Phog: The Most Influential Man in Basketball
376
Phog: The Most Influential Man in Basketball
376Hardcover
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Overview
Remembered in name but underappreciated in legacy, Forrest “Phog” Allen arguably influenced the game of basketball more than anyone else.
In the first half of the twentieth century, Allen took basketball from a gentlemanly, indoor recreational pastime to the competitive game that would become a worldwide sport. Succeeding James Naismith as the University of Kansas’s basketball coach in 1907, Allen led the Jayhawks for thirty-nine seasons and holds the record for most wins at that school, with 590. He also helped create the NCAA tournament and brought basketball to the Olympics. Allen changed the way the game is played, coached, marketed, and presented.
Scott Morrow Johnson reveals Allen as a master recruiter, a transformative coach, and a visionary basketball mind. Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, Wilt Chamberlain, and many others benefited from Allen’s knowledge of and passion for the game. But Johnson also delves into Allen’s occasionally tumultuous relationships with Naismith, the NCAA, and University of Kansas administrators.
Phog: The Most Influential Man in Basketball chronicles this complex man’s life, telling for the first time the full story of the man whose name is synonymous with Kansas basketball and with the game itself.
Scott Morrow Johnson is an award-winning sportswriter whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Sports Illustrated, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune. Judy Allen Morris is Phog Allen’s granddaughter.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803285712 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2016 |
| Pages: | 376 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Scott Morrow Johnson is an award-winning sportswriter whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including Sports Illustrated, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune. Judy Allen Morris is Phog Allen’s granddaughter.
Read an Excerpt
Phog
The Most Influential Man in Basketball
By Scott Morrow Johnson
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Scott Morrow JohnsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-9539-1
CHAPTER 1
Running from Independence
Forrest was on the run. Feet pounding dirt. Sweat glistening off his bare chest on a sweltering Missouri day. It was the dawn of a new century, and Forrest Allen was in love.
The teenager was on his daily run through the town of Independence, Missouri, basking in a routine designed to get his body into shape. Out on these dirt roads of his hometown, Forrest could be alone with his thoughts. Maybe his father was right. Perhaps the cigarettes and the rabblerousing were sending him down a dead-end street. If Forrest was going to make something of his life, he was going to have to start now.
Maybe the game was the thing that could save him. Basket ball. It had become his first true love, integrating itself into his every thought. And to master the game, Forrest would need to build up the temple of his body. On and on he ran, his heart pounding in the swell of the Missouri heat.
In a sense, Forrest was always running toward something. In front of him was a future only Allen himself could see, pulling him forward with visionary strength. The comforting aroma of elm and cottonwood trees filled the air of Midwestern summer as he ran. The new century swelled with opportunity, and young Forrest was stubbornly beating a path toward greatness.
He ran down Delaware Street, past the Sawyer family mansion on the corner, took a left on Maple Street and on past the First Presbyterian Church. Past the Bank of Independence building and the massive courthouse, with its concrete pillars rising up like four adjacent towers. He took another left at the soda fountain where that Truman kid served phosphates on the weekend and a right at the Jackson County jailhouse. He trampled on, down the winding hill toward the southern part of his hometown, his heart pumping and his new shoes kicking up dirt as he jogged the unpaved roads alongside the fields, through the blazing summer heat of eastern Jackson County. On and on he ran, with only his thoughts and the blazing sunlight, alone out in the farmlands at the edge of town.
Beads of perspiration swelled upon his forehead and trickled down the smooth skin of his round face. His chest protruded forward, his fists were balled in a fighter's grip. The sandy hair atop Forrest's head held remarkably firmly in place, the well-crafted part on the left side of his scalp gathering sunlight across a sliver of pink skin.
The clacking sound of horse hooves cut through the peaceful silence. As Forrest continued his pace, a man's voice startled him from behind. He slowed and turned to see a horse-drawn buggy pulling up alongside him. Atop the buggy was one of the town's richest residents, a landowner named R. Frank Milton, whose 320-acre plot and beautiful country home were the envy of every man in Independence. Milton slowed his horses to an easy gait. Their clacking hooves whispered to a halt. Forrest paused, his hands on bare hips, and looked up at the man.
