For George Allen, Life at the Beach Begins at 72

A lot of people were surprised that a famous coach such as George Allen took a job at the college level and at a third-rate football school at that. They reacted as if a world-class chef had been found flipping hamburgers in a roadside diner or a French Impressionist had been found painting cars for Earl Scheib.

I wasn’t one of them.

Some years ago, when I idly suggested to George Allen that I was giving some thought to retiring, I thought for a moment he was going to hit me. He looked at me as if I just told him I had kidnaped the Lindbergh baby or shot Lincoln. He could hardly conceal his distaste. “Retire?!” he said scornfully. “Why would you want to do a chicken-livered thing like that? I didn’t know you were a quitter.”

To George Allen, retiring was a form of quitting. He had no patience with the concept of quitting while you’re ahead. Or quitting while you’re behind, either.

To George, age has never been an enemy, it has been an ally. Even his teams were geriatric marvels. George once flew overnight to Texas to talk Jack Pardee out of what George considered premature retirement. Pardee had been frightened by a malignancy on his arm, but George talked him back into a Redskin uniform, and Pardee was a linebacker on Allen’s 1973 Super Bowl team. “You’re not older, you’re smarter!” became George’s battle cry.

Allen’s lineup became famous as the Over-the-Hill Mob or Leisure World East when he stripped the Rams of a passel of oldsters such as Maxie Baughan, Myron Pottios, Diron Talbert. George made the marvelous discovery that in this youth-worshiping age, the league would trade him mature, experienced, canny old pros for mere slips of paper (read: draft choices). The wits had a field day, cracking that the team logo should be a hot-water bottle rampant on a field of thermometers, but the old folks creaked their way to an annual division championship or better.

Still, Cal State Long Beach is a long way from a Super Bowl, a playoff or even a conference game in Soldier Field or RFK Stadium. Besides, George Allen is 72 years old. The game has passed him by, went the refrain. He’s going to embarrass himself.

George Allen doesn’t embarrass easily. George doesn’t exactly go through life with blinkers on, but he manages to shut out pretty much everything that doesn’t have a football connected to it.

It has always been one of George’s troubles. Give him a ball on a 40-yard line and a game plan and George is a near-genius. Out in the real world, he tends to step on his tongue.

With his football teams, he has always been as single-minded as a hungry lion. Dealing with people, he comes off as devious, part-Captain Queeg, part-Captain America. Furtive, secretive, suspicious, given to cover-ups and guarded answers, George always managed to create the impression he was smuggling diamonds or had just emptied your silver drawer and was tiptoeing to the fire escape.

He could make passing the salt look like a conspiracy, and his chronic conspiratorial air so infuriated even his owners that Dan Reeves once fired him on Christmas Eve and Edward Bennett Williams once complained: “I gave George an unlimited budget and he exceeded it the first month!” Carroll Rosenbloom fired him two (exhibition) games into a three-year contract for no apparent reason.

George accepted the rebuffs with a shrug. Lawyers urged him to sue over these career-terminating insults to his reputation. But George was always too busy out looking for football players. Old football players.

He belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It’s a disgrace he isn’t there yet, but George is used to rejection. Still, not even his worst enemies wanted to see him humiliated in what they conceived to be his dotage. So, when Clemson, a powerhouse in the South, beat his Long Beach team, 59-0, most Allen-watchers nodded their heads sagely. When he quickly lost to Utah State, 27-13, and San Diego State, 38-20, it was freely predicted the “Goodby, George” signs would soon be hung out in the rooters’ section.

Then, the team began playing like a George Allen team--smart, dogged, relentless football. Undiscovered ability has always been a hallmark of an Allen team. They beat Pacific, 28-7; beat Boise State, 21-20, beat New Mexico State, 31-27. True, they lost to San Jose State. But so did Stanford. And San Jose State tied Fiesta Bowl-bound Louisville and lost to Copper Bowl-bound Cal by one point and Rose Bowl-bound Washington by three. Allen’s team pestered them, 29-46.

Allen lost to Fresno State, 28-16, but then beat Cal State Fullerton, 37-35; beat Cal State Northridge, 25-24, and beat UNLV, 29-20. As usual, Allen (6-5) had a winning season--he never had a losing one in the NFL.

“People thought I was just going to be a weekend coach. I’m not a weekend anything,” Allen said.

Even though he opens up with Miami and Arizona back to back next year (Long Beach’s schedule-maker is a good, game guy), it’s possible to feel sorry for some of the other opponents when George gets through combing the countryside for his kind of players. “It’s a good thing for the league George isn’t 10 years younger!” growled a reporter after the UNLV finale.

I don’t know about that. It may be a good thing for the league he isn’t 10 years older.