George Allen

[KirkNC]

Link to a very good article on George Allen

I have vague memories of the Lombardi Skins but I was weened on the George Allen Redskins.

Thirty years ago was the beginning of the end. The 1973 season was one of hope for a group of old men and their head coach. George Allen's "Over the Hill Gang" was coming off a disappointing 14-7 loss in Super Bowl VII, the crowning moment of the Miami Dolphins' perfect season.

But for Allen, it was the beginning of the end. Including the '73 season, Allen would spend only five more years as an NFL head coach. His career abruptly ended after the 1977 season, a 12-year coaching stint with a 116-47-5 record. In the NFL's 83 years, Allen is the only head coach to serve more than 10 seasons and never have a losing record.

He began his NFL career in 1957 with the Rams, then joined the Chicago Bears a year later as a defensive assistant. In 1963, Allen was awarded the game ball after the NFL Championship Game -- a 14-10 victory against the New York Giants -- in which the Bears forced seven turnovers.

Allen's eye for talent is legendary. Among the players drafted during his time with Chicago: Richie Petitbon, Mike Ditka, Ed O'Bradovich, Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers. He also invented the nickel defense and was the first coach to emphasize special teams.

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Allen later turned around the Los Angeles Rams, the very definition of a perennial loser before he took over in 1966. After Vince Lombardi's death (Bill Austin was interim coach during Lombardi's illness), Allen was hired in the hope he would display the same winning traits with Washington, a team that had just one winning season in 15 years prior to his arrival in 1971.

"I regard him as the best football coach in the world," Redskins president Edward Bennett Williams said the day he introduced Allen as head coach. "I am delighted. Many other teams have coveted his services. I am saying unequivocally, unqualifiedly, and unambiguously that he is the last coach I will ever hire."

Of course, Williams also thought that when he convinced Otto Graham (1966-68) to be head coach, and then again when Williams persuaded Lombardi (1969-70) to return to coaching. But George Allen was different. He outwardly loved the game, loved gameplanning, loved coaching. It was all that and more that Williams prevailed on Allen when he coaxed the recently fired Rams head coach into accepting the Redskins' job.

Allen was 20-7-1 during his first two seasons, including 11-3 in 1972's Super Bowl season. In the final five years of his NFL career, Allen was 47-23 while finishing second in the NFC East four times. He was 0-3 in the playoffs during that time, dropping his career postseason record to 2-7.

And, in fact, Allen would prove not to be the last coach Williams ever hired. But Allen's penchant for dealing draft picks and players -- he made 131 trades, including 81 with the Redskins -- did pay dividends for the Redskins long after he had been ushered out. In 1976, Allen traded for the rights of Joe Theismann and John Riggins, two players who contributed to Washington's victory against Miami in Super Bowl XVII in 1983.

The Rams again came calling, luring Allen back to L.A. -- and away from New Orleans, which was courting the coach after he was fired following the the 1977 season. (His final game as the Redskins' head coach was a 17-14 victory against the Rams.) Allen in fact rejoined the Rams, but was fired before the season began and replaced by Ray Malavasi.

Allen, who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002, never returned to the NFL and remained out of coaching until 1990, when he coached Long Beach State to a 6-5 record -- again, a winning record -- in his only season before dying Dec. 31, 1990, at 72. That LBS team included Terrell Davis, who spent his first collegiate season playing under Allen but left the school when football was dropped after the coach's death.

After Long Beach State ended its 1990 season, Allen penned a Point After item for Sports Illustrated, published three weeks before his death. In it he said, "At a time when concepts like working together and being positive seem old-fashioned to some people, I can't tell you what a reassuring feeling it is that the players -- and I -- showed that those ideas still have value. I learned that players need the same things they needed in 1948 -- discipline, organization, conditioning, motivation, togetherness, love."

Fifty-five years after George Allen's first coaching job at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa -- and now 13 years after he died -- those words still ring true, both in the NFL and life.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=valueofwords&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns

[inmate running the asylum]

Yeah, George Allen was a good man.