Controversial High School Football Coach Rush Propst Cusses Out Rival During Angry Tirade To Begin First Year With New Program

Rush Propst is considered to be the most (in)famous high school football coach in America and he is already making waves at his new job. The 65-year-old picked up right where he left off.

Propst, who was named the head coach of Pell City High School in Alabama on March 31, had been away from the sport since 2021. Now, two years after his most recent firing, the new chapter is underway and it has already devolved into mayhem!

An angry tirade highlighted (lowlighted?) a contentious 7-on-7 preseason tournament and ended with Propst cussing out Pell City's biggest rival. The fireworks have already begun!

Who is Rush Propst?

For the 2006/2007 MTV fans, you might remember Propst from his days at Hoover High School, where he was the polarizing head figure for the show 'Two-A-Days.'

Rush Propst during MTV and Humidity Entertainment, 2006 Premiere of "TWO - A - DAYS, Hoover High"(Photo by Rick Diamond/WireImage)

The show aired in the 10:30pm ET time slot right after 'Laguna Beach.' It was essentially a high school 'Hard Knocks' that chronicled the lives of the players for Hoover's highly-ranked football team.

High school football in the South is a religion and athletes are considered celebrities, so the show had plenty of drama surrounding the Buccaneers. At the forefront of the gridiron stage was the hard-nosed head coach, who used his fire and brimstone persona to intimidate and provoke his players into success. He was the hardest of hard-asses and it lead to some pretty amazing quotes that would have gone viral (for good or for bad) in today's social media era.

Propst won five state championships and 110 games in his nine years at Hoover, but his tenure came to an abrupt ending in 2007 after a myriad of issues arose. First, he got in trouble for allegedly altering players grades so they'd be eligible to suit up for the Bucs, as well as qualify for college scholarships.

Then things got messy in his personal life...

After months of rumors, Hoover's Board of Education released a report that said Propst had an affair with the school administrator who helped to fudge the grades. He was married to his high school sweetheart with three children at the time. In addition, he had an entire second family in another part of the state, and allegedly had another affair with a young Hoover teacher while on a school site visit.

For those keeping track at home, that means Propst had a wife and kids, a second "wife and kids," a girlfriend on the side and was still sleeping around. Some of it allegedly. He resigned from Hoover in October of 2007, divorced his wife in 2008 and married his current wife with whom he has four children not long thereafter. And that's only the beginning!

Propst's "redemption" story started in Georgia.

Shortly after stepping down in Alabama, Colquitt County High School in Georgia made Propst the state's highest-paid coach at a whopping $141,000 a year. He amassed 119 wins and two state championships during his decade with the school and had back-to-back undefeated seasons in 2014 and 2015. ESPN documented the story on E60:

Things were great on the surface but once again, scandal followed. Propst was suspended for an entire year in 2016 after head-butting a player during the state playoffs.

That was the least of his problems.

In February of 2019, Colquitt County placed Propst on administrative leave and launched an investigation into "personnel issues." The school subsequently fired him a month later.

Among the most serious allegations, Propst was accused of dispensing "pills" to his players. Colquitt's report said that he gave a pill to a player, who later seemed lethargic, during halftime of a 2012 game and later promised not to provide any more medication to his athletes. Efforts to eradicate the pill problem failed and Propst was accused of again dispensing (undisclosed) medication during the 2018 season, as well as failing to show up for 21 half or whole days of work without notifying his boss. He also reportedly became enraged when the school's superintendent told Propst that the team could no longer stay in a hotel the night before a home game.

If that wasn't enough, outside reports also said that Propst owed nearly $450,000 in state and federal taxes dating back to 2010. Yikes.

Propst couldn't stay out of trouble.

The debacle at Colquitt kept Propst out of a high school job in 2019 and he spent the year as a volunteer consultant at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Despite his history of absurdity, winning football games is everything in the South and Propst received his next opportunity with Valdosta High School after one year off. He took over one of the winningest high school football programs in the country in 2020 and immediately got into trouble.

