From Volunteer to Position Coach: Trey Money’s Unlikely Rise at South Carolina
Trey Money’s path to becoming South Carolina’s linebackers coach is as unconventional as his name suggests. The North Carolina native could have played college football at a lower level out of high school, but chose instead to attend Appalachian State, where he immediately embedded himself in the program as a student assistant from 2014-16 before becoming a graduate assistant in 2017. That stretch coincided with a strong run for the Mountaineers, who went 37-14 and won back-to-back Sun Belt titles during his time there — all while Money earned a finance degree he jokes was secondary to his real focus. “I like to tell everybody my degree says finance, but I really majored in football, and that was kind of something that I picked up along the side,” he told The State. “I knew that I wanted to coach as soon as I got out of high school. I was able to get my foot in the door and took off volunteering for three years, which has got me where I am today.”
From App State, Money built experience at two Power Four programs, working as a graduate assistant with the inside linebackers under Hall of Fame coach Paul Johnson at Georgia Tech in 2018, then with the safeties at Louisville in 2019. That background sets up a broader point about coaches who never played beyond high school — a group sometimes assumed to be at a disadvantage, despite counterexamples like Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, who won a Super Bowl without ever playing college or pro football. Money doesn’t see his path as a weakness, explaining, “One of the narratives that gets pushed is, if you didn’t play college ball, if you didn’t go on to play in the NFL, then maybe you don’t quite know as much. But the way I kind of look at that is, by not playing college ball for three years, that was three years that I got to spend extra on the coaching side of it. … So that when I was able to become a graduate assistant and start coaching and start doing more, I had three years under my belt already.”
After a two-year return to App State working in quality control, Money landed at South Carolina in 2022 as a defensive graduate assistant under Shane Beamer, securing the job despite having no prior connection to defensive coordinator Clayton White — the two were eventually linked through a mutual contact. From there, his rise was steady: promoted to linebackers analyst in 2023, assistant linebackers coach in 2024, and finally linebackers coach this past January. White has been a constant throughout that climb, telling The State, “He’s been in the linebacker role for five years with me. If I wasn’t coaching them, he was. He’s prepared every meeting since we’ve been here, and prepared every tape. He’s basically been coaching the linebackers with me.” White also praised Money’s readiness for the promotion, adding, “In this business, if you can reward somebody with something like that, I think it’s a great opportunity. He’s put the work in. Great guy, great coach, great family. The players love him. … To them there was no difference. Now I just let him run the meetings.”
Money’s development work speaks for itself — he’s helped shape South Carolina linebackers including future pros Demetrius Knight and Bam Martin-Scott, along with All-SEC selection Debo Williams. Current players echo White’s praise, with linebacker Shawn Murphy saying, “Coach Money is all about ball. He’s a great guy, a great dude all around. He really pours into us every day. He’s excited to be in the building to take care of us. He makes sure we know what we’re supposed to know and where we’re supposed to be.”
Money hit a personal milestone with the promotion too — he’d set a goal of becoming a position coach by 30 and got there just a few weeks before turning 31. Looking ahead, while he has aspirations of one day becoming a defensive coordinator, his focus for now stays squarely on his current role: “At the end of the day, my number one job is make sure that Clayton White’s the best defensive coordinator in the SEC.”
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