Todd Dodge might coach his final high school football game today at Texas Stadium.

Or perhaps he will exit in storybook fashion next Saturday night in San Antonio's Alamodome. Perhaps he will ride off atop his Southlake Carroll players' shoulders with an unprecedented fourth Class 5A title in five seasons and a 79-1 record during that span.

No matter how it ends, even if Carroll is toppled by Allen in today's 5A Division I semifinal, Dodge's Texas high school legacy is secure as he prepares to embark on his next challenge, head coach at the University of North Texas.

He is a high school coaching legend at 43. If that proclamation seems exaggerated and premature, think about how historians will view Southlake Carroll's reign 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Dodge's impact extends deeper than championships or Carroll's current 46-game winning streak. He has been revolutionary.

He will depart with barely a quarter as many victories as all-time leaders G.A. Moore and Gordon Wood, but it can be argued that no one in Texas' 106-year high school football history has had a bigger influence on style of play than Dodge.

During the last 35 years, Texas has evolved from almost strictly a running state to one that has produced at least one air-it-out champion annually since 1993. Dodge has been both pioneer and innovator, first as Port Arthur Jefferson's record-shattering quarterback in 1979-80, then as coach.

"To the point where he's got the passing game now, yes, I think he has revolutionized it," says former McKinney coach Ron Poe, under whom Dodge served as offensive coordinator from 1988 to 1992.

"He helped start the revolution, and now a lot of coaches are doing the same thing. The thing that sets Todd's offense apart is that he has simplified his."

Other pass-oriented Texas offenses preceded Dodge, who cherry-picked and refined others' philosophies and schemes. But none dominated the way Dodge's teams have. None have been as successful for so long or done it with as many different quarterbacks as Dodge.

Today's showdown against 13-1 Allen is his ninth semifinal appearance as a head coach, assistant coach and player.

A victory today by the Dragons would give Dodge his seventh title-game berth – 1980 with Port Arthur Jefferson, 1987 as a Rockwall quarterbacks and receivers coach, and five straight with Carroll.

"I was very blessed to know when I was 17 years old that I wanted to go into coaching," Dodge says. "And that I had the opportunity to play at the University of Texas, where I don't know that you can have a better training ground to be a coach.

"You definitely learn how to handle success, and failure, when you're in those situations."

When Dodge and those close to him reflect on the path he took, they are not surprised that he has reached this juncture.

His parents, Don and Jean Dodge, recall boyhood and teenage moments that provided clues as to the athlete, coach and person Todd would become.

Don, a semi-retired Methodist minister in Marshall, says his son learned to read by poring over the morning sports section. He always seemed to have a ball in his hands, and while honing his accuracy twice broke stained-glass sanctuary windows.

Don loved hunting and fishing, but after Jean bought 9-year-old Todd his first BB gun, he horrified himself by shooting a bird at his grandparents' house in the tiny East Texas town of Chireno.

"Daddy, I didn't mean to hit the bird. Can you heal it?" Don recalls Todd asking. After being told no, Todd buried the bird, took the gun into the house and never touched it again.

Every four years or so, Don was called to serve another church in another East Texas town, which meant Todd often had to reacclimate athletically and socially.

"Lo and behold," Todd chuckles now, "that's kind of the way of a coach."

He says it also helped him grow up faster, especially after Don was called to a church in Longview. Todd already had established himself at Port Arthur Jefferson as a potential Division I-A recruit. Don says the University Interscholastic League rule at the time was that a student who moved to a new district had to sit out a year.

Rather than do that, Don and Jean arranged for Todd to live with the parents of one of his teammates. During that time, Todd grew close to Jefferson coach Ronnie Thompson, which Todd reckons is why he has had special bonds with his quarterbacks.

"But Todd was really way ahead of his time," Thompson says. "The things he could say to guys in the huddle with just two words or maybe a look would take me a mouthful."

Thompson, too, was progressive. As a young assistant coach at San Antonio Jefferson in 1971, he closely followed the exploits of John Ferrara-coached Robert E. Lee, which won the state title that season behind the passing of Tommy Kramer to receivers Richard Osborne and Pat Rockett.

"Really and truly, a lot of the things we do now, that comes from Lee, how they called plays, how they thought," says Thompson, 62, who came out of retirement this season to coach Port Arthur Memorial.

