I have added this section, devoted to my all-time favourite player from the NFL, former Los Angeles Raider & Kansas City Chief running back, and member of the Professional Football Hall of Fame (2003 Class) ...

MARCUS ALLEN

A guy who had a real knack of finding the endzone, as probably the best goal-line back ever, but also able to hit the 'home run' from distance too (see his amazing run in SuperBowl XVIII). As well as this he could catch (was the NFL record holder for receptions by a RB), block and pass.

A NFL MVP, SuperBowl MVP, Heisman Trophy Winner, who led high school to a state championship playing at QB, and was recruited to USC (University of Southern California) as a safety. As well as being such an all-rounder, he exuded sheer class both on and off the field !!!

“Fear is the path to the Dark Side .. .. .. Fear leads to anger .. .. .. anger leads to hate .. .. .. hate leads to suffering”
– Yoda (in “Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace”)

FEAR occurs when False Expectations Appear Real, and more often than not causes us to Forget Everything And Run !!!

According to the great Jim Brown (former Cleveland Brown running back) “Fear is a gift from God .. .. .. for survival”, however, for a majority of people it is “FEAR” that is the only force (hence the Jedi link !) that can stop us from being great.

In his book “Major in Success”, Patrick Combs (2000) discusses ‘The Six Big Fears’ with a variety of people, including Marcus Allen:

<< I interviewed the one and only Super Bowl champion, Heisman Trophy-winning, MVP legend, NFL running back Marcus Allen. One question I asked him was, “What does fear mean to a person as accomplished as you ?”

His eyes lit up and he delivered his words like a fire chief (as opposed to a Kansas City Chief !) teaching emergency instructions. “You have to collide with fear. You have to attack fear”, he said without flinching. He continued: “What I’m about to tell you, I’m more proud of than ANY of my football accomplishments. I’ve always been afraid of the water. Growing up in San Diego, my buddies were always going to the beach to play in the ocean. I’d always make up an excuse to not got with them, and I never went in the water. Two years ago, when I was thirty-six years old, I decided it was time to attack that fear so I signed up for scuba diving lessons. Talk about facing your fears .. .. .. I was suddenly sixty feet underwater and being told to keep calm while I shared a respirator with a buddy. Everything on the football field is easy compared to keeping your cool while you’re sharing your air sixty feet underwater. But, I attacked my fear and it opened up a whole new world for me. I do everything now: water ski, jet ski, surf, scuba dive. But I never knew all I was missing until I faced my fear. Fear causes you to miss fantastic opportunities.

And then Marcus Allen sent chills down my spine by saying .. .. ..

“THAT’S THE THING ABOUT FEAR. DEATH WILL KILL YOU ONCE, BUT FEAR KILLS YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER, IF YOU LET IT”. >>

(Excerpted from Major in Success by Patrick Combs, copyright 2000, all rights reserved.)

.. .. .. And so, I might suggest that when faced with Fear you do as Marcus Allen suggests, and as Susan Jeffers so succinctly puts it .. .. ..
“Feel the fear .. .. .. and do it anyway !”

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Of all Marcus Allen’s talents, the greatest was scoring

By Jerry Magee (Union-Tribune Staff Writer, December 29, 1999)

As fluid as Marcus Allen was, he seemed to drift through the seasons, a running back like a wraith who became all too real for the teams opposing him when he was within reach of an end zone.

It’s what Allen did. He scored touchdowns. He also did a great deal else. He won the Heisman Trophy at USC. He was an NFL Rookie of the Year and a Super Bowl MVP. One day, his features almost certainly are to be reflected in a bust displayed in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. What most distinguished him, however, was his knack for getting into end zones, which is, after all, what football is all about.

Through his 16 NFL seasons, Allen scored 123 rushing touchdowns for the-then Los Angeles Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs, a record when the former Lincoln High whiz stepped away from football after the 1997 season (Emmitt Smith since has eclipsed it).

Grace was Allen’s measure. It was there in how he ran, with that good, forward lean of his. His style was simple, without the histrionics in which many players indulge. Scoring, Allen would merely hand the football to an official. He personified class.

Near Allen’s conclusion of his time with the Raiders, it must be said that he represented something else, an enigma. Why did the Raiders permit him to languish as an all-but-forgotten figure through his final two seasons in Los Angeles in 1991-92 ? The Raiders never have addressed this question. Allen has said Al Davis was trying to ruin his career.

Arguably, Allen is the greatest player ever to serve the Raiders, and they have had a few: Jim Otto, Art Shell, Gene Upshaw, Willie Brown, Mike Haynes and Ted Hendricks, among others, all members of the Hall of Fame. But one won’t hear this from the Raiders and particularly from Davis, whom Allen has blamed for making him, in effect, persona non grata on the club.

