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Rush Propst used to battle Vestavia Hills et al for region football titles. Now, he faces Valdosta, Lowndes and Warner Robbins, Northside.

The Ohatchee native and who left the wildly successful Hoover program amid controversy was announced as the new head coach at Colquitt County High School in Moultrie, Ga., on Wednesday.

Propst assumes control of a program that has fallen on hard times in recent years while powerful South Georgia rivals have lived the Hoover life. It's like coming home.

"They're very hungry people," Propst said. "They want their football program to be successful, and it has not been.

"It was the same situation at Hoover. Everybody around Hoover was winning. Vestavia had just won a state championship in '98. Pelham was good. Mountain Brook was good. Everybody was good, and Hoover wasn't."

Propst interviewed for the job over the weekend and accepted it Tuesday. He also looked into jobs in Florida and Alabama, including Alma Bryant and Robert E. Lee in Alabama.

He said he preferred to go out of Alabama because of advantages with the state retirement system. He was in no hurry to get back into coaching.

"I was prepared to stay out a year, if I had to," he said. "I wasn't going to coach, because I was not going to go put myself in another situation that I felt uncomfortable or things just wasn't exactly right."

Propst said he was sold on the one-town, one-school concept at Colquitt County. This after he worked in the Hoover school system, which oversees Hoover and Spain Park.

"Not having to battle and play all of those political games, all of those things, that's what attracted me," he said. "… There's 45,000 people that live in that county, and everybody goes to that high school. There's no private schools. There's not another school. It's just all about Packer football."

Propst said he faced tough questions during his job interview, covering the extramarital affair he acknowledged when he resigned at Hoover, an ineligible player that cost Hoover four forfeits in 2007 and a grade-fixing scandal.

"I was honest," he said. "We went through the whole deal from A to Z, and I told them everything that I knew.

"It's not hard to find. All you have to do is Google it, and there's things all over everywhere, and about 90 percent of it is lies and not true."

Propst said he received "tremendous support" from Hoover city officials and friends in his native Northeast Alabama through his ordeal at Hoover and since.

"A lot of people know the true thing that happened," he said. "Most of it, 99 percent of it, was personal agendas. We won so much. We won so long, and people were tired of that.

"Have I made some mistakes? Absolutely. Ain't no question that I made mistakes, but I can tell you what I've never done. I've never changed a grade, never been involved with that, wouldn't be a part of it, wouldn't pressure teachers. The funds, everything had to be signed off on three times there. Never had an affair with anybody inside that school or inside that city.

"We've done it right. There's no question. What we were doing there, we were doing right."

Propst's new challenge involves reviving a program amid thriving rivals. He'll go up against two defending state champions next season in Class 4A Warner Robbins, Northside and Class 5A Lowndes.

Cleburne County coach Michael Shortt, a friend of Propst's, knows the area. He was defensive coordinator at Albany (Ga.) High School from 1986-88. He said Colquitt County's region is "just as tough but probably more athletic" than Alabama's Class 6A, Region 6.

"He's going to have his work cut out for him," Shortt said. "… I think if they're willing to do what he wants to do, they're going to be right back in the mix."