George Allen: A Football Life - Hardcover

Richman, Michael

 
9780803249684: George Allen: A Football Life
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0803249683 ISBN 13: 9780803249684
Verlag: University of Nebraska Press, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

George Allen was a fascinating and eccentric figure in the world of football coaching. His remarkable career spanned six decades, from the late 1940s until his sudden death in 1990 at the age of seventy-three. Although he never won a Super Bowl, he never had a losing season as an NFL head coach and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002.

In George Allen: A Football Life, Mike Richman captures the life and accomplishments of one of the most successful NFL coaches of all time and one of the greatest innovators in the game. A player’s coach, Allen was a tremendous motivator and game strategist, as well as a defensive mastermind, and is credited with making special teams a critical focus in an era in which they were an afterthought. He had a keen eye for talent and pulled off masterful trades, often for veteran players who were viewed to be past their prime, who then had great seasons and made his teams much better.

In addition to his coaching feats, Allen had an idiosyncratic and controversial personality. His life revolved around football 24-7. One of his quirks was to minimize chewing time by consuming soft foods, giving himself more time to prepare for games and study opponents. He lived and breathed football; he compared losing to death. Allen had contentious relationships with the owners of the two NFL teams for which he was the head coach, the Washington Redskins and Los Angeles Rams. Richman explores why he was fired by those teams and whether he was blackballed from coaching again in the NFL.

Based on detailed research and interviews with family, former players, and coaches, George Allen is the definitive biography of the football coach who lived to win, loved a good challenge, and left a lasting legacy on pro football history.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mike Richman is an author and journalist who has covered sports for more than twenty-five years. He is the author of Washington Redskins Football Vault: The History of a Proud Franchise; The Redskins Encyclopedia; and Joe Gibbs: An Enduring Legacy. Dick Vermeil was an NFL head coach for three teams across fifteen seasons and led the Rams to their first Super Bowl win. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2022.
 

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1

Humble Beginnings

When one looks back on the football coaching exploits of George Allen,
certain characteristics about him inevitably take shape: his exceptional
work ethic, his ultracompetitiveness, and his unyielding quest for perfection.
Those traits defined him to the core.

It’s not too difficult to pinpoint why he became so driven or the origin
of his Type A personality. Growing up poor during the Great Depression
likely played a significant role. The way he described it, his hunger to
succeed existed from the very beginning.

“I was born motivated,” Allen wrote in his 1990 book, Strategies for
Winning. “Not everyone is. But I believe motivation can be passed on and
acquired, like a vaccine.”

George Herbert Allen was born on April 29, 1917, in a home at 62 Fulton
Street in Detroit. His birth certificate identifies his father, Earl Allen, as
a “machinist auto worker” and his mother, Loretta Hannigan Allen, as
a “housewife.” By his teenage years, George would be called on to help
support the family, which welcomed a second child, Virginia, in 1921. But
the Allens seemed financially comfortable for the time being.

Earl and Loretta had moved to Detroit from the town of Rensselaer,
New York, on the east side of the Hudson River opposite the state capital,
Albany. In the 1800s many Dutch immigrants settled in Albany, Rensselaer,
and other nearby areas. Rensselaer is today the only New York State
site devoted to Dutch culture and is home to Crailo, the museum of the
colonial Dutch in the Hudson River valley. Earl and Loretta were both of
Irish descent, with Earl also possessing Dutch lineage.

By the turn of the century, millions of Americans were migrating to
the country’s rapidly growing cities in search of economic opportunity.
Detroit, which had evolved into a mecca of industrial production led by
auto companies, held a wealth of potential jobs. The city’s population skyrocketed
in the first half of the twentieth century, with waves of European
and Canadian immigrants, as well as residents of southern U.S. states,
seeking work in the booming car industry.

The Allens took notice, although when they relocated to Detroit is
unclear. Their home in 1917 at 62 Fulton Street was in a blue-collar
industrial area in the southwestern part of the city. Many working-class
people settled there around the end of World War I.

That same year, the Allens headed east to the Detroit suburb of Grosse
Pointe Shores, which by the early twentieth century had become a popular
destination for the rich and powerful. Their residence was on Lake Shore
Road, which featured some imposing mansions on multiacre estates,
with architecture so grand that one house resembled an “early English
Renaissance Castle” and cost $2 million to build, the equivalent of about
$40 million today. Members of the Ford family—the auto-manufacturing
dynasty—owned some of the mansions. Grosse Pointe Shores as a whole
was trending upscale, with a fair number of residents listing themselves
as professionals, merchants, or industry owners of some sort. One called
himself a “capitalist.”

Other people such as Earl Allen were there to service the wealthy. He
and his family resided at 1025 rear Lake Shore Road. The “rear” in the
address likely meant they lived in a cottage on the property or in an apartment
above the garage.

Earl Allen was a chauffeur for a successful businessman named Edgar
H. Houghton, who lived with his family in the main residence at 1025 Lake
Shore Road. Houghton, a Canadian immigrant who became an American
citizen, managed the Lawrence Publishing Company before becoming
secretary-treasurer of the Michigan Farmer, an agricultural publication.
Having a car and being able to afford a chauffeur made him quite upper
class for that time.

Houghton thought highly of Earl Allen as an employee and penned a
letter of recommendation for him on January 20, 1920: “The bearer, Earl
R. Allen, has been in my employ for three years. I have found him to be
perfectly honest in every way and a consistent worker. I cheerfully recommend
him, and I am certain that he will ably fill any position he may accept.
He is taking a vacation for three months, while I am away in Florida, and
I will gladly take him back on my return if he will accept the position.”8

In addition to being a chauffeur, Earl spent time as a car mechanic at
a local Ford plant. Loretta was a domestic worker. The family’s 1025 rear
Lake Shore Road residence was across the street from the estate where the
family of Edsel Ford, the only son of automobile mogul Henry Ford and the
president of the Ford Motor Company at the time, began residing in 1928.

According to the 1930 U.S. Census, the Allens relocated about six miles
north, to 23511 Allor Boulevard in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, a bedroom
community with many workers in the Detroit auto industry. It was also a
transport site for “rum running,” the illegal business of shipping alcohol
during the Prohibition era. The 1930 Census says Earl Allen was still a
chauffeur for a “private family.” He also played the saxophone and performed
in clubs. The Allens owned a radio, which at the time meant they
were probably in the middle-class portion of the socioeconomic spectrum.

But the Great Depression, which began in 1929, shook the nation, causing
steep declines in industrial output and employment. Many companies
laid off workers, and Detroit was hit hard. Some fifteen million Americans
were out of work by the nadir of the Great Depression, in 1933.

Earl Allen struggled, although not entirely because of the tight economy.
In an incident that prevented him from working, he suffered a debilitating
head injury on the Ford assembly line. At the same time, he was a heavy
drinker, a pattern that his son observed. George Allen never drank alcoholic
beverages in excess in his life, limiting his consumption to a blackberry
brandy or a beer that he shared with his wife. “My father’s determination
not to drink and to make sure his children did not drink much could be
because his father drank too much,” said the oldest of George Allen’s four
children, George Felix Allen.

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Verlag
University of Nebraska Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0803249683
ISBN 13 
9780803249684
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
587
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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