AUSTIN, Texas — Todd Dodge’s relationship with football started very early on. He remembers growing up in Garrison, Texas, and hanging around the high school football field after school while he waited for his mom, who was a teacher. He hung around so much that the coach gave him his first job in the game.
“The coach made me the ball boy when I was six years old and I just fell in love with the game of football,” says Dodge.
That love carried over into his playing days. The Dodge family was living in Port Arthur when Todd became the starting quarterback at Jefferson High School. In his senior season, he became the first quarterback in Texas history to throw for more than 3,000 yards.
“The production through my junior and senior year throwing the ball. I gained a lot of notice,” says Dodge.
That attention got him offers to play in college. One offer though, made the choice obvious.
“I was one of those kids, that if the University of Texas came calling, that’s absolutely where I was going,” says Dodge.
After his playing days were done, Dodge knew he wanted to stay around the game. He bounced around a few different high schools as an assistant before landing his first job as a head coach at Cameron Yoe. He spent short stints as the head coach there, then at Carrollton Newman-Smith and Keller Fossil Ridge before landing the job at Southlake Carroll. Leading the Dragons program is where Dodge made his name as a head coach. He won four state titles at Southlake, which included a run of 72 straight wins. The last of his titles there came in 2006, with his son Riley as the team's starting quarterback.
“It was everything,” says Riley Dodge. “It was a dream come true to get to play for him and win a state championship with him."
“He and I have been kindred spirits since the day he was born,” says Dodge of his son.
All the success he had at Southlake Carroll led to new opportunities, including a chance to coach in college. In 2007 he went from a high school head coach straight to being a college head coach at North Texas. After three-plus years at UNT, Dodge was let go as the team struggled. He spent the next season as a college assistant at Pittsburgh but knew his calling was back in Texas and back at the high school level. Dodge took over the program at Marble Falls High School in 2012 and then two years later got the call to be the next head coach at Westlake — the same high school where his father-in-law, Ebbie Neptune, used to coach at and was the longtime athletic director.
“I was always a huge fan of Westlake football as kind of an outside member of the family,” says Dodge. “It was always a little bit of a bucket list deal for me to get a chance to coach at Westlake before my career was over.”
Dodge not only got that chance, but he took the Chaparrals back to the top of the high school football mountain. Westlake won a state title in 2019 and then again in 2020, when they beat his old school, Southlake Carroll. In that game, Todd went up against his son, Riley, the head coach at Southlake.
“That was really tough on our family to be honest with you,” says Dodge. “But it was rewarding for Riley and I because we were the first father-son combination that’s ever played against each other in a state championship.”
With the Westlake program at its peak, Dodge shocked a lot of people this summer when he announced his plans to retire at the end of the season. At the age of 58, he felt it was time to move on.
“I will miss the practices, I will miss the grind of the week and I will miss the kids,” says Dodge. “It’s time and I feel really good about it. Probably the biggest motivation is those three beautiful grandkids I have up in Southlake and get a chance to be a pa-pa.”
Before Dodge rides off into retirement, he’s hoping to cap off his time at Westlake with a 3rd straight title. He has the Chaps undefeated, ranked #1 and with a good shot for him to win his 7th state title overall as a head coach.