Kramer had 2,700-yard passing seasons in 1971 and '72. When Dodge passed for 3,135 yards in 1980, he became the first 5A quarterback to break the 3,000-yard season barrier. His 5,642 career yards broke Kramer's 5A mark of 5,489.

"That's chump change now," laughs Dodge, noting that all five of his Carroll quarterbacks, including his son Riley this season, surpassed his 1980 total.

Port Arthur Jefferson lost the '80 state title game to Odessa Permian, but the Thompson-Dodge association was just starting.

A year after Dodge left for Texas, Thompson joined the Longhorns staff as an assistant. Thompson was there when a banged-up Dodge got lustily booed during the 1984 season, after Texas rose to the No. 1 ranking then suffered four losses and a tie in its final nine games.

And after Dodge was severely burned in a 1987 electrical accident, Thompson rushed to the hospital and waited anxiously with Dodge's Longhorns teammates and bride of seven months, Elizabeth, the daughter of longtime Westlake coach Ebbie Neptune.

Todd was about to start his coaching career as a Rockwall assistant. But while working for the city of Austin's electric department, Dodge was plugging a meter into a transformer at an office complex when the transformer blew up.

Twice a day for the next three weeks, Dodge went through excruciating skin treatments that Thompson likened to "pouring gasoline on a fire."

"A lot of people would trade places with him now," Thompson said, "but they wouldn't have wanted to go through what he's been through."

Dodge says the ordeal strengthened his faith, marriage and resolve to succeed, adding, "you really find out about how a football team and athletics can build a family feeling. I had a lot of people who really cared for me."

So when did Dodge cross over from being noted high school quarterback and Longhorns-ex to great high school coach?

"Probably the day he walked onto the field at Rockwall," Thompson says.

Rockwall lost to West Orange-Stark in the 4A final that year, 1987. Dodge then joined the staff at McKinney, where Poe had won the 1979 state title with a run-oriented offense. But by 1990, opponents were stopping McKinney by stacking the line of scrimmage.

Over at South Garland, Poe's twin brother, Don, had a high-powered spread formation attack installed by his offensive coordinator – Thompson.

Dodge persuaded Ron Poe to try the spread formation. Before the '91 season, they went to South Garland for the first of what Thompson figured would be several days of chalkboard sessions.

"I'll never forget," Thompson recalls. "We were about 25 minutes into it and Todd said, 'I got it,' "

What Dodge came away with was a hybrid between the University of Houston's Run-and-Shoot, the University of Miami's three- and five-step drops and zone running game, and the old Port Arthur stuff.

McKinney, which had been roadblocked from the playoffs by Denison the previous year, rallied from a 17-14 deficit to overwhelm Denison, 62-17, in '91 behind six Max Knake touchdown passes.

"The offense was here to stay after that," Dodge says.

Dodge credits Thompson, noting that "right now, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you can't go two degrees of separation in the coaching fraternity without finding someone who has been influenced by Ronnie Thompson."

But Thompson and Ron Poe say Dodge has taken the offense to new heights. It certainly helps that he installed the system from the seventh grade up at Southlake's middle schools, spoon-feeding kids rather than handing them a full plate at Carroll.

Dodge says the decision to go no-huddle is what took the offense to a new level. The Dragons are 77-1 since then, which coincides their move from Class 4A to 5A.

It hasn't all been easy or fun. In 2004, Dodge and his players endured the death of defensive coordinator Charlie Stalcup, to cancer. Early this season, 72-year-old Don Dodge went in for an angioplasty and wound up having a quadruple bypass.

Todd left at 4:30 on a Thursday morning, arriving at Longview hospital at 6:30. But Don has been well enough to travel to playoff games, including the one two weeks ago in Lubbock, where Riley helped his father settle an old score against Odessa Permian.

Todd's younger sister, Kim, wore an old Port Arthur Jefferson Yellowjackets cap to the game. Following the 42-6 victory, after his players herded into the locker room, Todd took the cap from his sister, put it on his head and walked off the field.

"He wanted those Mojos to see him wearing it," chuckles Don.

Now he has but two high school opponents left to conquer.

E-mail btownsend@dallasnews.com

Southlake Carroll (14-0) vs. Allen (13-1), Class 5A Division I semifinal, 1 p.m. Saturday, Texas Stadium (KKGM-AM 1630, KZEZ-FM 92.1)