Jalen Kitna is a college quarterback trying to build a career out from under the shadow of a single afternoon in November 2022.
He is the son of Jon Kitna, the 14-season NFL veteran turned high school and college coach, and he spent his freshman year as a backup at Florida before an arrest on felony charges tied to child sexual abuse material ended his time with the Gators and nearly ended his football career altogether.
A plea deal that summer dismissed the felony counts, and Kitna has spent the years since rebuilding, first through a transfer to UAB and then through two full seasons as the Blazers’ starting quarterback.
Jalen Kitna Biography
He was born March 22, 2003, in Tacoma, Washington, the second of Jon and Jennifer Kitna’s four children. Jalen Kitna grew up inside a football family that also moved constantly, following his father’s coaching jobs across three states.
His own high school path mirrored that instability. He started at Waxahachie High School in Texas, transferred to Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix for his sophomore year while his father coached there, moved on to Frisco High School in Frisco, Texas for his junior season, and finally landed at Burleson High School in Burleson, Texas for his senior year, the same year his father was hired as Burleson’s head coach.
He originally committed to Boston College before decommitting and switching to Florida, choosing the Gators over offers that also included Georgia Tech, Liberty, and Tennessee.
Jon Kitna’s Son
Jon Kitna attended Lincoln High School before walking on at Central Washington University. In this NAIA program, he led the Wildcats to a share of the 1995 national championship and earned NAIA All-American honors.
He went undrafted in 1996 and signed with the Seattle Seahawks, spending part of that year on loan to the Barcelona Dragons of the World League, where he was named World Bowl MVP after winning the title.
He went on to play 16 seasons in the NFL for the Seahawks, Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys, throwing for 29,745 yards with 169 touchdowns against 165 interceptions.
He was named NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 2003 after leading the Bengals back to relevance. He retired after the 2011 season and, rather than take time away from football as he originally planned, returned almost immediately to Lincoln High School, his alma mater, first as a math teacher and then as head football coach from 2012 to 2014.
He went on to coach at Waxahachie High School in Texas from 2015 to 2017, Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix in 2018, spent the 2019 season as quarterbacks coach for the Dallas Cowboys, then returned to the high school ranks as head coach at Burleson High School in Texas from 2020 to 2022.
Since 2023, he has been head coach at Lakota East High School in Liberty Township, Ohio.
Family
Jon Kitna met his wife Jennifer, then Jennifer Durrow, while both were students at Central Washington University in the early 1990s.
Jennifer was born August 17, 1971, in Portland, Oregon, the daughter of Charles Chuck Durrow, a U.S. Navy veteran who died in 1998, and has a brother, Timm, who works in real estate in Portland, and a sister, Loretta.
Jon and Jennifer’s relationship nearly ended in 1993 when Jennifer discovered he had been unfaithful during a period he later described as a struggle with alcohol and other destructive habits.
The two stayed together, and Jon has said publicly that the crisis led him to commit to his Christian faith, with Jennifer following shortly after. They married in 1994.
Jon Kitna has said of that period that football was a career, but that teaching and faith became something closer to a calling.
Jon and Jennifer have four children, three of whom have played quarterback like their father. Their eldest, Jordan Kitna, was the starting quarterback at Lincoln High School during its 2014 season, throwing 55 touchdowns in an 11- 1 campaign, and went on to play college football at Colorado State University Pueblo and Texas Wesleyan University before brief stints with the Seattle Seahawks and the Dallas Renegades of the XFL.
Their daughter, Jada Kitna, played volleyball and cheered at Burleson High School and has been described by her father as effectively running practice logistics for his teams. Jalen is the second son.
The youngest, Jamison Kitna, has also been involved in his father’s programs, appearing as a ball boy on the sidelines during his father’s Waxahachie years as a young child. Jennifer Kitna has largely stayed out of the public eye relative to her husband, working as a teacher herself and supporting Jon’s coaching career at each stop.
In a 2012 interview with the Seattle Times, she summed up her marriage plainly, saying she didn’t marry an NFL quarterback; she married a teacher and a coach.
She and Jon also founded the Jon and Jennifer Kitna Eternal Blessings Foundation, a nonprofit that provides scholarships to graduating seniors at Lincoln High School in Tacoma.
During Jon’s playing years, the couple also took in two of his younger cousins, Chris and Casey Kjos, raising them alongside their own children under a shared custody arrangement with the boys’ parents.
Career
Jalen Kitna enrolled at Florida as a four-star rated prospect and redshirted his first season on campus. He served as backup to Anthony Richardson, the eventual first-round NFL draft pick, throughout the 2022 season, appearing in four games and completing 10 of 18 passes for 181 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions.
He was in line to compete for the starting job in 2023 if Richardson left early for the NFL, a path that never played out because of what happened that November.
Child Pornography Case
On November 30, 2022, the Gainesville Police Department arrested Kitna on five felony charges, two counts of distribution of child exploitation material and three counts of possession of child pornography.
The investigation began after a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children flagged images shared through the messaging platform Discord.
Police identified Kitna as the probable account holder, and a search of his devices led to the additional charges. Kitna told investigators at the time that he believed the material he had shared was legal and said he had found it online.
The University of Florida immediately suspended him indefinitely, removed him from the roster, and barred him from campus.
The case moved through Florida’s Eighth Judicial Circuit for roughly seven months. On July 5, 2023, Kitna accepted a plea deal that dismissed all five felony charges.
In exchange, he pleaded no contest to two counts of disorderly conduct, both second-degree misdemeanors. Judge Susan Miller-Jones sentenced him to probation, with reporting varying between six months and one year depending on compliance, and did not require him to pay a fine or register as a sex offender.
Kitna read a statement in court apologizing to his family and friends for what the process had put them through.
His attorney, Ron Kozlowski, argued publicly that the investigation had shown Kitna did not download or search for the material and did not intentionally share it, and that the outcome reflected that.
Kitna later said in his own public statement that he had made naive decisions he deeply regretted, while maintaining that the initial felony charges had never fit what actually happened.
Transfer to UAB and Return to Football
Kitna entered the transfer portal within days of the plea deal and, after a year away from competitive football, was admitted to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in December 2023 to play for head coach Trent Dilfer, the former NFL quarterback.
Dilfer and UAB’s athletic department said publicly that they conducted extensive due diligence before admitting him.
Kitna spent the 2024 season working into the starting job, taking over in week five and finishing the year with 16 touchdowns against 10 interceptions over his final seven starts, including a performance where he tied a UAB program record with six touchdown passes in a 59-to-21 win over Tulsa.
He entered 2025 as UAB’s unquestioned starter. He played all season behind center, finishing with 2,462 passing yards, 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions on 66.4 percent completion across the year, including a 38-of-51, 364-yard, two-touchdown performance against a ranked Tennessee team in September.
