Football
One of college football’s rising stars will soon climb the ranks in Corvallis.
Kirk Barron, most recently an assistant offensive line coach and football analyst at Alabama, is reportedly set to join JaMarcus Shephard’s staff at Oregon State. The news was first broken by OregonLive.com’s Ryan Clarke.
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Barron, 30, played center at Purdue from 2013-17. He started 25 straight games for the Boilermakers, and was named a team captain in 2016 & 2017. In 2017, Barron helped lead Purdue to a win in the Foster Farms Bowl, their first bowl victory in six seasons, and an overall record of 7-6 – a stark improvement from their five wins in the previous two years combined.
Barron’s football career is marked with luck: after a short NFL stint – minicamp with the Dolphins and training camp with the Bengals in the summer of 2017 – Barron starred in the rebooted minor league XFL, with the Seattle Dragons. Then, as a graduate assistant at Oregon in 2021, he learned under two of the most knowledgable offensive line coaches in America: Alex Mirabal and Mario Cristobal. Two years later, the analyst and assistant offensive line coach at Alabama earned OurCoachingNetwork’s 30 Under 30 honors.
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Like many coaches on JaMarcus Shephard’s inaugural Oregon State coaching staff, Barron has close ties to his new boss: Barron’s senior year at Purdue was Shephard’s first year on that coaching staff, and then the two coaches reunited at Alabama ahead of the 2024 season.
Barron joins Shephard’s staff after Shephard was hired to replace the fired Trent Bray, who went 5-14 in just over two seasons at the helm in Corvallis. Bray was temporarily replaced by Robb Akey, who went 2-3 over the final five contests of the 2025 season.
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