It didn't take long for Greenville ISD to find its new head coach after the surprising retirement of Darren Duke on Tuesday.

The Lions named Randy Jackson as their interim athletic director/head football at Greenville High School on Thursday, replacing Duke who had led the program since 2016.

“I was planning on being an assistant coach this year," he said. "I knew I wanted to be back on the field this year and I couldn’t pass this opportunity up. In a lot of ways Hunt County is my home county. I coached in Greenville in the early 1990’s under Marvin Sedberry, Sr. I coached in Quinlan and I was head coach in Lone Oak."

Jackson, who announced his own retirement after the 2020 season, spent last summer coaching professional football in Germany. He holds an impressive career record of 170-78 with stops at Paducah, Mason, DeKalb, Lone Oak, Mesquite Poteet, Plano East, Grapevine and North Forney.

Coach Jackson is known as a program builder and has quickly turned struggling programs into winners. The most notable turnaround he was part of was at Mesquite Poteet, where the Pirates won just two games the previous two seasons before Jackson’s arrival for the 2010 season. Poteet went 12-3 and advanced to the state semifinals in his first season. He followed that up with 7-3 and 11-3 seasons before taking over Plano East in 2013.

The new Greenville coach authored similar quick turn-arounds in his stops at Lone Oak, Grapevine and North Forney.

Jackson will have his work cut out for him in Greenville where he takes over just three days before the Lions begin fall camp. Greenville’s freshman began workouts on July 31 and the rest of the athletes begin camp August 7. With Greenville going through spring football and the staff already being in place, Coach Jackson won’t be able to make a lot of wholesale changes as there’s simply no time to do much different that what has already been implemented.

"My strategy right now is to go in and serve the coaches and kids and kind of steady the ship," he said. "I want to tell the seniors that it’s my job to help them have a great senior year and that’s my plan right now."