364 days after he was hired at Valdosta, Propst's program was hit with sanctions. The GHSA levied a $7,500 fine against the school and ordered the Wildcats to forfeit seven wins from the season prior. It also banned the team from playing in the 2021 postseason (something that has never happened in Georgia), and declared a handful of player ineligible for the next season.

The ban put the Wildcats out of the postseason for the first time since 2008.

Boosters made things messy.

An investigation into the program was the result of comments that Propst made on a secretly-recorded conversation with a former booster on May 16, 2020. The booster is known as 'Nub' because he only has one arm.

Nub recorded the head coach asking for "funny money" to help pay living expenses for families with superstar sons who wanted to move to the city and play for his team.

Propst smears the college football operating system and accused two high-profile programs of paying its players on the 14-minute call. He may not be wrong, because "Bag Man" culture was rampant on the FBS level, but it opened up a can of worms.

Rush Propst put Valdosta in a tough spot.

Propst claimed that former Alabama head coach Bear Bryant built an illegal slush fund for recruiting. He also claimed that current Georgia head coach Kirby Smart paid Nick Chubb "three $60,000 donations" to return to the Bulldogs for his senior season. Chubb even addressed the allegations.

Having implicated some of the nation's top collegiate coaches and athletes, Propst then went on to say that the police department provided him with "$30,000 of drug money" from a narcotics raid in the area while at Hoover. Then he told Nub that boosters gave him an additional $4,500 a month on top of his salary at Colquitt.

That money paid his cellphone and truck payments as well as part of his mortgage. He discussed all of his previous stops only to circle back and request "at least $10,000 cash" to help bring four- and five-star recruits to Valdosta.

Jake Garcia, a four-star quarterback in the Class of 2021 who recently transferred from Miami to Mizzou, was the biggest name to transfer. Amari Jones was another.

Nub says that he did not leak the tape. He did say that he turned it over to Valdosta school officials and GHSA investigators. From there, the GHSA dug deeper into the program and imposed its sanctions.

Netflix followed Propst at Valdosta.

Propst's tenure at Valdosta was subject of Netflix's 'Titletown High.' The reality television show was essentially a modern remake of MTV's 'Two-A-Days,' but at a new school.

Although the documentary didn't get into the gritty details of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans, it was clear that something was going on. Garcia's transfer and the dissension surrounding his move was a big focus of the show.

Rush Propst was later let go just months before the series went live on Netflix.

The Valdosta board decided not to renew the head coach's contract in April 2021. It later reconsidered its decision to fire Propst, but ultimately chose to stick with it.

Propst was out of coaching for the 2021 and 2022 seasons after Valdosta cut him loose, outside of a brief offseason stint as an associate head coach. And then Pell City, a program that won just one game last year, came calling.

Rush Propst is back and he's not slowing down!

Pell City was recently paired with its biggest rival, Oxford, during a 7-on-7 tournament – in Hoover, of all places. Propst's team got smacked and lost big.

He was full of anger as his team took the field for one last play of a 30-2 loss.

Joseph Goodman of AL.com was at the tournament and described the scene:

Oxford won 30-2. Getmanshchuk threw a couple interceptions early and things spiraled from there. Pell City had the ball with time for one more play, and Oxford’s sideline decided to use that moment to taunt their rivals.
"Mercy rule," shouted the Oxford players.
"Make their asses quit," shouted one of Oxford's coaches.
There was nothing casual or friendly about the moment. It was just 7-on-7, but Oxford wanted to make a point. Rush who? For Propst, the outburst from Oxford's coach was too much for him to handle. Propst took a few sudden paces onto the field. He was angry.
"Hey!" Propst screamed. "F---- you!"

Pell City's assistant coaches had to pull Propst back. Things eventually calmed down, but the tone was set.

Rush Propst has not changed at all. His coaching style has not softened.

Get your popcorn ready!