"Why are you running?" Milton asked, looking down at the shirtless teenaged boy in the running shorts. "Where are you headed?"
"I'm running to the spring, about five miles from here," Forrest responded breathlessly, "for a drink of water."
Frank Milton scoffed, disgusted by the sight of a boy without a shirt on the roads of Independence. He ordered the horses to reassume their gallop. "You," Milton said scornfully, refusing to look back as he passed the shirtless boy, "are a disgraceful sight."
The horse and buggy paraded off into the distance that lay out in front of him, and Forrest Allen kept on. He couldn't afford to stop. He had to stay in shape. He had to stay ahead of the competition. He wanted to be the best basket baller he could be.
What Forrest probably knew at the time was that he would see Frank Milton again; in a town of six thousand people, it was impossible not to.
What he couldn't have known at the time was that he was about to fall in love again, in love with something other than basket ball. He was going to fall in love with R. Frank Milton's eldest daughter.
The America into which Forrest Clare Allen was born on November 18, 1885, was still battling itself, in conflict with what it was and with what it hoped to be, a full two decades after the conclusion of the civil war. He was a Missourian by birth, born to William and Mary Allen in the northwest part of the Midwestern state, but Allen's bloodlines traced back to a group of Scots-Irishmen known as "Borderers," a defiant band of loyalists who had made land runs from Scotland to Northern Ireland and on to the eastern part of the United States before settling in the American South in the mid-nineteenth century. A fiercely stubborn people whose fighting spirit developed during their century-long rise from peasantry, the Scots-Irish were known for their fearless insolence to authority as well as their tenacious disdain for the status quo.
Allen's grandparents on both sides eventually settled into Virginia, where each of his grandfathers served as Confederate soldiers in the civil war; John Wesley Perry, his grandfather on his mother's side, fought under Gen. Robert E. Lee. In the post–civil war years, many family members continued the generational migration westward from Virginia, to a part of the United States that was caught in its own inner battles.
By the time Allen's father, William, arrived in Missouri in 1871, the Border War between Missouri and neighboring Kansas was ablaze in the heartland, the hatred still simmering from the murderous rampage eight years earlier by a man named William Quantrill and his Missouri gang against a liberal group of Kansas rebels known as the "Jayhawkers." When Quantrill and his men crossed the border to pillage the Kansas town of Lawrence in 1863, killing more than 150 men and boys while setting fire to buildings, they drove a burning stake into the interstate border that would continue to smolder for more than a century.
A nineteen-year-old Virginian named William Allen would ride into Missouri from Virginia's Carroll County eight years later, arriving as one of the thirty original settlers in the town of Jameson, Missouri. He soon began working as town constable and clerk. Eventually, Allen would be recognized as the town's first physician and owner of the only drug store in Jameson. By the time he turned twenty-five years old in 1877, William had impregnated an eighteen-year-old woman named Mary Elexzene Perry and married her. Together, they began a family with the birth of son Homer Perry Allen, in March 1877. Sons Elmer and Harry followed before Forrest came into the world, kicking and screaming like any well-respecting Scots-Irishman, in November 1885. Forrest Clare Allen was born in an unincorporated farm town ten miles east of Jameson called Jamesport. He was the fourth child in a family that would eventually include six boys and would go on to settle down in Independence, Missouri, a community of about six thousand people where the six Allen boys would spend most of their formative years.
Independence was the kind of community where families gathered around a large table for nightly supper before spilling into a summer evening to wrap themselves in the company of a neighbor's porch, which would be lit only by the moon or an occasional gas lamp in a window after sunset. Names and faces brought a comfortable recognition, as it wasn't difficult to notice the out-of-towners who filed in by the dozens for weekend shopping at Independence Square. At the center of town, the square offered a popular soda fountain where teenagers could congregate around malts and phosphate sodas as well as an enormous courthouse, complete with rising stone pillars, which resonantly marked the heart of Independence. Residents looking for a change of scenery could venture east to Kansas City, just a ten-mile trolley ride away, where taverns and shops and the country's second-most busy train stockyards provided entertainment.
