Alan Dell: Life couldn't be better for former Manatee High football coach Joe Kinnan

Joe Kinnan has shown it's never too late to hit the trifecta of life.

Last week, the former Manatee High football coach received the Florida Athletic Coaches Association's Dub Palmer Award for his outstanding service to the sport.

It followed the good news from his doctors, who told Kinnan he was cancer-free after multiple surgeries that included removal of part of his kidney.

All of that was preceded by the standout season Kinnan had in helping the USF football team and his former pupil, Willie Taggart, get to its first bowl game since 2010.

FACA honored Kinnan for his five state championships and 290 victories at Manatee in building the program into a national power.

Kinnan has always been praised for being an innovative person, but he may have done his best job in reinventing himself at the age of 70, though you could say he just upgraded what was already an elite model.

"It was a lot of work, but certainly very fruitful," Kinnan says. "We were making so many changes, it took considerably longer than normal. Hopefully next year won't be as rigorous as the time we had to spend because now we are pretty much on the same page."

Kinnan left Manatee after the 2013 season and

joined Taggart's staff as senior offensive consultant last spring. It was a chance to say thanks to the person who quarterbacked Manatee to a state title and two state championship games during the mid 1990s.

"I inject my two cents worth of what we are doing and how we are doing it," Kinnan said. "I look at and analyze and evaluate and watch practices and make comments about the things that I see."

Kinnan and Taggart are alike in many ways. They are both proactive individuals. It's a quality that helped Kinnan in his battle against cancer and it helped Taggart in fixing the ailing offense he struggled with during his first two years as USF head coach.

USF went from 118th in total offense to 35th last season. The Bulls were 10th in rushing offense and 39th in red-zone offense after finishing 114th and 118th, respectively, in 2014.

"If you can run the football and stay away from turnovers and get turnovers from the other side and block and tackle, you have a chance for success," Kinnan says.

The biggest adjustment for Kinnan was not living at home in Bradenton. He got an apartment in Tampa and living there, away from his wife, was a little more trying than the long hours he put in coaching. But as Taggart has said on many occasions, passion supplies energy, and football runs through Kinnan's blood.

"We had a lot of late nights because of the renovation and rebuilding of what we were doing offensively," Kinnan said. "We went from the West Coast Offense to what we coined the Gulf Coast Offense."

As a consultant, Kinnan doesn't coach the players, but his input to the coaching staff was invaluable, especially with everyone adjusting to a new role.

"We were all on the same page developing and evolving an offense that was different than what had previously been done as far as the no-huddle and running options, a lot of what we call RPOs (Run Pass Options)," Kinnan said.

USF broke 30 offensive school records and turned out five of the 10 most productive games in USF history. Quinton Flowers ran for 991 yards and was ranked fourth among FBS quarterbacks in averaging 76.2 yard per carry.

"It takes a while for kids to buy into something new and it was a new experience for Coach Taggart in calling plays under the system," Kinnan said. "We got better and he got better with our tempo and eliminating what didn't work. Now we are evaluating what we did and trying to correct the process,"

After starting 1-3, the Bulls won seven of eight regular season games before losing the Miami Beach Bowl to Western Kentucky.

Kinnan doesn't expect his role to change next year and enjoys being a consultant and sounding board for Taggart. He coached two quarterbacks at Manatee who were similar to Flowers at the collegiate level in Tommie Frazier and Taggart, who are among the best all-time in NCAA Division I.

This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Alan Dell: Life couldn't be better for former Manatee High football coach Joe Kinnan ."