Kansas University football assistant coach Earle Mosley has resigned for health reasons, and head coach Mark Mangino announced Friday that Louie Matsakis would be Mosley’s replacement.

Mosley, 60, was entering his third year as KU’s running backs coach. Mosley has been in coaching since 1975, with stops at Notre Dame, Stanford and the NFL’s Chicago Bears.

“Earle did an outstanding job with our running backs,” Mangino said in a statement. “He surely will be missed. However, we will continue to encourage Earle as he deals with his health issues.”

Matsakis, 29, will coach the running backs and coordinate the special teams at KU. He spent the last year as special-teams coordinator at NCAA Div. III Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. He is the younger brother of George Matsakis, KU’s director of football operations.

Louie Matsakis previously worked on Mangino’s staff in 2004 and 2005 as director of quality control. In that role, he worked with the special-teams coordinator, worked in an administrative role doing statistical analysis and scouting reports and was involved in on-campus recruiting, camps and clinics.

Matsakis was the special-teams coordinator at Texas State-San Marcos in 2003 and was a special-teams intern at Texas Tech from 2000-02. He was a three-year letterman as a punter and kicker at Emporia State in the 1990s.

¢ Bouncing back: Former KU defensive end Rodney Allen has hopes of landing an NFL contract by the end of the weekend. The 6-foot-3, 280-pounder out of Miami has been contacted by several teams this spring with the NFL draft starting today, despite being hindered for most of his senior season with multiple injuries.

“I’m thankful for being able to get a chance to prove myself,” Allen said, “but dealing with injury this entire season has been disappointing as far as my future and football goes.”

¢ Options: If an NFL career isn’t to be for former KU running back Jon Cornish, a professional career likely still will be.

Since Cornish is a native of British Columbia, he was eligible to be drafted into the Canadian Football League four years after starting college. That was a year ago, when Cornish was taken in the second round by the Calgary Stampeders despite having college eligibility remaining.

Cornish said officials from the Stampeders keep in touch often. Though it’s established that Cornish is interested in the NFL first and foremost, a CFL career will continue to be an option for him.