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sports
Former
coach finally achieves Fame
By Jo Appleton
Summer Forty-Niner
When former NFL
coach, George Allen, came to coach the Long Beach State 49ers
in 1990, he immediately became the inspirational whirlwind
that the struggling football team needed. At the age of 72,
Allen brought the team from a shameful record of losses to
a respectable 6-5 record in one season.
That is why all
who still work in the LBSU athletic department and vividly
remember his dynamic presence say he should have been inducted
into the Pro Football Hall of Fame long before last Saturday.
August 3, at Fawcett
Stadium, behind the Hall of Fame, Allen's son, Sen. George
Allen (R-Va), accepted the honor on behalf of his late father,
who died of heart failure New Year's Eve 1990, in front of
a crowd of nearly 18,000.
"I think it's about
time," said Steve Janisch, assistant sports information director
at LBSU during Allen's tenure.
"I believe in the
one year coach Allen was here, I learned more about organizational
skills and what a positive work ethic can do," Janisch said.
"Coach Allen worked non-stop and pretty much expected everyone
else to as well, and we all worked toward the same goal."
Former football
secretary De Leon Price, who worked close to Allen during
his year at the university, said she remembers how he disliked
the brown and gold colors of the football team's uniform saying,
'we're not wearing that!'
He decided to change
it to black and gold, which are now the official colors of
the university. We have to be more distinguished, Price said
she remembered him saying.
"He was a feisty
little rascal," Price said. "He was a very direct person who
knew what he wanted, and knew how to get what he wanted."
Allen went jogging
around campus everyday at lunch and anything that he saw as
not quite right, he would go out of his way to make it right,
she said. One time, after noticing a tree on campus that appeared
to be dying, the former coach made a few phone calls and arranged
to have a new tree planted in its place, Price said.
The Gold Mine hallways
in the university's athletic department would be filled with
people who would just come to see the eccentric coach in action,
she added. Allen would hand out tickets to the football games
to rally up support, said Mario Leon, who worked in the LBSU
grounds department.
"He was a great
guy and a great motivator," Leon said.
"He was really
appreciated."
In fact, to show
how much the university appreciated Allen, they named their
new soccer field after him.
The black and gold
signs around the field read: "George H. Allen Field. The Future
is Now," in honor of his positive and now famous TV quote
about his newly-acquired Redskins team in 1971.
Although he was
a driving force behind the Washington Redskins in the 70s
and the LBSU 49ers in 1990, Allen personally did not
like to drive.
He thought driving
was a waste of time because he could be doing something more
productive, Price said, who remembers him always being on
the phone.
Shortly after Price
began her day, Allen would call from his limousine, wanting
to go over the details of his schedule before he arrived at
work, she said.
Dede Rossi, executive
director of sports events at LBSU, said the former coach just
had a way of making people feel they could do anything. She
said she remembered when Allen started a game in Utah by running
from the hotel to the stadium, with his team following him
onto the field.
"He was a once-in-a-lifetime
kind of person," said Pat West, an administrative assistant
of 13 years at the LBSU athletic association. "[The honor]
is so well-deserved and he should have been put in [the Hall]
before."
Allen spent 23
years as a head coach in both the collegiate and professional
football ranks. His professional coaching career started with
the Los Angeles Rams, according to a 1990 Long Beach Football
Media magazine.
Whether it was
last Saturday or last century that he was enshrined in American
sports history, "The Future is Now" for George Allen's legend
will always be remembered by those close to him as one of
a kind.
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