UIW to add football
Web Posted: 04/16/2007 05:58 PM CDT
Tom Orsborn
Express-News Staff Writer
University of the Incarnate Word president Louis Agnese will announce Tuesday the school is starting a football program and could begin play as soon as 2009, sources told the San Antonio Express-News on Monday.
The announcement will come at 2 p.m. at a news conference at the McDermott Convocation Center on the school’s campus.
New Orleans Saints owner and UIW booster Tom Benson will attend the news conference with his wife Gayle and several Saints players to help Agnese make the announcement.
Benson, a San Antonio auto magnate and banker with strong ties to the city and school, funded the faculty chair for banking and finance at UIW two decades ago.
Agnese told the Express-News in 2004 that UIW has discussed adding football twice during his 19-year-tenure as president, but because of a desire for equal numbers of male and female athletes, a football program has never come to fruition.
Also in 2004, Lone Star Conference officials visited the school in what the league’s commissioner called a “fact-finding mission.”
UIW is currently a member of the Heartland Conference and competes with the LSC in NCAA Division II.
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