris Megginson
From scratch, the University of West Florida Argos football team has risen to become an NCAA Division II national semifinalist in two years.
UWF, which fielded its first-ever football team a year ago with a 5-6 record, is now sitting at 10-3, including a 6-1 mark on the road as it prepares to travel once more to challenge No. 3 Indiana University of Pennsylvania this Saturday, Dec. 9, in the national semifinals. Kickoff is at 11 a.m. Central Time.
No team before now had been to the NCAA Division II playoffs in only its second year of existence, much less a semifinal. UWF did so with a shutout of No. 16 Wingate, 31-0, and close wins over Gulf South Conference foes West Georgia and GSC champion West Alabama, 28-21, to claim the Super Region 2 title.
“We’re playing very good football right now. Our team believes in each other. They trust each other and we’re having a lot of fun. We are just trying to keep it together and keep playing,” said UWF Head Coach Pete Shinnick. “We want to keep winning. It’s been a lot of fun. This is a great group to coach. They show up every day and work hard. It’s been an enjoyable process.”
Talk of adding football at West Florida began more than a decade ago, but became a reality in 2011 when then President Judy Bense raised a white helmet over her head at an on-campus pep rally and announced the start of the program.
In February 2014, Athletic Director Dave Scott announced the hire of Shinnick as head coach after seven seasons as head coach at UNC Pembroke. At Pembroke, Shinnick built a football program from the ground up and made it competitive in short time with back-to-back nine-win seasons in years two and three and a playoff appearance in year three – at the time, the fastest a start-up program made the playoffs. UWF has now broken that mark, reaching the playoffs in its second season.
“It was a great thing bringing him in because he’d done it before. When we had hurdles or challenges, he’d say, ‘here’s what we did,’ and he had a great insight into moving things forward,” Scott said.
On day one in Pensacola, Shinnick said all he was introduced to was a corner, a desk and a phone. It was a year and a half before Shinnick would hear the sound of pads hitting in a practice.
“It was a long time away from coaching, but it really allowed us to get the foundation we were looking for and create the type of program that we wanted to have,” he said.
He immediately set out to begin to sell the opportunity to build a tradition of Argos Football.
“We felt like there was enough tradition (in the Gulf South Conference) that we were joining, along with how we feel about Pensacola and UWF, that we had a great selling point,” Shinnick said. “Our vision was we were going to be competitive in the conference and try to be one of the top teams in this conference. If you’re one of the top teams in the Gulf South Conference, statistically proven, it shows you have an opportunity to be successful in the playoffs.”
After hiring his staff and finding players who fit the program, UWF fielded a small roster in the Fall of 2015 to begin practice and conducted five on-campus scrimmages. Word began to gather around Pensacola about the Argos. UWF defeated Ave Maria, 45-0, in its inaugural game, and then brought college football to Pensacola on Sept. 20, 2016 to draw more than 6,000 fans to Blue Wahoo Stadium in downtown Pensacola. The fans continued to show up to give UWF an average home attendance of 6,328 to rank No. 18 in NCAA D2.
Scott says the addition of football has rounded out an already successful athletics program, which has won nine team national titles and 16 individual national titles in Division II since 1996.
“It’s created a great interest in our institution,” Scott said. “We’re celebrating our 50 years as a great academic institution, and I think what football has done is create a greater awareness of our institution and where it is.”
This year’s run to the semifinals began with a goal to simply be better than last year. That turned into a 7-3 regular season, which helped the Argos claim votes in the national poll for the first time and earn the No. 6 seed in the Super Region 2 bracket. The run has already earned Shinnick the honor of American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Region 2 Coach of the Year. He is now a finalist for National Coach of the Year.
Scott says the reaction around campus and the community has been one word – unbelievable.
“I know the coaches have always believed, and the student-athletes, they truly believe they can go all the way, and we think they can too, but it’s hard to believe that it’s in the second year of this program. There’s a lot of young student-athletes out there performing at a really high level,” Scott said.
Shinnick says the respect they have for the competition in the GSC and the support received from the community and UWF administration, including Scott, former President Bense and new President Martha Saunders, has helped the team reach this point. All around the program are enjoying the run.
“It’s a crazy ride right now and a learning experience,” Scott said. “We’re very excited for our program and our university, and hopefully we can keep going forward. We’re two games away from a Cinderella dream story.”
Follow Megginson on Twitter @jcmeggs. Email comments to megginsonjc@gmail.com.
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