Perhaps because of a heightened sense of his own professional mortality, Kansas University football coach Terry Allen’s final weekly press conference took a turn for the morbid on Wednesday.
Twenty KU seniors will play their final collegiate game on Saturday at Iowa State, and Allen used a couple of examples why, though a bowl game is out of reach, the outcome is far from meaningless.
Among the seniors will be linebacker Dariss Lomax, who suffered a near-death experience one summer when a severe asthma attack put him in a coma. Not long after, his mother passed away.
Senior punter Joey Pelfanio lost his father last spring.
“I’m not trying to be melodramatic,” Allen said. “But when you talk about significance, how you get excited to play, it’s those guys playing their final game. The bowl has gone by the wayside, but there are so many other significances.”
Allen also cited senior running back David Winbush, who was forced to play as a 17-year-old true freshman, and senior Moran Norris, a fullback loaded with external preseason expectations who has missed most of the last four games with a sprained ankle.
“I look at David he was 17 years old and weighed all of 165 pounds, and we put him right out there in the Big 12 Conference,” Allen said. “If we were an established program, we wouldn’t have played him as a freshman. And Moran you look at that kid and he’s got tears in his eyes and he says, ‘Coach, I can’t go.’
“You have to lay down and remember we’re here for the young people.”
Allen has been there for KU’s young people for four seasons. Kansas hasn’t won more than five games in a year since Allen arrived and hasn’t been bowling since 1995, despite Allen’s expectations in the last two years.
Earlier in the week, he talked about six years being “about right” to expect a coach at a mid-level Big 12 school to produce a bowl a statement he hinted had been taken out of context.
“We were talking about Iowa State,” Allen said of the Cyclones, who will go bowling this year for the first time in Dan McCarney’s six-year tenure. “Then I get the old e-mail and fax machine, ‘Coach Allen’s trying to cover his butt for a sixth year.’ That’s how things happen. That’s all part of the game. I understand how those things happen. It’s much to-do out of a little.”
Allen can’t help but look longingly at ISU, which hasn’t been bowling since 1978. Allen and McCarney are close friends who were born in the same Iowa City hospital (Mercy) and who worked together one summer when McCarney was at Iowa and Allen was in high school.
“Iowa State has the glass slipper,” Allen said, “and we got the pumpkin.”
But Allen blames himself for being on Cinderella’s bad side.
“If we had taken care of business we don’t have anyone to blame but ourselves,” Allen said. “If we win at SMU, even if we don’t pull out the game with Texas Tech, we have five wins and we’re going to Iowa State and playing to be bowl-eligible.”
Allen then tossed some bouquets toward KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway and athletics director Bob Frederick.
“I’ve always felt very strongly about Bob Frederick and Chancellor Hemenway,” Allen said, “about their commitment to football. People try to attack that. But I know it’ll be better for the next person than it was for this guy because of the things we’ve done. We don’t take second fiddle to anything. We have great support, and we’ll try to make the best of it.”
The final meeting of the Lawrence-area Quarterback Club is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. today at the Adams Alumni Center. The 20 KU seniors will be honored, and Allen will be the keynote speaker.
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