Matt Manninger is in his fifth season on the Illinois football strength staff in 2025 as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. Manninger moved to Champaign after six years as an assistant strength coach at Vanderbilt.
Manninger has helped elevate Illinois with a tough, smart, dependable brand of football during his first four seasons in Champaign. The Illini have 28 wins and 18 Big Ten victories over Manninger's four seasons, highlighted by a 10-win season in 2024 that tied Illinois' single-season record for wins. In 2024, Illinois was ranked by the CFP selection committee for a program-record four straight weeks, appeared in 12 AP Top 25 polls, and tied the program record for ranked wins with four. The Fighting Illini capped one of the best seasons in program history by beating #14 South Carolina in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, 21-17, in one of the top bowl game victories in Illinois history.
Manninger has helped bring the Fighting Illini program back to national relevance with continued appearances in the AP Top 25 and College Football Playoff rankings, two New Year’s Bowls, three national award finalists, and 11 NFL Draft picks since 2021. Illinois has had three national award finalists and seven top-100 draft picks since Yerry's arrival. Jer'Zhan Newton (2023, Nagurski), Chase Brown (2022, Doak), and Devon Witherspoon (2022, Thorpe) gave Illinois three finalists in National College Football Awards Association awards over a two-year span for the first time since 1994-95, while Illinois is one of five schools with three or more players drafted in the first three rounds in the 2023 and 2024 NFL Drafts, along with Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, and Penn State.
Before joining the Vanderbilt program, Manninger worked as a strength intern at Maryland during the 2014 football season. He also served as a strength intern with Idaho student-athletes during the summer of 2014.
As an undergraduate student at Nebraska, Manninger earned a letter in 2012 as a linebacker with the Cornhuskers football team. He earned a bachelor’s degree in dietetics and nutrition/exercise and health sciences from the University of Nebraska and later completed a master’s in human nutrition from Eastern Michigan.
Manninger is certified through the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association.
He married Danielle Manninger (formerly Eckert) in May 2020. They have two sons, JJ and Landon, and one daughter, Daisy.