After the 1992 season, Allen was acquired as an unrestricted free agent by the Chiefs, who also that season enlisted quarterback Joe Montana. “When he came to us, it was my personal hope that Marcus would play three years”, said Carl Peterson, president, general manager and CEO of the Kansas City franchise. “To our great satisfaction, he gave us five outstanding years”.

Finally, he retired. “It’s bittersweet, man, it’s bittersweet”, Allen said. “Football has been my life. I feel like I’m the luckiest man alive. I got to live what I wanted to do”.

He had played in 222 NFL games. In addition to his 123 rushing touchdowns, he had 587 receptions, the most of any NFL back. His 12,243 yards gained placed him sixth on the league’s career rushing table. Allen is the first back to attain both 10,000 yards rushing and 5,000 receiving.

Allen currently is pursuing a broadcasting career as a feature reporter on “NFL Today” on CBS.

Allen’s introduction to football at Lincoln was as a defensive back. He had watched a brother, Harold, a 155-pounder, serve as a middle linebacker for the Hornets and he wanted to continue the hard-hitting defensive play that his brother had demonstrated. As a sophomore, Marcus was a starting safety. As a junior, he was listed as Lincoln’s backup quarterback, but he would show up at quarterback only in games that already had been decided. He still was largely a defensive back.

Before Allen’s senior season, Lincoln coach Vic Player decided Marcus would be his quarterback. Allen was not delighted.

“The idea of becoming the starting quarterback is the dream of the majority of kids who play high school football. But not me”, Allen said in his autobiography, titled “Marcus” and published in September 1997. “I was a defensive player and that’s all I wanted to be”.

“And so, during spring training, I set out to convince Coach Player that I wasn’t the man for the job. I fumbled snaps. I took my time getting back to set up to throw passes, threw interceptions and often loafed. I pouted and constantly begged to go to the other end of the field, where the defense was practicing”.

Player was adamant. Marcus continued to argue. Player threw him off the team.

“His words are just as clear to me now as they were on that afternoon”, Allen said. “ ‘If you’re not going to try, then get the hell out of here’ ”.

The following morning, Allen went to Player and apologized, promising he would do everything he could to become the best quarterback he could be. With Allen at quarterback, Lincoln scored more than 500 points before outscoring Kearny 34-6 in a CIF-San Diego Section championship game in which Allen scored all five of his team’s touchdowns.

One of Allen’s awards was to be invited to an event at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York where the leading high school players in each state were to be cited. O.J. Simpson was to hand out the awards.

“What I didn’t anticipate was that in the years to come, we would become close friends”, Allen said in his book.

Allen matriculated to USC as a defensive back, but injuries created a depth problem behind starting tailback Charles White. Coach John Robinson suggested Allen move to the offensive backfield. Robinson was being prescient; he had identified a future Heisman winner.

“I’ve seen running backs who were a little faster and maybe even a little stronger than Marcus Allen, but none who had his combination of intelligence and competitiveness”, Robinson later would say. “Those are the things that have set him apart from the rest. Add to them the God-given physical characteristics that a great back needs .. .. .. balance and vision, ability to get into the holes quickly, explosion at the end of a run .. .. .. and you've got the whole package”.

Allen established 12 NCAA records and tied another during his time at USC. The Raiders made him a first-round draft selection in 1982. He was the 12th player taken.

As a rookie, Allen quickly demonstrated his ability for getting into end zones, scoring 11 touchdowns while rushing for 697 yards. The following season, he began a run of three straight 1,000-yard seasons. His most productive season was 1985, when he rushed for 1,759 yards.

He was MVP in the 1984 Super Bowl, in which the Raiders outscored Washington 38-9, with Allen rushing for 191 yards.

His association with Davis, meantime, was deteriorating. In his autobiography, Allen said he never completely understood what makes Davis tick. A source within the Raiders organization .. .. .. he no longer is employed by the club .. .. .. said Davis’ disenchantment with the running back had its source in Allen pursuing a holdout at a time when he was under contract. Davis is big on loyalty. According to the source, to Davis, Allen’s act was an indication that he was not loyal to the club.

Allen eventually would make public his grievances with Davis in an interview with Al Michaels during a “Monday Night Football” game. Davis, the player charged, was attempting to destroy his career. In a written statement, Davis dismissed what Allen had said as the words of “a disgruntled aging veteran”.

Allen then filed for free agency. His hope was to be reunited with former Raiders coach Tom Flores, then directing the Seattle Seahawks. Allen also was advised that Washington, Miami, the New York Giants and Kansas City were looking for a running back. Of these five teams, Allen said the Chiefs were last on his wish list, but a visit to the Midwestern city convinced him that it could be a fine place to live. He became a Chief.