Despite its hospitable veneer, Independence was a town also steeped with the stubborn pride of its southern traditions. The Northwest Missouri hamlet featured a part of town known as "Nigger Neck," where most of the "colored" citizens, many of whom had endured slavery earlier in their lives, took up residence. It was a town where Quantrill's men were known to hide out three decades earlier, after runs across the Kansas border to pillage small towns and set fire to homes of the liberal Jayhawkers. By the time the Allen family moved there as the 1880s rolled into the 1890s, the town of Independence still hosted Quantrill reunions for surviving members of the gang's infamous Lawrence Massacre.
While the growing metropolis of Kansas City was considered progressive, Independence was steadfastly stuck in its southern roots. Perhaps these values were what led Forrest Allen off to other places, for despite his loyalty he was never one to settle for the status quo.
William T. Allen, Forrest's father, was a bit of a progressive thinker in his own right. A bookkeeper and salesman who also farmed his own land, William used his entrepreneurial skills in finding creative ways to bring in money. He was known to take his boys — Homer, Elmer, Harry (who went by the nickname Pete), Forrest, Hubert, and Richard — from one county fair to the next, signing them up for boxing matches to help supplement the family savings. Using the pseudonym Pug Allen to remain somewhat anonymous, young Forrest would pull on his gloves — reluctantly at first, though in time he grew to love the sport — and climb into the ring, weekend after weekend. The taste of his own blood came to fuel a competitive fire within him, one that drove Forrest toward something that only sport could provide. He became a quite proficient boxer, and as a basketball coach later in his life, Forrest would use the sport to help develop the hand-eye coordination and footwork of his players. The carnival scene also unearthed a showman side to young Forrest's personality, and his gift for publicity and promotion would be a big part of his career as a coach and flag-bearer for the sport of basketball in years to come.
In Independence, the Allen family lived a Midwestern life of daily chores and constant activity within a budding community where neighbors shared cherry pie and fresh-picked fruit. While Mary Allen, the boys' young mother, kept house, the Allen boys played all sorts of games out back, developing a healthy thirst for competition and the inner passion to win at all costs. Baseball was an early favorite among the Allen boys, who were known to invite neighbors over for spirited games. Before long, young Forrest gained such acumen for baseball that he began serving as an umpire at games played in and around Independence. Forrest Allen quickly became known around town for his big, booming voice while calling balls and strikes. Not overly intimidating in physical stature, young Forrest carried an unexpected volume that soon earned him a nickname on the baseball circuit. The voice was reminiscent of a foghorn, and before long people in and around Independence were calling him "Fog" — although it would be a few years before a young newspaper reporter in Lawrence, Kansas, named Ward "Pinhead" Coble would change up the spelling to give the nickname a little pizzazz.
The boys' father earned his own nickname in those days, thanks in large part to the bevy of athletic endeavors that left him constantly shopping for his kids' footwear. "Shoe" Allen, as Forrest's father William came to be called, was known around town for the grocery store he owned on Market Street. The elder Allen employed young Forrest as a clerk at the Haines-Allen Grocery Company, where Forrest Allen often daydreamed about swinging a bat or catching a football or shooting a free throw. Shoe Allen supported his sons' passion for athletics but didn't believe a career in sports was a worthy endeavor. He was especially cynical about young Forrest's prospects in the working world and sometimes scoffed at the boy's talk about earning a living in athletics. Forrest had spent part of his youth running with a bad crowd and seemed without true direction. William Allen couldn't have seen it at the time, but basketball, known in those years as basket ball, became the driving force that would provide young Forrest with a pathway toward adulthood.
