ATLANTA – Gary Phillips saw news clips last December of Colquitt County High School football coach Rush Propst head-butting one of his own players on the sideline.

Video showed the coach, in an effort to fire up his kicking squad, run headfirst into the player, who was wearing a helmet. Propst was only wearing a visor.

Later in the clip, blood could be seen trickling down the coach’s forehead.

Phillips is executive director of the Georgia High School Association, which oversees scholastic athletics, but said it’s not for his association to say whether Propst crossed a line.

“From the beginning, that was a Colquitt County school board-superintendent-type issue,” he said in an interview this week.

That approach may explain why nothing happened in the immediate aftermath of the sideline incident, during a Dec. 4 playoff game between the Packers and Mill Creek. It wasn’t until five months later that a state board charged with monitoring teacher conduct voted to suspend Propst’s teaching credentials for a year.

Propst is appealing the decision.

Phillips said the Georgia High School Association has the authority to suspend coaches for breaking game rules or misbehaving toward officials.

It’s not its place, though, to police sideline antics, he said.

Phillips said he reported as much to Colquitt County’s athletic director, who asked in December whether the incident violated any of its rules.

“We get complaints all the time about conduct of coaches in the school building, on the sidelines, at football practices,” he said. “Those are all personnel matters.”

In this case, Colquitt County High Principal Stephanie Terrell and then-Athletics Director Kevin Giddens met with Propst the week after the game. What was said was not publicly disclosed.

Nor was there any apparent reprimand of Propst, who finished the year by leading the team to its second consecutive state championship.

Terrell could not be reached for comment late this week, and the new athletic director, Greg Tillery, deferred questions to the superintendent.

Outgoing Superintendent Samuel DePaul, reached by phone Thursday, declined to comment.

“I’m gone now,” he told a reporter. “Let the people there deal with it.”

With the school system and Georgia High School Association taking a pass, it was a state board that oversees teacher conduct that penalized Propst after receiving a complaint about his interaction with players.

The Professional Standards Commission notified Propst in May that it had decided to suspend his teaching certificate for “inappropriate physical contact with a student.” News of its decision broke last month.

The commission adheres to a broad definition for what qualifies as inappropriate contact.

A spokeswoman said it can be anything that is “unnecessary, not required to protect that student’s or another’s safety, violent and/or abusive in nature, and/or any other contact outside the ‘normal’ teacher-student bounds as generally recognized by the profession.”

It’s unclear how often the commission takes action against coaches. Its spokeswoman said the agency lacks the staff needed to research the answer to that question.

Propst has not commented on the case. A hearing date for his appeal has not been scheduled.

The coach is well known for his intensity, particularly in his highly publicized former job as coach of the Hoover High School Buccaneers in Alabama. He’s mostly avoided trouble since coming to Moultrie in 2008. He was ejected from a game during his first season after disputing an official’s penalty call on his team, then suspended for a subsequent game.

Phillips said he was not aware of any complaints about Propst received by the association. The source of the complaint filed with the Professional Standards Commission will not be disclosed until the case is concluded.

Although Propst appeared angry when he head-butted the team’s senior kicker, Luis “Baby Lou” Martinez, he has insisted he was not.

Propst also has said that his bloodied forehead was not a result of hitting Martinez’s helmet, but rather caused by a screw on the face mask of another player whom he bumped following the collision with the kicker. This isn’t clear from the video.

In Propst’s estimation, the Packers had not played well to that point in the game, despite having just scored a touchdown and a two-point conversion to take a 21-14 lead. Instead of acting pleased, on video, Propst appears to be throwing a tantrum.

He has said, however, that he was exhorting the kickoff team, as he often does, to make sure not to allow a long return that could get the opponents back into the game. Colquitt County went on that night to beat the previously undefeated Hawks, 52-31.

Wayne Grandy is sports editor of the Moultrie, Georgia Observer. Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.