Twelve months ago, Pittsburg State was celebrating its third MIAA championship in four seasons.
On Sunday, the Gorillas announced they are moving on from the coach who delivered the most recent one.
Pitt State Vice President of Athletics Anthony Crespino announced today that Tom Anthony will not return as head coach. The school will conduct a national search for the program’s 17th head coach.
The release did not name an interim coach or a timeline for a hire.
Crespino said he has “seen firsthand how much Tom cares about our players,” and thanked Anthony and his family for their work in Pittsburg.
Anthony leaves the program with a 22-13 record over three seasons.
Pitt State opened 2026 ranked #4 in Division II, but a year that started with high expectations saw the Gorillas finish 4-7. They lost the opener 42-14 to #1 Ferris State at Carnie Smith Stadium. That game was a rematch of the biggest win of Anthony’s tenure: Pitt State beat the Bulldogs 19-3 to open the 2024 season, and Ferris State then went on to win 31 straight games.
This fall’s losses also included a 21-10 home loss to MIAA rival Emporia State, a 24-23 loss to #25 West Alabama and a 42-17 loss to Fort Hays State.
Anthony went 8-3 and reached the NCAA Division II playoffs in his 2024 debut. He went 10-3 in 2025 with an MIAA title and the program’s fourth straight playoff appearance before the disappointing finish this fall.
Anthony came to Pitt State in December 2019 as Brian Wright’s defensive coordinator and was promoted to associate head coach/defensive coordinator before the 2022 season. In June 2023, he left coaching for a non-coaching job in Ohio. Six months later, Wright left for FCS Northern Arizona, and then-athletic director Jim Johnson called Anthony at his home in Cincinnati to offer him the job. Pitt State introduced him as its 16th head coach on December 3, 2023.
Before Pitt State, Anthony was the defensive coordinator at Western Illinois (FCS) and Texas Southern (2016-18). He also coached at Augustana, St. Francis, Youngstown State, Miami (Ohio), Lake Erie and Baldwin Wallace.
There aren’t many Division II jobs where a conference title one year earlier doesn’t buy a coach another season. Pitt State is one of those proud programs.
Johnson called it the winningest program in Division II when he hired Anthony, and it won national titles in 1991 and 2011. The standard in Pittsburg is the playoffs every November, and a 4-7 season from a team that started in the top five nationally didn’t meet it.
Tradition and a long winning history make this one of the best jobs in Division II, and the next coach takes over a program one season removed from a league championship.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest on the search.