{"id":380321,"date":"2026-07-21T00:46:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T00:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/380321\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T00:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T00:46:23","slug":"socs-kevin-jennings-out-to-prove-hes-king-of-dallas-with-smu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/380321\/","title":{"rendered":"SOC’s Kevin Jennings out to prove he’s ‘King of Dallas’ with SMU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Todd, who has won two more state championships at SOC, including the 2025 5A Division II state title<\/a>, said Monday during the Texas High School Coaches Association\u2019s annual convention and coaching school that SMU coach Rhett Lashlee took a chance on Jennings.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe actually came to the Lovejoy game [in December 2021] and said he wanted to check him out,\u201d Todd said. \u201cA lot of coaches say that, but when he left that game, he was like \u2018Coach, we\u2019re going to offer that kid. Tell him he\u2019s got an offer from SMU.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When Jennings arrived at SMU<\/a>, he entered a quarterback battle with former Parish Episcopal quarterback Preston Stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cPreston Stone had a lot of ties to SMU and Coach Rhett actually went out on a limb and went with who he thought was the better guy, and it seems like it\u2019s paying off,\u201d Todd said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The South Oak Cliff product, in his final season of eligibility<\/a>, is one of the top returning quarterbacks in the nation. Jennings has the most career passing yards for a returning ACC quarterback and the fifth-most career passing yards for a returning Power Four quarterback.<\/p>\n

SMU recently launched a Heisman campaign<\/a> for Jennings dubbed \u201cK7NG OF DALLAS.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really proud of him because he\u2019s probably one of the few kids that I\u2019ve coached [who can] handle that success because he\u2019s so humble,\u201d Todd said. \u201cIf it was me personally, I\u2019d probably be walking around SMU with a big coat on driving a Bentley or something. I probably wouldn\u2019t be able to handle the success that he\u2019s had.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he\u2019s a humble kid and he\u2019s done nothing but great things since he led us to the state championship, and like they say, he\u2019s the King of Dallas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Todd, who has won two more state championships at SOC, including the 2025 5A Division II state title,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,1365,99583],"class_list":["post-380321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-south-oak-cliff-school","tag-tp-smu-mustangs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}