In “Three Stages”, author Ben Bryant plays football for celebrity coach George Allen

In chapter two I reported how a former Whittier College football player introduced me to (soon to be) celebrity Coach George Allen who arranged for me to get an athletic grant. My first year I was on the Freshman team and had only minimal contact with The Man. But…

From Chapter 3 – I’m A Poet: Whittier (1953-1956)

“Sophomore year I was on the varsity football team and as third string fullback and linebacker, I got to be the blocking dummy for the first and second strings in practice. At least I proved that I wasn’t gutless by time and again being run over by a blocking back and a pulling guard in “live meat” practices. No matter how many times they knocked me on my ass I just kept coming back. And once in a while I fended them off and made the tackle.

“I have to tell you about George Allen. He was a fabulous coach and a great character. Have you ever had an experience where you wished that you’d written something down, sealed it in a dated envelope and opened it ten years later? After the first week of practice I believed Coach Allen was destined for the NFL. And he was funny. Built with a broad ass and narrow shoulders he was nicknamed by the players “The Green Arrow”. Even then (when players had to play both offense and defense) he was a fanatic about defense.  The two seasons I played under the Arrow we lead the NCAA in interceptions. We had designed plays for returning interceptions and fumble recoveries. And drills: interception drills, fumble drills, all sorts of drills. He was writing a book on drills.

G A Book“And he used us to try them out. So practice was never boring and routine. We laughed a lot.

“Allen was not afraid to try outrageous things. I had become fascinated by the girls’ modern dance class and would sneak into the gym to watch these fine young specimens in their leotards go through their provocative moves. When the teacher caught me she suggested that if I could get four more guys to join, the class would become coed. Once I described the class to my buddies I soon had six recruits, mostly football players. We wore tee shirts and shorts. No respectable football player would be caught dead in tights. (This was long before the days of Broadway Joe Namath.) The Arrow wandered in one day as we were warming up. He watched for a while and at practice that afternoon he introduced several of the dance moves to our warm-up calisthenics.

“One of the things that provoked laughter was the Arrow’s assistant, line coach, Fred Burri. In those days, especially at a small school like Whittier, a coach was lucky to have two assistants so there were no specialist coaches. Burri, a 250 pound blonde Viking, was five or six years out of Oregon State and he was funny. He ate oranges and hard-boiled eggs the way the rest of us ate apples. He claimed the husk and shell were good for the digestive tract.

“Fred (The Animal) also gave the scouting reports on our opponents. My favorite was when we played Northern Arizona the first time. He said, “The right guard is named sixty-two and he’s the meanest sum-bitch I ever saw. The right tackle, Manual Labor (the guy’s name was really Manuel Lava) is even meaner.” The Animal didn’t always make sense but he meant well.

“Coach Allen was also a great motivator. We had awards for “Bonus Blocks”. If you made your assigned block then another that was a point. Backs got bonus points for being tackled when we didn’t have the ball. Defensive players got bonus points for tackles behind the opponents’ line of scrimmage. If you fumbled in a game or scrimmage you had to carry a football to classes and all the other players were supposed to try and knock it out of your hand at every opportunity. We didn’t fumble often. I could write a whole chapter about Coach Allen but that’s not what this volume is about. Suffice to say he was a great innovator and beloved coach.

“When we played Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, I didn’t make the traveling squad so I drove to the game with two or three other guys. It was a very rainy, cold night and a close game until the third quarter when we blocked an Arizona punt. The ball bounced into their end zone and we recovered for a touchdown. But wait! Two of the four officials said touchdown and two said touchback, our ball on the twenty. George Allen marched onto the field waving the official NCAA rule book. Twenty-three minutes later (the longest argument delay in NCAA history) we were awarded a touchdown and all hell broke loose. There was a near riot in the stands and we feared for our lives. Fortunately our rain parkas covered our Whittier jackets so we managed to survive. We won the game and later that night the parking lot at our motel, where the team was housed, was invaded by pickup trucks equipped with gun racks and bearing Arizona fans. The cops came and ran them off and we were very glad to depart, unscathed, early the next morning.”

More about Coach Allen in Three Stages

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