MOULTRIE — Don’t expect Earl Jefferson to say that he believed the Kirby Smart he coached some 32 years ago would go on to become an outstanding collegiate football player and, later, a National Championship coach.

Jefferson, the Colquitt County director of football operations, was a young defensive coordinator for the Hutto Junior High football team in Bainbridge when one of the members of his secondary was the son of Bearcats varsity head coach Sonny Smart.

“He was not a standout,” Jefferson remembers. “But he was a ball player. You could tell he was a coach’s son. He was a great kid.”

By the time he became a senior on the Bearcats 1993 team, the younger Smart had become a ball-seeking safety who helped lead his team to 10 wins and a berth in the state semifinals.

One of those victories came against Colquitt County and Smart helped seal the deal with a late interception.

It was one of 16 he had while roaming the secondary for the Bearcats.

Smart went on to play safety at the University of Georgia, where he picked off 13 more passes.

He then embarked on a coaching career that reached an apex earlier this month when his Georgia Bulldogs defeated Alabama 33-18 to win the the program’s first national championship in 41 years.

Jefferson calls watching Smart lead the Bulldogs to the national title “a blessing.”

Smart visited Colquitt County last week and was greeted warmly by Jefferson, who helped him get his football career started three decades earlier.

Jefferson, of course, has followed his former player’s career arc over the years from places such as Camden County, Vidalia, Pierce County and, for the last 16 years, Colquitt County.

He has taken immense pleasure in watching young players compete in high school, get the opportunity to perform at the collegiate level and move on to successful careers.

He ticks off the names of some — but certainly not all — of the former Packers he has been keeping an eye on.

Cameron Erving, who played on a National Championship team at Florida State (Jefferson’s alma mater, by the way) and later earned a Super Bowl Championship ring with the Kansas City Chiefs, is a prime example.

Jay Ward is another Packer that Jefferson closely watched. Ward was on LSU’s 2019 National Championship team and is still playing for the Bayou Bengals.

He also named Ridge Underwood, Ty Flournoy-Smith, Bryce Giddens, Quin Roberson, Kiel Pollard, Ty Phillips, Bull Barge, Gabe Mobley.

And there are others.

“I tell them to go to college and get an education,” Jefferson said. “Play football and have fun, but get your degree.”

Jefferson never had the chance to play college football.

The Ocala, Fla., native, a “football and track guy,” played in the 10th and 11th grade, but a knee injury cost him his final season.

But he went north to Tallahassee to attended college and soon got into coaching to be around the sport he still reveres.

He spent 10 years working for Ralph Jones and Sonny Smart at Bainbridge and as the team’s advanced scout, learned plenty about such Colquitt County football luminaries as Darrell Funderburk and Darius Dawson, among others.

Jefferson took his first varsity job in 1990 at Camden County, where he stayed three seasons.

He then went to Vidalia, where a young student got off the bus in the afternoons and stopped in his office before going to meet his mother, another teacher at the school.

Jefferson had a jar of M&Ms on his desk and the boy grabbed a few before traipsing off to meet his mother.

One day, the mother asked the boy where he was getting the candy and he replied “from the chocolate man.”

The mother, Vidalia teacher Traci Jones, went to meet her son Carter’s “chocolate man.”

Soon Jefferson, Traci Jones and her husband Bob Jones, then the Vidalia middle school principal, became friends.

Jefferson then went to Pierce County, where he remained for 12 years.

In 2006, Bob Jones, by then the Colquitt County High School principal, was looking to fill some vacancies when he came upon Jefferson’s name as a reference on a prospective employee’s application.

Jones remembered Jefferson, contacted him and soon Jefferson and wife Delano were on their way to Moultrie to join the Colquitt County school system.

When Jefferson got to Moultrie, he noticed that the football team’s snapper was senior Carter Jones.

Jefferson worked as a teacher in Colquitt County in 2006, but the following year coach Tim Cokley got him back in the coaching business to replace the retiring James Stancil as the Packers running backs coach.

Rush Propst replaced Cokely the following season and Jefferson continued to work with the running backs.

Among the backs he helped develop were Eric Key and Tevin King.

In 2009, Jefferson took over as the Packers ninth-grade head coach.

He held the job the next year as well, but Propst began asking him to take over some of the varsity team’s administrative duties.

By 2012, he became the Packers’ director of football operations and he has held the position ever since, occupying an office within shouting distance of, first, Propst, then the last three years, Justin Rogers, and now the recently hired Sean Calhoun.

In 2014, Jefferson realized a longtime dream of being a part of a state championship team when the Packers went 15-0 to claim the Class 6A title.

Colquitt won it again the following season, duplicating the 15-0 record.

“You know, you never give up on your dream,” he said.

Calhoun is now the fourth head football coach that Jefferson has worked for since coming to Moultrie and while he will be 67 in June, he says he feels fine and has no plans to step back.

“I still love doing it,” he said after 45 years in education and 42 working with football players and coaches. “I know I am a servant. People think DFO stands for director of football operations.

“I say it means “do for others.”