By George, Son Can’t Shine on the Raiders

His father went 17 consecutive years without a losing season, but George Allen’s son is about to complete his second in a row as senior assistant (general manager) for the woeful Raiders.

And it’s killing him, because Bruce Allen, as much as any little boy afforded the opportunity to walk the sidelines with the great George Allen, idolized him both as father and coach.

“He was my father, my friend, my hero,” Allen says.

He snaps his fingers to make the point, talking proudly of his father’s ability to make the Los Angeles Rams an instant winner, moving on to Washington to give Redskin fans their first championship in 30 years, and still standing tall with the best winning percentage in NFL history, .705, among coaches who last 12 years in the game.

“And he was a better father than coach,” Allen says.

“Every year, Dad would tell me he would give me a game ball if the team won the week I had my birthday. His team won every year, and I have every game ball.”

George Allen was “absolutely” the best coach who ever lived, says Bruce Allen, and without hesitation, a man who would have embraced the opportunity to work with Al Davis.

“There was great respect there,” Allen says.

In part, that is why he is working for Davis, and although most football fans and observers are mocking Davis, saying he has lost it, Allen says admiringly, “Al Davis is a lot like my father.

“Their focus on football is so similar, their drive, their passion, their respect for the people who played and the history of the game--their hobby is their sport. Now don’t write this off as some kind of public relations stuff coming from someone who works for the Raiders. No, I see Al Davis as being very similar to my father. I see Al Davis as a terrific leader and I wish the players could see more of it, because this man can build a fire in you.”

Others might describe George Allen and Al Davis as “eccentrics,” says Allen, butting in and finishing the sentence. “No question.

“Hey, I liked Ronald Reagan and I still think Richard Nixon was a great president and just because some people don’t think so, doesn’t change my opinion. I look up to Al Davis; I’m rubbing shoulders with NFL history, and being raised in this game, it’s really magical for me.

“Listen, I had a good business working as an agent, and I was surfing and golfing, but I didn’t have that challenge in life, that feeling that you were spilling your guts to do something, your heart being ripped out with wins and losses. That’s what my dad felt, and that’s what I wanted to experience.”

In the three years since he stopped being a sports agent, Allen has been taking the ultimate ulcer test, working for Davis, and enjoying 19 wins, but suffering through 27 losses.

There has been speculation that Davis might fire Allen at season’s end, further talk that a frustrated Allen might quit, unhappy with his own inability to effect more immediate success. There have been reports from Oakland writers assigned to cover the team that Allen has changed, has become harder to reach, more difficult to trust.

But isn’t that the Raider way?

Insiders say there have been heated exchanges between Allen and Davis, making Allen one of the few, if not the only one in the Raider organization, willing to express an opinion contrary to Davis’. The last time that happened, John Madden was coach and Ron Wolf, now the Packers’ general manager, was the team’s personnel operations director and the Raiders were winning.

“I want to be a part of the solution here,” says Allen, declining to be more specific. “It is the way I have been raised: I have to be the very best I can be.

“I remember working in a gas station before they were self-service, and it was cold and I was standing inside the shop. A car pulls up, and I walk out with my hands in my pockets and the window’s rolled down and it’s my father. I never dreamed it would be him, because he just never drove. . . . I don’t remember seeing him drive anywhere.

“And he’s yelling at me right there in the gas station for having my hands in my pocket, telling me I should be smiling and quick to serve and wanting to check the oil, not because I was going to get a commission but because I wanted to be the very best gas station attendant in all of northern Virginia.”

Growing up in Palos Verdes, where his mother, Etty, still lives, Allen recalls sitting on the family couch with his sister and two brothers in the mid-’60s, listening to his father.

“He told my brother, George Jr., he would be a lawyer and maybe president if he wanted. He told my brother, Greg, he would be a doctor, maybe a veterinarian, and my sister, Jennifer, she would be a teacher and writer. He must have checked our IQs before doing that, because he said I would be in football.

“George Jr. now has one month to go as governor of Virginia, Greg’s a shrink, and Jennifer’s been a teacher, and now she’s a mother and writing a book about Dad and her relationship with him.”

All very successful--the Allen way, because “you have to be,” says Bruce Allen. But the future was always now for George Allen, a motto carved into sports Americana, that seems to be escaping the present-day Raiders.

“You just have to keep at it,” Allen says. “I remember my parents making me take tap-dancing classes because they told me Jon Arnett did and it helped make him a great runner. They wouldn’t let me quit, and to this day I wonder if Jon Arnett ever really took tap-dancing classes.

“I know I’m made up of my mom and dad, and she’s as fiery as they come. She would never let me quit anything. I think about that, and I think about the challenge my dad took in going to Long Beach [State]. . . . He didn’t have a prayer to win there, and he knew it was going to kill him, but in the last year of his life, he wanted that feeling in his stomach, that thrill of taking on a challenge.”

The football program was about to be shut down at Long Beach State when George Allen took over at 71. He didn’t have a chance, and his team started 0-3, including a 59-0 loss to Clemson.

“There was an ugly fight at the end of a loss to Utah State, and Dad said, ‘That’s it, I’m going to do it my way,’ ” Allen says. “He fired the female trainers, made any player with a ponytail cut his hair, allowed no more earrings, went to class with some of the players, called parents to tell them that their sons were not doing well in school and worked 20 hours a day.

“And the team finished the year 6-5.”

Allen is on his feet, holding up a newspaper clipping from a long-ago issue of the Los Angeles Times, which quotes his father: “Winning is living, every time you win, you’re reborn. When you lose you die a little.”

There is no doubt, Allen said, “My dad could be successful today--instantly . . . to a certain extent. Look what Bill Parcells did with the Jets. It can be done.”

George Allen began his career as a winner, and ended it that way. He won the last regular-season game he ever coached in the NFL, leading the Redskins over the Rams in 1977, and 13 years later he recorded his final victory, against Nevada Las Vegas, a memory that still hangs comfortably with his son.

“The last game, the [Long Beach State] players drenched him in Gatorade, and he came down with pneumonia,” he says. “He was sick for several weeks and the doctors wouldn’t allow him to run, and he was such a fitness fanatic because that’s how he relieved his stress. He wanted to run so badly, so on New Year’s Eve morning, he went running, and when my mom came home, she found him dead on the kitchen floor.

“But he went out his way: John Wayne. And he did everything he wanted to in life, and when those players carried him off the field after beating UNLV in his last win, he wouldn’t have traded that feeling for three or four Super Bowl wins.”

And that is the feeling that Bruce Allen now pursues.

“I had so many advantages from being raised the way I was,” he says. “I ought to be able to achieve it.”

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Out of Time

Fewest games remaining in NFL seasons when head coaches were fired:

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Coach (Team) Games Left in Year Marion Campbell (Eagles) One in 1985 LeRoy Andrews (Giants) Two in 1930 Hugh Campbell (Oilers) Two in 1985 Ray Perkins (Buccaneers) Three in 1990 Rod Dowhower (Colts) Three in 1986 Bud Wilkinson (Cardinals) Three in 1979

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Source: World Features Syndicate