Kirby Cannon will begin his 11th season as the head football coach at S&T after the Miners posted one of the most successful years in recent history in 2008.
Cannon guided the Miners to a record of 7-4 during the year as the Miners had one of the nation's top offensive units, as they led the Great Lakes Football Conference in total offense and ranked 12th nationally with its average of 449.5 yards per game. S&T's scoring average of 37.1 points a game ranked 13th in NCAA Division II.
Defensively, the Miners led the GLFC in rushing defense and were second overall defensively as they held their opponents to 274 points, the lowest total in 14 seasons.
The 7-4 record in 2008 marked the Miners' third winning season in the last four years.
The Miners finished 2006 with a 6-5 record on the heels of a 7-4 mark in 2005, which was the program’s first winning record since 1985. As an NCAA Division II independent, S&T has used its record-setting offense to make strides on the field, as it had the nation’s top passing offense in 2006 and won three games over teams from the NCAA Division I-AA ranks; the Miners have five wins over I-AA opponents in the last four seasons.
S&T averaged 350.9 yards per game through the air in 2006 behind the arm of Joe Winters, the national leader in total offense. A year earlier, the Miners set new modern day records for points scored with 379 and in yards per game with 433.8, marks that were later broken by the 2008 Miners.
The Miners finished 4-7 in 2007 during a season in which the Miners battled numerous injuries. Missouri S&T lost its top two quarterbacks to season-ending injuries within the first four weeks of the season, yet won three of its last four games to finish the campaign on a high note.
Cannon came to S&T in 1999 with the task of rebuilding a Miner program that went through a difficult stretch during the 1990s. The Miners went 3-8 in 2004, which included a victory over No. 23-ranked University of Central Missouri, while facing a schedule that included three teams that made the NCAA Division II playoffs. The Miners showed annual improvement in their play during Cannon’s tenure while playing in the powerful Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association through the 2004 season.
Cannon, who had been an assistant coach at Western Illinois University prior to his selection as the Miners’ head coach in December 1998, played against the Miners while at Missouri State University and coached against S&T as an assistant at Truman State University.
A native of Alexandria, Mo., Cannon faced the Miners as a quarterback at Missouri State, where he received his bachelor’s degree in physical education in 1981. He began his coaching career that year as the defensive coordinator at Ozark High School in southwest Missouri and helped lead that team to its first playoff appearance in school history.
After that two-year stint, Cannon joined the collegiate ranks as a graduate assistant coach at Iowa State University with his primary duties being his work with the tight ends and special teams. Cannon, who also completed work on his master’s degree at ISU in 1985, spent one of those two years as the head coach of the junior varsity program and one year as acting recruiting coordinator.
His next position was defensive coordinator at North Central College in Naperville, Ill., where he helped a struggling program improve to a 19-18-1 mark over the next four years -- the school’s best four-year record in 30 seasons. That helped him get the position of defensive backs coach at Truman State in 1989. He was elevated in 1993 to defensive coordinator.
While at Truman, Cannon also served as recruiting coordinator and helped bring in players that led the Bulldogs to a record of 42-22 over a six-year span and to three appearances in the NCAA Division II playoffs. Truman State finished second to Division II power Pittsburg State in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association in each of the playoff years.
When Bulldog head coach Eric Holm left Truman State after the 1994 season, Cannon followed him to Northern Michigan University to serve in the same roles for the next two years. Northern Michigan had winning seasons during both of those years and had a two-year record of 14-6.
Prior to his arrival at S&T, Cannon was an assistant coach at Western Illinois University, primarily coaching the defensive backs. Over that span, WIU was ranked second in NCAA Division I-AA in 1997 and reached the national semifinals in 1998, falling in that round to eventual runner-up Georgia Southern.
While at Missouri State, Cannon played quarterback for the Bears’ football team and pitched for the baseball team. He held the school record for career pitching wins (25) until it was broken in 2003 by current Oakland Athletics pitcher Brad Ziegler. He received his bachelor’s degree in physical education from the university in 1981.
At S&T, Cannon will work on the defensive side of the ball for the eighth straight season after working with the offensive backs during his first three seasons at the helm of the Miner program.
Cannon and his wife, Lisa, have one son, Josh.
