He Could Have Been Among Best : AFC championship: Chiefs’ Marcus Allen got cheated out of his proper place in NFL lore.

What happened to Marcus Allen is criminal. After a dozen NFL seasons, these twilight years ought to be one long toast to one of the most brilliant offensive careers in the league’s history. He ought to be the subject of serious debate, such as, “Who’s better, Payton or Allen? O.J. or Allen? Dickerson or Allen? Dorsett or Allen?”

Instead, the primary questions asked about Allen since 1986 have been, “Where is he? What happened to him? How does a man with that much talent just drop off the face of the earth?”

Don’t get me wrong, even at 34 and 10 years removed from his last 1,000-yard rushing season, Marcus Allen is of great value, as his 12 touchdowns this season for the Kansas City Chiefs attest. But you watch Allen now, you see that 21-yard cutback run for a touchdown against the great Houston defense to clinch Sunday’s AFC playoff victory and you can’t help but be disturbed that between 1986 and 1992 Marcus Allen was a virtual non-person.

He went into Al Davis’ doghouse over a salary dispute before the 1986 season and it took free agency to lead him out of it and into Kansas City for 1993. He went from 380 carries in 1985 to 179 in 1990, from 18 touchdowns in 1984 to three in 1992, from being the most valuable player in Super Bowl XVIII to being benched in favor of somebody named Vann McElroy on critical third downs.

Overwhelmingly he was healthy, beloved almost to the point of worship by his teammates and coaches, of indisputable integrity and toughness. His principal sin was getting on Davis’ bad side.

“It’s almost impossible to conceive of what happened to Marcus,” his friend and NBC analyst O.J. Simpson said this week. “Everybody knew it was wrong; the question is, ‘Why?’ It’s an answer I still don’t have.”

It’s been so long, it’s easy to have forgotten how exceptional and uncommon an offensive player Allen was.

As a rookie out of Southern Cal, in strike-shortened 1982, he rushed for 697 yards and 11 touchdowns and caught 38 passes for three more touchdowns.

In ‘83, he rushed for 1,014 yards and nine touchdowns. Even more ridiculous is that he completed 4 of 7 passes for 111 yards and three touchdowns and recovered a ball in the end zone for yet another touchdown.

To cap that second year, he rushed for 191 yards in the Super Bowl against the Redskins and was named the game’s MVP.

Marcus Allen, at 25, was on a rocket ship.

And then it crashed. A salary dispute led to a holdout. Essentially, it lasted until he got to Kansas City--seven years.

In a teleconference with reporters Wednesday morning, Allen said it wouldn’t “do anyone any good” to talk about his lost years with the Raiders, his theories of why Davis buried him on the bench.

But Allen has gone on the record before, once in a revealing interview at halftime of a 1992 Monday Night Football telecast during which he said, “What do you think of a guy who has attempted to ruin your career? He told me he was going to get me and he has. . . . I think he tried to ruin the latter part of my career, tried to devalue me and tried to stop me from going to the Hall of Fame.”

Davis called Allen’s comments “blatant lies.”

Simpson admired Davis and Allen admired Simpson, all the way back to when Allen was a high school All-American in San Diego. Allen wound up at USC, just like Juice, and won the Heisman Trophy, just like Juice.

Simpson recalled he had believed his protege and the owner he had always secretly wanted to play for would work things out. They didn’t.

Allen sat and sat. Word leaked that Davis had ordered coaches not to use Allen in short-yardage and goal-line situations.

Coaches denied that Davis was interfering. “I’d watch games,” Simpson said, “and I see third downs and Van McSomebody in the game instead of Marcus.

That’s tantamount to taking Barry Sanders out of the game on third down and inserting some fourth-stringer.”

Al Davis was responsible, single-handedly responsible. He held the most hurtful grudge imaginable: He wasted the better part of another man’s career.

Al Davis has been a visionary in many ways, the Bill Veeck of the NFL. But this is the black mark on his record, the stain that can’t be washed away.

Seven bum years, even if he was hurt twice (’89 and ‘91).

Allen would play hurt, Allen would try to rally the troops through the mid-week doldrums during losing seasons.

You know what his teammates did last year? They voted Allen the club’s Commitment to Excellence Award. It was the only way they could say, “We support you.”

Marcus Allen, for more than half his career, was the NFL Players Association’s best argument for free agency. Look what one man with power absolute could do to another without freedom of movement.

Allen told The Times: “You never forget what happens to you, but you have to get past it, you have to move on.

“You try to stay busy enough that you don’t have time to dwell on what happened. The biggest difference between here and the Raiders? Easy, here I’m happy.”

Marty Schottenheimer, the Chiefs’ head coach, readily admits he foresaw Allen as a third-down back, a guy who could carry eight, 10 times a game and back up Harvey Williams.

One game from a trip to the Super Bowl, Schottenheimer says Allen is the toughest back he’s ever coached, ever seen.

Simpson laughs. “They brought him in as a third-down back and he’s now the main back.

His fear, at least subconsciously, was that those years would keep him out of the Hall of Fame.

Instead, he’s been spotlighted; this has probably cemented his going into the Hall. No matter what happens Sunday in Buffalo, this had been a triumphant year for Marcus Allen.

It proves from a performance and talent standpoint that Marcus was right.”