By the turn of the century, the Allen boys had taken to the sport, partly because it required a minimum of five players, meaning the six Allen brothers could field a team of their own — with one sub. The Allen Brothers Basket Ball Team was formed, complete with wool uniforms featuring the letter A and the number signifying each brother's birth order inside a circle on the front; Phog wore the A4 jersey, as the fourth-born. Phog and Pete — four years Phog's elder and wearing jersey A3 — towered over their smaller brothers, even the oldest two, Homer (A1) and Elmer (A2). The Allen Brothers would challenge all comers at an old livery barn on the family's property, even taking on college teams if they dared. One brother, Hubert, would brag in later years that the Allen Brothers lost only one game in the five years they played together. Older brother Pete was the tallest and strongest of the Allen boys, and he quickly developed a knack for the game. But it was Forrest who would become the basketball star of the family over time.
At Independence High School, where a sign above the door welcomed students with a Latin phrase that translated to "youth, the hope of the world," Forrest Allen was an unremarkable student who took a liking to a teacher named George Bryant. Mr. Bryant taught his students a sleeping technique that involved reading poetry before bed. Allen became a better sleeper because of it and also learned to appreciate the works of John Keats, John Milton, and Virgil. He fell in love with an Ernest Thayer poem about a burly baseball player from Mudville who wanted one big whack in an important at-bat. The 1888 poem "Casey at the Bat" is about the slugger's inability to deliver a hit when called upon in the clutch. Allen could relate to the idea of an athlete looking for a chance to shine; he was a three-sport star at Independence High, where he played third base in baseball, end in football, and forward in basketball, all for a coach named W. J. O'Brien. Allen kept himself in shape by working summer jobs — he spent one summer in Texas working as a railroad axe man and in a lumber mill — and also by running the streets of his hometown. He was on one such run when Forrest ran into R. Frank Milton, who turned out to be the father of an Independence High classmate named Bessie Milton.
Bessie was two years Forrest's junior, a small girl whom he recognized from church. Forrest didn't know much about her other than the starkness of her charcoal eyes and dark, curly hair, and over time her beauty would cause his heart to flutter. What he didn't know at the time was that Bessie Evalina Milton, like Forrest himself, also had deep Confederate roots, having been part of a family that had retreated from war-torn Virginia in favor of the tranquility of Missouri following the civil war. According to family lore, one cousin was even known to have run with Quantrill's band of rebels back in the day. Bessie's father, Robert Frank Milton, had twenty cents in his pocket when he arrived from Virginia as a teenager. He found work as a farm laborer, making fifteen dollars a month while learning the trade. By the age of twenty-four, he had saved up enough money to purchase a small farm near Wellington, Missouri, where he planted a crop of wheat before returning to Virginia in an effort to woo his high school sweetheart to join him in the Midwest. Elizabeth Myers agreed to accompany Frank Milton on his return trip to Missouri, and her family was so upset that they effectively disowned her; when Elizabeth wrote to her family from Missouri, her letters went without response. She eventually married Frank Milton, whose prodigious wheat fields helped build up a small fortune. Frank and Elizabeth Milton started a family, and by the time Bessie was born, the Miltons were among the wealthiest families in all of Independence. Frank Milton's property on Lee's Summit Road boasted 420 acres of land — the largest acreage in town. Bessie's father was also a very proud man, and he made it known that he did not want his daughter hanging around with a "rascal" like Forrest Allen.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Phog by Scott Morrow Johnson. Copyright © 2016 Scott Morrow Johnson. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Foreword Acknowledgments Prologue: From Naismith to Wilt 1. Running from Independence 2. The “World’s Championship” 3. A Man Named Jim 4. The Hero Arrives 5. The Game Can Be Coached 6. Call Him Doc 7. A Teacher among Teachers 8. Once a Jayhawk 9. Ascent to New Heights 10. A Bitter Winter 11. The Day the Game Arrived 12. Stepping Out of the Shadow 13. A Greater Calling 14. The Fall of a Legend 15. Rising from the Ashes 16. Just Like Any Other Game Day 17. Searching for Gold 18. The Improbable Return 19. The King Gets His Castle 20. The Biggest Fish 21. Wanting One More Year 22. The Sparkle of a Diamond 23. Pay Heed, All Who Enter Epilogue: Shining On Notes Bibliography Index