Bubba Brannan has been a football coach much longer than he’s been an administrator, and this fall, he’ll make those years even more lopsided in favor of coaching.

After a seven-year stint at Enterprise, including several seasons as an assistant football coach and the past two years as a high school principal, Brannan will return to the sidelines for the 2022-23 school year. Tuesday morning, he was announced as Clarkdale’s new football coach at a Lauderdale County School Board meeting.

“Coaching is my passion,” Brannan said. “I got into administration because of different family reasons, and I had a great job there, but every day I think about coaching, and I wanted to get back in it.”

Brannan began his football coaching career as an assistant at Quitman for four seasons, followed by his first stint at Enterprise in the mid 2000s. He was also head coach at Stringer for eight years before returning to Enterprise, where he’s spent the past seven years. Once he found out the Clarkdale job came open, Brannan said he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to coach close to home.

“I live about 10 minutes from Clarkdale, so I don’t have to turn my family upside down to do it,” Brannan said. “I know a little bit about the Clarkdale community and their program because I’ve been around it for a while just across the river at Enterprise. I see excitement in their football program.”

Clarkdale principal Brian Jordan said it wasn’t just Brannan’s coaching acumen that stood out during the interview process.

“The fact he’s been a winner everywhere he’s gone stood out to us,” Jordan said. “In the military he excelled, on the football field he excelled, in the classroom he excelled, and he’s excelled as an administrator, so I just knew he’d be a really good fit for Clarkdale.”

Enterprise plays Clarkdale every season, which allowed Brannan to get a first-hand look at the school’s football team prior to the interviewing process.

“In order to be competitive, I think you need kids who are hungry,” Brannan said. “When I watched the Clarkdale kids on film and in person last year, they just looked hungry. They have a desire, and that’s easy to coach when you have kids who really want to do well.”

Brannan replaces Jason Soules, who coached at Clarkdale for four seasons and led the team to an 8-4 record and a playoff berth this past fall. The two previously knew each other as faculty at Enterprise before Soules took the head coaching job at Clarkdale.

“Coach Soules is a friend of mine,” Brannan said. “We’ve known each other for a few years, we’ve coached together at Enterprise, and I think a lot of Coach Soules. He did a heck of a job while he was at Clarkdale. I did talk to him not long after his resignation and told him that I was probably going to put in (for the position), and because he’s a friend of mine I wanted him to know that. I hope we’ll continue to talk, because friendship is bigger than any of this other stuff.”

Fortunately for Brannan, he’s not stepping into a total rebuilding job, though the 2022 Bulldogs will have to replace some key pieces from last year’s team.

“We need to build on what was already there, because they had a really good season last year,” Brannan said. “Clarkdale turned a lot of heads, but we need to grow on that. We don’t need to go backwards. We do have a core of the team coming back. We lost a lot of really good athletes and a lot of offensive linemen, but I think we need to take it one game at a time and keep building the program.”

Ultimately, Brannan said he wants to use football to teach mental toughness in his players, something that he hopes will stick with them long after their football careers are over.

“I want us to be known for being physically tough,” Brannan said. “Football is a demanding sport physically and mentally. I try to emphasize three things to my teams: team, effort and toughness. If they can do those things well, the Xs and Os will take care of themselves.”