George Allen

[Prop13]

I'm a transplanted DC native to the South part of LA. People around here--where Allen was from, I believe, think that every Redskin fan was an Allen fan, but that is not the case.

I got into football around seven years old or so--my first memories were of the Allen era. The county was pretty split back then between pro-Vietnam/anti-Vietnam and pro-Nixon/anti-Nixon (Nixon and Allen were friends by the way), but in DC, there was another split--I'd call it pro-Allen/anti-Allen, but people who were there at the time would probably remember it best as Kilmer/Jurgensen, with Kilmer people being pro-Allen.

Anyway, this is the way I remember it--don't have any statistics or surveys, etc. ...it's just the way I remember it.

My house was definitely pro-Jurgensen. I was too young at the time to know much about the fundamentals, but if Jurgensen had played more we would have won more. Yes, I know, Jurgensen was hurt a lot, and he was hurt for the Superbowl against the Dolphins, but Kilmer's performance there was in some ways indicative of the kind of player he was--he threw 4 interceptions, as I recall, and we only lost 14-7.

I believe it was Allen who was known for saying he was willing to sell his soul to win. I'd quip back that he was willing to sell everybody else's soul too. Before the Herschel Walker trade (surely one of the worst in history) Allen's Ramskins trades probably ranked pretty high. ...This is partially why (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), we didn't have a draft pick higher than the 4th round from 1972 until 1979. Think about that.

George Allen was like a Buddy Ryan except more so. He had good qualities. He had bad ones too. People tend to remember the good ones--I remember the bad ones too. Maybe my impressions were colored by the opinions of my parents, like I said I was pretty young then and didn't know much about the fundamentals of the game. ...but that's the way I remember it.