Todd Dodge: From Southlake Carroll to UNT

Tonight at 7pm the Athletic Director at The University of North Texas is going to introduce Todd Dodge as the new head football coach. Word has been buzzing about town all day about this pending announcement.

Todd Dodge is the local famous high school football coach at Southlake-Carroll. He is Mr. Friday Night Lights in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Going from a 5A high school program to the head job of an NCAA Div. 1A program, albeit UNT, is quite a leap.

Here’s what dragonstuffonline has to say about Dodge:

“Todd Dodge became head coach of the Carroll Dragons in 2000 after a successful collegiate career at the University of Texas, serving as Offensive Coordinator at North Texas, and head coaching stints at Cameron Yoe, Carrolton Newman-Smith, and Keller Fossil Ridge. Overcoming an extremely difficult pre-season schedule, Todd led his initial team, and the last to call old Dragon Stadium home, to a 9-5 record, a district championship, and advanced to the regional finals. In 2002, he coached the Dragons to a State Championship in their first year in Class 5-A. In 2004, the Dragons took the State Championship again and were recognized as the National High School Champions by USA Today.”

I’m sure folks over in Southlake are mourning the departure of their coach, but he’s got a semi-final game to coach this Saturday against the Allen, Texas (a northern suburb of Dallas) Eagles. Kickoff is scheduled for 1pm at Texas Stadium.

Will Dodge bring his coaching genius to Denton? Will he recruit his son, who is the quarterback of Southlake-Carroll (and senior next year)? Time will tell.

I think it was a great move by UNT to get a local guy with a solid reputation. Now speculation is that Mr. Bomar (OU ex-bad boy) may migrate up to Denton to play for coach Dodge. It’s way too early to see who will come play, but I’d guess many more will head toward Denton with him at the helm.

Who could blame him? He can stay in Southlake where his son will be a senior at Southlake-Carroll and where his daughter (now a middle schooler) may be able to graduate high school. He can get a big pay raise. He can take along some of his assistant coaches and help them climb the ladder to greater coaching success. He can help the administration at Southlake figure out who his successor should be - after all, he’s got a vested interest to have the best coach possible for his son’s final year of high school. It all makes pretty solid sense really. Especially if they pay in excess of $500,000 (speculation is it will be somewhere around that number, while others are speculating it will be half that - who knows?). I say, “Good move.” Everybody wins (well, maybe not Southlake-Carroll, but I’ll bet they keep the mojo rolling forward with whoever replaces Dodge).

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