Allen assumed a low profile through the period when Simpson was being implicated and later tried in the death of his wife, Nicole, and he does so again in his book. He recognizes that Faye Resnick, a friend of the slain woman, has contended that Allen and Simpson’s wife were conducting an affair, but he does not remark on it.

Ed Hookstratten, Allen’s attorney, writes in the book that Allen has remained silent at his recommendation. “I know how difficult it was for him”, Hookstratten writes, “but I tried to explain to Marcus that nothing he could say would be of any real benefit to anyone .. .. .. himself or O.J. One of the hardest things in the world to do when people are hurling false accusations at you is to remain silent. But I urged him to think of himself and his family, to stay above it all”.

(Article from http://www.uniontrib.com/sports/sdbest/19991230-0010_1s29marcus.html )

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MARCUS ALLEN - Southern California (Back)

The fourth running back from the University of Southern California to win the Heisman Trophy, Marcus Allen did it by being the first rusher to cover more than 2,000 yards in one season. He had eight 200-yard plus games, including the season’s first five in a row. He finished his senior year with 2,342 yards.

Marcus was the first man to have 4 straight 200-yard plus games. On October 31, 1982 in USC’s 41-7 win over Washington State, Allen toted up 289 yards on 44 carries and scored 4 touchdowns.

Drafted in the First Round by the Oakland Raiders and retired from the Kansas City Chiefs after the 1997 season. He has been voted the MVP of the Super Bowl and of the NFL and is the leading rusher in Raider history. Marcus can now be seen on the NFL on CBS as a game analyst.

Marcus was elected to the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame in 1999.

Other Nominations for 1981 Heisman Trophy:
(2nd) Herschel Walker - Georgia
(3rd) Jim McMahon – Brigham Young
(4th) Dan Marino – Pittsburgh
{heard of these guys ???}

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His brilliant 16-year career has Hall of Fame written all over it .. .. ..

Considered one of the game’s best-ever goal-line and short-yardage runners, Marcus was at the top of three NFL career lists when he retired in 1997:

(1) Was the NFL’s all-time rushing touchdown leader with 112 yards. He retired having scored 123 (since broken).

(2) His 222 games were the most ever by an NFL running back

(3) His 587 pass receptions were also tops for a running back.

In 1995 he became the first player in league history to rush for over 10,000 yards and catch passes for 5,000 yards.

Stands sixth on the NFL’s all-time rushing yardage list with 12,243 and is third on the all-time touchdown chart with 145. Only Walter Payton (21,803) had more career combined yardage than Allen at the time of his retirement (17,648).

Has 3,022 career rushing attempts to rank fourth in league annals.

Was named the Chiefs MVP by his teammates in 1993 and 1995.

Was Kansas City’s leading rusher in four of his five seasons with the club, getting 830 yards in ‘96, 890 yards in ‘95, 709 yards in ‘94 and 764 yards in ’93.

Earned six Pro Bowl trips, one with the Chiefs in 1993 and five with the Raiders (1982 and 1984-87).

Was MVP of Super Bowl XVIII when the Raiders upended the Redskins, 38 - 9.

Has rushed for 1,000 yards three times (1983-85) and owns 24 career regular season 100-yard games.

Was the second-oldest player to rush for 100 yards in a game, doing it at 35 years, 252 days (John Riggins was 36 years, 84 days old).

Was the holder of NFL record for most consecutive games with 100 or more rushing yards with 11 (1985-86; since bettered).

Also possessed the NFL single-season mark for most rushing and receiving yards combined, getting 2,314 yards back in 1985.

Owns a Chiefs record with seven straight games scoring a touchdown (1993).

Was The Sporting News’ NFL Player of the Year and PFWA NFL MVP in 1985.

In 15 career playoff games (all starts), he has 255 rushes for 1,310 yards, 5.1 average (second all-time) and 11 touchdowns along with 52 catches for 522 yards and two scores.

His 13 career playoff touchdowns are the fifth-most in NFL history.

Has five playoff 100-yard rushing games.

Owns Chiefs playoff records for rushing attempts (88), rushing yards (349) and touchdowns (three).

Was also a threat as a passer, completing 10 of 25 passes for 267 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions (119.5 passer rating) .. .. .. what an all-rounder !!!

Since 1960, only two running backs have played after their 37th birthday: Riggins (37) and John Henry Johnson (37).

The Southern Cal product was the 10th overall pick by Oakland in the first round of the '82 NFL Draft; two Pac 10 running backs (Darrin Nelson of Stanford and Gerald Riggs of Arizona State ) were actually chosen ahead of him in Round One.

And also .. .. .. blocked as well as any other halfback who has ever played the game (with the exception of Walter Payton), spending time in the Raiders’ backfield at “Fullback” with Bo Jackson at Halfback !

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