Former Buff Shinnick Leads UWF To National Title Game

Roughly 13 months ago, the West Florida Argonauts were finishing up their first football season in the university's history.

It was, in the words of head coach Pete Shinnick, a "tough stretch" for the Pensacola, Fla., school. In their final three games of the year, the Argos lost 45-21 to West Alabama, 51-3 to North Alabama and 69-0 to West Georgia to finish their season 5-6.

A tough stretch, indeed.

Not that such results are unexpected for a fledgling program, especially one whose roster included approximately 70 freshmen. New programs are expected to take their lumps. The Argonauts definitely took theirs.

But Shinnick, a former University of Colorado offensive lineman who played under Bill McCartney, never let his staff or players lose faith.

"We wanted to learn from our mistakes and not be in that position again," Shinnick said. "That's something that we talked about a lot as soon as last season ended. We told ourselves, 'This isn't going to be what we do, this isn't how we're going to be viewed. We need to do a much better job.'"

That is exactly what the Argonauts did — and today, they are one of the more amazing success stories in college football annals, at any level.

You see, Saturday afternoon, Shinnick's Argonauts will play for the Division II national championship against Texas A&M-Commerce at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City.

Consider that for just a moment.

In its second year of existence, a program whose players still dress in single-wide trailers masquerading as locker rooms, a program that plays its home games on a baseball field and still has twice as many underclassmen as upperclassmen, is now 11-3 and will play for a national championship.

"To tell you the truth, it's hard to put into words," Shinnick said earlier this week. "We're just having fun, enjoying the process and trying to get a little bit better every day. I'm sure when the season is over we'll have time to reflect a little more on what it all means, but right now we're getting ready for another game."

The Argonauts' path is, quite simply, unprecedented in NCAA history. In fact, the last team to come close to such an accomplishment was the 2009 UNC-Pembroke squad, which advanced to the D-II playoffs in its third year of existence.

The Braves' coach in that stretch?

Pete Shinnick.

Yes, this is the second time Shinnick has taken a program from startup to the playoffs.

"The first time was pure curiosity, and also the opportunity to get back a little closer to my wife's family," Shinnick said. "I'd been in California with my family (he was the head coach at Azusa Pacific from 1999-2005, where he took the Cougars to the playoffs five times in seven years) and we thought that was great. But we had really enjoyed my time as a graduate assistant at Clemson, and it was an opportunity to get back to that area. I thought it would be a great challenge to take on and I loved it."

But then Shinnick heard that West Florida, a school in the picturesque Florida panhandle city of Pensacola, was going to start a football program. He inquired, interviewed — and was given the keys to a car that didn't yet exist.

"Pensacola is a great place and the University of West Florida is a fantastic university," Shinnick said. "I felt like if we could do it right, we could have success. We've been blessed, we've been fortunate … and here we are."

Shinnick spent two years establishing the foundation for the program. That meant everything from recruiting players to scrambling for some semblance of facilities to addressing every other detail that most head coaches take for granted.

It was a process he had instituted before — and one for which he still used lessons learned nearly 30 years ago from his former head coach.

"Coach Mac (Bill McCartney) knew how to build a team and knew how to build a culture," Shinnick said. "I think culture is probably the thing I take most from that experience at Colorado. Getting people to believe, getting people to be on the same page. I learned a lot through that experience that obviously has stuck with me through my coaching career."

Shinnick came to Colorado as an offensive lineman from Columbia, Mo., in 1983 — a point when the CU program had hit bottom. In his first year in Boulder, the Buffs finished 4-7. A year later, they went 1-10 — at that time, the worst season in CU history.

But in 1985, the Buffs turned the corner, carving out a 7-5 record and qualifying for a bowl game in McCartney's fourth season. A year later — Shinnick's last with CU — the Buffs finished second in the Big Eight, beat Nebraska for the first time in 19 years and qualified for a second straight bowl game.

"A couple of those years were really hard," Shinnick said. "Then, my last couple of years, Coach Mac and his whole staff did a fantastic job in guiding us. You look at the guys who were on that staff and how many head coaches came from that group and it's amazing."

While the Buffs weren't technically starting from scratch, the parallels of rebuilding a program are lessons that stayed with Shinnick through the years. He has used that approach to gather support from the community, the UWF administration and student body — and to recruit.

"Coach Mac tells a great story about when he came to CU on his interview," Shinnick said. "You're coming in from the airport and you see Boulder — whether it's day or night, Boulder is gorgeous. I remember him saying, 'Surely I can out-recruit somebody from Lincoln, Nebraska.' Pensacola has a lot of those kinds of qualities, where you say, 'Gosh, surely somebody would want to come here and be a part of this.' I took a little from what Coach Mac was able to provide. We have a great university, a great place and I have a staff that understands the type of guy that we're looking for. They do a fantastic job of that and we've been able to go out and sell the vision."

Shinnick graduated from CU in 1988 with a degree in business. But as the son of a 13-year NFL veteran and longtime NFL assistant coach, Don Shinnick, his career quickly turned to coaching. He took at job as an assistant at Richmond in 1988, and he coached at six more stops (Arkansas, Clemson, Oregon State, Northern Michigan, St. Cloud State, Humboldt State) before getting his first head coaching opportunity in 1999 at Azusa Pacific.

Now, he and his players are living a fairy-tale season that has captivated the community. A new football facility with real locker rooms and offices is in the works. Games at Blue Wahoos Stadium — a baseball stadium that is actually a terrific football facility as well — draw capacity crowds.

"It's off the charts at this point in time," Shinnick said. "Everybody has been extremely supportive and extremely gracious through the process. Last year, we got beat 69-0 in our last game. For every to come back out and support us this year, and be behind us like they have been, has been nothing but fantastic."

It has indeed been a season to remember.

"At one point this year, we were 4-2," Shinnick said. "I told the guys, 'Look — your best is good enough to beat anybody in the country. But your good is going to get us beat, your average is going to get us killed.' The good news is we haven't gotten killed."

Rather, the Argos have spent their time avenging those lopsided losses of a year ago.

Last year, it was West Georgia who dealt UWF that 69-0 thumping in the season finale.

This year, the Argonauts beat West Georgia in their regular season finale to earn a spot in the playoffs as their region's No. 10 seed and again in the second round of the playoffs.

"We have a saying here — we expect to win every game we're in, but we meet that expectation with smart, hard work," Shinnick said. "We have literally talked our guys through what that looks like. Every week we say we expect to win, but we have to put the work in if we expect to win. We expect to win and we meet that expectation with smart, hard work."

The Argonauts have also knocked off two Super Region No. 1 seeds (West Alabama and unbeaten Indiana, Pa.) and are now one game away from what would have been deemed impossible just a few short months ago.

"That's another thing from Coach Mac," Shinnick said. "He created a vision of what his program was going to look like. We did the same thing here — we had to create a vision that we were going to be a top program, that we were going to be a team that competed for the Gulf South Conference Championship. We sold that vision, our guys have bought in.

"Now we're obviously a little bit ahead of schedule, but we'll take it."

BROADCAST: Saturday's Division II national championship game between West Florida and Texas A&M-Commerce will kick off at 4 p.m. at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas, and will be broadcast live on ESPN2 HD/ESPN3.com.

Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu

Former Buff Shinnick Leads UWF To National Title Game

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