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A Troup legend has returned to the sidelines. Ten years after hanging up his whistle and retiring from coaching, Bubba Jeter is back. The long-time Tiger and former two-time Troup head football coach has come out of retirement to coach the linebackers for the 2025 season.

“When I hung up the whistle 10 years ago, I thought it was for good, but [head coach Tanner Glisson] has been talking to me for the last few months, and I just felt like this was the right opportunity at the right time to return,” Jeter said. “I was sitting on a lake I built here at my house, and he called me, wanted to come talk to me. And we came outside on a little pavilion by my lake, and we sat out here and talked football for a while, and he just asked me if I’d be interested in coming and helping them out in a few areas.”

The bonds on the Troup High football team are one of the main reasons that prompted Jeter’s return. Jeter shares a strong connection with Glisson, but it’s his relationship with defensive coordinator JC Copeland that really made him come back. Copeland was a standout player for the Tigers before enjoying a collegiate career at LSU and a brief stint in the NFL. 

Jeter refers to Copeland as his son.

“I’ve got JC out there, who’s my son, and he’s running the defense. And those two guys are really, you know, if Tanner wasn’t there and JC wasn’t in the role that he was in, I don’t know that I would have done it, but I think the world of those two men,” Jeter said. 

Jeter left Troup High in 2010 to join the coaching staff at Northgate. A few short years later, Jeter decided it was time to call it quits on his coaching career, a move he thought would stick at the time. 

There are few, if anybody, in Troup’s history who is as intertwined as Jeter is with the Tigers’ football program. Jeter played for the Tigers in the 1970s and has the distinction of being the only two-time head football coach in Troup’s history, compiling a record of 36-28 across six seasons. Jeter also previously served as the athletic director at Troup High School.

Jeter was the defensive coordinator in 2001 when the Tigers made their first state semifinal appearance.

“This place has been very good to me over the years,” Jeter said. “I couldn’t ask for any more than it’s given me.”

Jeter may be in his early 60s now, but he is still going strong. The summer heat has done little to slow down the fiery Jeter as he has jumped right back into the fray.

“It’s like riding a bike. I felt comfortable. I got out there, got my linebacker drill set up before they got out there,” Jeter said. “I was a little nervous at first, believe it or not. It was my first time back doing it in 10 years, but once I got that whistle around my neck, and I got those linebackers over there, and started doing those drills that I’ve done for years and years and years, I just felt right back at home.”

With that summer Georgia sun beating down outside, the Tigers have been practicing indoors in the facility named after the legend himself. For the next two months, Troup is prepping for the 2025 season in the “Bubba Jeter Indoor Practice Facility.”

As a Troup student or coach, Jeter has participated in 304 football games across 28 seasons. In the fall, he will once again be adding to his tally, and he would have it no other way. 

“The first year I was retired from coaching was the strangest feeling in the world, because when that first fall hit, it was like my body, for 30 years, had been geared for Friday night at 7:30. To be coaching football in the fall, something was missing. I could just tell something in my life, something in my makeup of my body and my heart, my mind was just missing,” Jeter said. “It feels good to be back. I’m having a ball out there.”