The Old Pro Might Take Them to School

Some people may believe Cal State Long Beach made a smart move in hiring George Allen to coach football, given his name and fame.

Other people believe that by the time George Allen gets through with Long Beach’s football program, you might as well shut down the college and turn it into a Taco Bell or a Texaco station or something.

Allen is a quirky, Queegy guy with a reputation for doing things his way, no matter what the cost.

We hope Long Beach knows what it’s doing.

Maybe George has mellowed. He’s older now--he’s one of those ageless wonders whose actual date of birth is often in dispute, like Nancy Reagan’s and Zsa Zsa Gabor’s. Maybe he’s wiser, too. Maybe he won’t be a risk.

All we know is that the voice of the late Edward Bennett Williams, erstwhile owner of the Washington Redskins, echoes in our head. Of Allen he said: “We gave George an unlimited expense account, and he exceeded it.”

We also can’t forget the words of Daniel F. Reeves, for more than 30 years the owner of the Rams, accusing Allen in 1971 of excessive expenditures, disloyalty, NFL constitution violations, lying to management and going behind management’s back to make secret deals with players.

And then there was the late Carroll Rosenbloom, who said in 1973: “There are two coaches who have broken all the rules of football.” One, he said, was George Allen, whom he accused of violating waiver rules.

Allen was hired and fired by the Rams so many times, we lost count. His parking space must have been marked: Mystery Guest.

The coach’s halcyon days came in Chicago, coaching George Halas’ NFL championship defense, and in Washington, riding herd on the Redskins’ Over the Hill Gang. George kept busy on and off the field, procuring talent by trading away most of the Redskin draft choices of the 20th, 21st and 22nd Centuries.

Funny, but the Redskins still managed to do in the 1980s exactly what they didn’t do under Allen in the 1970s--win the Super Bowl.

Allen was a player’s kind of coach, though. He brought in golden oldies. He made them feel so young, he made them feel as though spring had sprung. Veterans such as Ron McDole, who was 34 when Washington met Miami in Super Bowl VII, said that he was tired of playing with kids who kept making mistakes. Older guys understood the business, he said. They needed no teaching.

Allen’s players knew they could tease the coach about anything, including his insatiable ice cream addiction. In the huddle, Diron Talbert often broke into choruses of: “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!”

Then there were George’s proclivities for security measures, for industrial espionage, for alleged spying and counterspying in preparation for big games. Said Miami Coach Don Shula before the Super Bowl: “We’ve thought of moving our last practice sessions to Tijuana, so that George can start now to scour the area to find our practice field.”

Miami’s actual practices for that Super Bowl, apropos of nothing, were held in Long Beach.

Controversy dogged George Allen. He was charged with everything from failing to report an injury before a playoff game, to signing Jack Pardee to a bonus agreement outside the player’s standard contract without filing this contract with the club or league office.

It seems safe to say that George Allen was prepared to do anything in his power to win football games. Sometimes he even did things beyond his power.

When Los Angeles and Washington fans watched their teams win game after game, though--49 of 70 with the Rams, 67 of 98 with the Redskins--they didn’t much care how the coach did it.

Maybe Long Beach won’t care, either. The school has won 11 times in three years.

George Allen is an amiable enough fellow who has been longing for one more chance to do what he does best--coach. He is one of those men with so much knowledge about his sport that he has found it difficult to believe that no one wanted him.

Throughout his inactivity, at least George has maintained a sense of humor. We recall him appearing on a cable-TV comedy program called, “Bizarre,” in a sketch about a football team that cannot take one more day of Coach Allen’s incredibly demanding practices.

Calling his kicker aside, Allen orders players to climb into a deep pit. Reluctantly, they do so. Only their heads protrude above ground level, whereupon the kicker, one by one, sends their heads flying through the goal posts.

George was good for a laugh.

Who knows? Maybe he’ll give everybody in Long Beach one.