After a standout-career as a high schooler at Murfreesboro (Tennessee) Blackman High School, Matthew Leifheit garnered a Football Championship Subdivision opportunity at Tennessee Tech, before injuries cut short his playing career.
Undeterred, Leifheit transferred to the Volunteer State’s flagship school, the University of Tennessee, and began to work his way up in the college football world as a team manager under revered Vols gurus Roger Frazier, Max Parrott and Allen Sitzler.
Now, after most recently working with former UT assistant coach and current Eastern Kentucky head coach Walt Wells, in addition to former Vols staffer Derek Day with the Colonels, Leifheit is getting his chance to climb another rung on the coaching ladder.
Sources tell FootballScoop that Leifheit is joining the Southern Miss staff of Will Hall, who engineered one of college football’s most impressive turnarounds in 2022 when Hall guided the Golden Eagles to a seven-win campaign that included a victory in the Lending Tree Bowl.
Leifheit is joining in an quality control-type of role and expected to work with Southern Miss special teams coordinator Greg Meyer, who continues the Rocky Top connection. Meyer for three years served as the special teams analyst for Butch Jones’s Tennessee squads from 2013-15, helping oversee some of Tennessee’s top special teams performances during that time.
The departure of Leifheit also creates an immediately open quality control position at EKU, which last season under Wells, Day & Co. knocked off Football Bowls Subdivision program Bowling Green and also advanced to the FCS Playoffs.
Coaches interested in the vacancy on the Colonels’ staff can email Garry McPeek, EKU football’s chief of staff: garry.mcpeek@eku.edu