Argos ready to suit up for first football season [podcast]

The University of West Florida plays its first football game on Sept. 3 in Naples, Fla. against Ave Maria University.

Dr. Judy Bense, UWF president, can’t wait.

“I had lunch with the head football coach, Pete Shinnick, yesterday, and he is raring to go,” Bense told Inweekly. “He’s counting the days until the players arrive, which is August 9th and 10th.”

Dr. Bense became the fifth president of the university on July 1, 2008. She placed a priority on creating a full college campus experience at West Florida, which had been considered primarily a commuter school before she took over.

“One of my number one goals has been to try to get the University of West Florida on the path to be a real university, like the ones many of us attended with student life and activities and a downtown presence and engaging the community,” she said. That needed to be done for a long time and I’m really glad that we’ve made a lot of progress.”

Adding a football program was important.

“Everybody’s gotten on board with the ’real university’ concept, and football is just kind of the cherry on to,” said Dr. Bense. “I mean, you know, what’s bad about that? Nothing other than it took forever.”

In 2008, Inweekly published an April Fools’ Day issue that touted UWF was adding a football program with its first home game versus Norte Dame at the Community Maritime Park on Sept. 10, 2010. The school’s athletic department was flooded with ticker requests.

The newspaper was off by six years, and the Argos are playing Ave Maria, not Notre Dame, but the article sparked discussion.

“College football is something that people like and that they want to do it,” said Dr. Bense. “I know we’re not a typical college town, but by gosh there’s a college in this town and it’s a great university and we’re the only ones that can bring college football to Pensacola, so like why not?”

She added, “I’m a true believer in trying to give people what they want and once you do that and have that attitude, a lot of things flow from that. I listened to people. We had focus groups and football was always at the top of the list.”

When some wanted to go immediately to Division 1 and play in the SEC, Dr. Bense told them, “That is down the road, but we’re by gosh going to start football.”