Leaderboard

This hire is starting to grow on me the more I look into it. My initial reaction was “meh” but most of the comments I have seen from West Florida folks are something to the effect of “Towson has no idea what a great coach they just landed”. He seems to be well loved by players and fans.

Same, wouldn’t winning be more fun with 10,000 people jumping up and down as opposed to 504 family members of the players? Also more people coming to campus means more money for the local businesses which is a good thing

Honestly Dont care if 504 ppl show up. If he makes us a winner it’s good by me

For those stats geeks amongst you, last season, UWF averaged 4,403 attendance for its home games, with 3 crowds in excess of 5K, the highest being 5,503. I wasn’t able to determine their maximum seating capacity, though I believe it’s not much more than 5K. OTOH, last season we averaged 5,567 per home game attendance. However, if you redact the season high in attendance, 9,784 vs Morgan (driven in no small measure by Morgan fans) our average attendance for the remainder of our home games was 4,513, or just 110 people per game higher than UWF’s average attendance. In fact, UWF’s highest attendance for 1 game, 5,503, surpassed all of our single game attendance figures, with the exception of the Morgan game & the UNH game, where the attendance was 5 people more (5,508) than UWF’s highest attendance (5,503)

I think the conversation about recruiting and staff assembly is ultimately more interesting than looking back at the past accomplishments, but one thing I do find interesting when you look at Shinnick's time at UNC-Pembroke is he started the program back up had .676 winning percentage (50-24) and they made two NCAA D2 Tournament appearances. Since he left, they have made one tournament appearance and had a .435 winning percentage (37-48). I think one thing that I am always interesting in coaching hires is has the coach won at a place where others have trouble winning and/or taken jobs where they have had to create success rather than walking into it. My guess is West Florida put some good resources into being good in D2 and being in Florida doesn't hurt. However, I just looked at the history of D2 National Championships and it appears West Florida's national title in 2019 and its appearance in the championship game in 2017 are the only ones every in D2 history by a college/university from the state of Florida. Of course, there are so many D1 Florida schools and they generally aim higher than trying to be good at the D2 level, but it is still an impressive accomplishment as far as I can tell. Like I said it is hard to have complete context to judge the hire, but I do like that in general the two places Shinnick has been a head coach he has been a program builder. It will be different at this level, but I am glad we hired someone with experience doing this because we do need someone who understands this. Rob took as to the highest level of the FCS, and I think at minimum I would like to see Shinnick make us a consistent playoff team that makes some runs. What that looks like in the modern landscape of college football over the next 3-5 years I have no idea.