Allen Gets Pot of Gold at the Goose

If you didn’t have $100 and 3 1/2 hours to burn Wednesday night, you didn’t eat dinner with George Allen under the wings of the Spruce Goose.

You don’t know what you missed.

Roy Firestone did his Carol Channing impression.

Billy Kilmer put down his drink, picked up a microphone and announced that he wanted to “Shay shome words” about his old coach.

Roy Firestone did his Jimi Hendrix impression.

Walter Matthau cracked one bad joke (“I thought this was a tribute to Woody Allen”), followed it up with one more and left early.

Roy Firestone did his Gordon Lightfoot impression.

Milton Berle hugged Deacon Jones.

Roy Firestone did his Johnny Mathis impression.

Jeff Severson put on a cowboy hat and sang a country ballad about the new coach in town.

Roy Firestone did his Billy Joel impression.

And everybody ate mousse out of little chocolate footballs.

Fund-raising is never a pretty sight and the main thing Allen seemed to welcome during this Long Beach Welcome to George Allen was the dousing of the lights. But 1,700 diners means $170,000, which buys a lot of new uniforms, so George figured he could put up with almost anything for a few hours, even Roy Firestone’s rendition of “One Moment in Time”--sung while video highlights of the 1988 Olympics, strangely, were flashed upon a big screen.

Along with brown-and-gold balloons, confetti and autographed George Allen footballs at every table, old Rams and old Redskins were in abundance. At the head table sat Kilmer and Jones, Dick Bass and Roman Gabriel, Roger Brown and Jack Snow, Tommy Mason and Dave Butz.

Kilmer, a Redskin once by trade and always by face, found his way to the podium and told the audience that “as soon as I found out George was named coach at Long Beach State, I called UCLA real quick to see if I had any eligibility left. Thank God I didn’t.”

Kilmer also leaned over to remind Allen that “there’s no trading of freshmen for seniors in the NCAA. George, you can’t do that anymore.”

George half-smiled and half-winced and probably will look into the matter.

There was more than enough shtick to go around, as long as they were able to keep the microphone away from emcee Firestone, who apparently mistook the event as Long Beach’s Night of One Star and thought 1,700 people were really interested in his sports-world reworking of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Wasn’t the original enough for one generation to bear?

From Jones: “Most of you don’t understand why all these ex-Rams and ex-Redskins are at the head table. We’re the original Over The Hill Gang--and we’ve come back again. You’re looking at your starting lineup.”

And Matthau: “George is a very astute man. He once said to me, ‘Capitalism is where man exploits man. And communism is vice versa.’ When I heard that, I knew this man could coach any football team.”

And Berle: “Laugh, George. I laugh when you coach.”

Gabriel decided to play it straight, just the way he used to throw passes for Allen’s Rams, until after the formal program, when the yarns began to spin.

“I don’t think he’s ever had a driver’s license,” Gabriel said. “He’s always had a driver. When I was coaching for him (with the USFL’s Arizona Wranglers), his car passed a funeral one day and his driver said, ‘That poor bastard.’

“But George said, ‘What do you mean? That’s no big deal. He doesn’t have to live with the thought of losing anymore.’ ”

Gabriel also told of the time he and Allen were trapped by a group of autograph hounds outside the Los Angeles Coliseum.

“After one ballgame, we were standing there, back to back, signing autographs,” Gabriel recalled. “We must have been signing for one or two hours and all the time, George’s wife is waiting for him.

“Finally, she starts waving at him and yells, ‘George, George.’ And George tells here, ‘Miss, if you get to the back of the line, you’ll get an autograph too.’ ”

Gabriel laughed.

“That’s George,” he said. “He’s so into football. It’s his whole life.”

No kidding. Printed in Wednesday’s dinner program was a list entitled “George Allen’s Ten Commandments,” an item that should be of interest to his new players at Long Beach.

Commandment No. 1: Football comes first.

Of course. You were expecting maybe, oh, I don’t know . . . an education? For better or worse, the George Allen era is under way at Cal State Long Beach. If he wins a few games early, and stays within 40 of Clemson, they’ll probably forgive him for Wednesday night.

At least the setting was right. Like Long Beach football, the Spruce Goose hasn’t gotten off the ground in years.