ALLEN, Forrest Clare ("Phog")

(b. 18 November 1885 in Jamesport, Missouri; d. 16 September 1974 in Lawrence, Kansas), noted college basketball coach at the University of Kansas from 1908 to 1909 and from 1920 to 1956 who was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1959.

Allen was the fourth of six sons born to William T. Allen, a produce wholesaler, and Mary Elexzene Perry, a homemaker, writer, and lawyer. In 1887 the family moved to Independence, Missouri, where Allen and his brothers went to school and participated in all available sports, particularly the new game of basketball. In 1899 Allen's older brother Pete organized the Independence Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) basketball team, and in March the team played the University of Kansas team from Lawrence, Kansas, which was coached by the physical education director James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.

Allen did not graduate from Independence High School. In the summer of 1902 he went to work for the Kansas City Southern Railroad as an axeman, pounding stakes on the track. He returned to Independence the following year and joined the Kansas City Athletic Club, where he became the best basketball player on the team; in 1904 he was named captain. Later that year the Allen brothers formed their own basketball team, which played for five years through 1908.

In 1904 Naismith took note of Allen and encouraged him to enroll at the University of Kansas when Allen successfully secured sponsors for an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sanctioned basketball tournament, which pitted Allen's Kansas City Athletic Club team against the Buffalo Germans from Buffalo, New York, winner of the 1904 AAU Tournament. The Kansas City Athletic Club soundly defeated the Germans in two out of three games played before a packed Kansas City audience. Allen's biographer, Blair Kerkhoff, noted that Allen "had created a basketball event, promoted it, won it, then cashed in on it."

Allen, whose nickname, Phog, was derived from his fog-horn voice, enrolled at the University of Kansas in the fall of 1905, though he had never graduated from high school. He had played only one season of basketball for Kansas when officials at Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas, approached him with an offer to coach their team. Naismith dismissed the coaching offer by saying, "You can't coach a game like basketball. You play it." Allen disagreed. He accepted the offer and coached at Baker from 1906 to 1908. He then coached at the University of Kansas from 1908 to 1909 and at Haskell Indian Institute, a Native American institution of higher learning also located in Lawrence, in 1909. At the end of the 1908–1909 season, Allen's college record was 115–23.

On 25 June 1908 Allen took time out of his coaching schedule to marry Bessie Milton, whom he had met in Independence. The couple eventually had six children together. That year Allen decided to take a break from coaching and entered the Central College of Osteopathy in Kansas City. His decision to enroll was motivated in part by a back injury he suffered as a member of the University of Kansas football team when he was a freshman. In 1912 he graduated with a doctor of osteopathy degree and accepted a position as coach and athletic administrator at the Missouri State Normal School (now known as Central Missouri State University) in Warrensburg, Missouri.

Allen coached basketball, baseball, and football for the Normals for seven years, resigning in 1919. As a coach, he posted a 84–31 record in basketball and a 29–17–2 record in football. He briefly practiced osteopathic medicine in Warrensburg before accepting a position as director of athletics at the University of Kansas, joining Naismith once again.

Allen began his long career at the University of Kansas in 1920. Recognized for his flashy on-court dress and his inspirational locker room speeches, Allen, known as Doc to his players, led his team to two Helms Foundation national championship titles in 1922 and 1923. He was promoted to the chairmanship of the Department of Physical Education, a position Naismith had held. In 1924 Allen completed his first book, ghostwritten by his wife, entitled My Basket-Ball Bible, one of the first published basketball coaching manuals. The book also explained how to treat sports injuries, always part of Allen's coaching philosophy. In 1937 Allen published Better Basketball, an updated version of the 1924 publication.

Throughout his coaching career, Allen was a vocal supporter of college and amateur basketball around the world. In 1927 he was instrumental in forming the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), which implemented changes to collegiate basketball rules, and he served as the organization's first president. In 1936 he led a successful effort to include basketball as a sport in the 1936 Olympic games. Allen was named director of Olympic Basketball but resigned after a dispute with the AAU, which refused to pay the travel costs of team members. In 1939 Allen served on an NABC committee that created the first post-season tournament, the forerunner of the current National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament.

Allen was an outspoken proponent of raising the basketball goal from ten to twelve feet because he believed the area around the basket was congested with smaller players attempting to prevent the penetration of the larger players. Although he was unsuccessful in this effort, he did succeed in another area—focusing attention on the problem of gambling in collegiate basketball. In 1944 he told a reporter for the United Press Associates in Kansas City about point shaving that occurred in games played in New York City's Madison Square Garden. The allegations sent shock waves through the sport, and evidence of gambling was uncovered at other sports venues. Allen's solution, which was outlined in his last book, Coach Phog Allen's Sports Stories for You and Youth (1947), was to create a basketball czar who could suspend coaches, athletic directors, and players who violated the rules.

The 1951–1952 season was one of Allen's most memorable. Led by Indiana native Clyde Lovellette, an All-American selection, at center, Kansas won the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament. It was Allen's first national championship since 1923. The year 1952 was also an Olympic year. Because of its NCAA win, Kansas sent seven players to the Olympic team, and Allen served as the Olympic team's assistant coach. A year later, Allen and his own assistant coach, Dick Harp, instituted a pressure man-to-man defense. Allen's fellow coaches quickly copied the defensive scheme.

The 1955–1956 season was Allen's last as head basketball coach at the University of Kansas because he had reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy. In his forty-eight years of coaching, Allen won 744 games and lost a mere 263 contests, and at retirement he had the most wins as a coach in collegiate basketball history. That record stood until 1968, when Adolph Rupp of the University of Kentucky, Allen's former student, broke it. In 1959 Allen was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.

During his busy retirement, Allen maintained an active lecture circuit and opened an osteopathic practice in Lawrence specifically to treat sports injuries. He later opened the Phog Allen Health Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The coach, afflicted by arthritis, began to slow in 1968. He died of natural causes when he was eighty-eight years old and is buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.

Allen was a remarkable fixture on the collegiate basketball landscape. He worked side by side with the game's founder, James Naismith, but, unlike Naismith, who saw basketball primarily as a form of recreation, Allen saw it as a sport to be coached and correctly earned the title "Father of Basketball Coaching." Dean Smith, who played under Allen in the 1950s and later became head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina, remarked on the eve of the 1991 NCAA Final Four tournament games that all four teams were there because they utilized the pressure man-to-man defense invented by coaches Allen and Harp in 1952. Through his example and his books, Allen taught others to coach. He also fostered the growth of basketball in North America when he founded the NABC and internationally through his effort to make the sport an Olympic event.

Allen recorded some biographical data in Coach Phog Allen ' s Sports Stories for You and Youth (1947). Blair Kerkhoff, Phog Allen: The Father of Basketball Coaching (1996), is the only published biography on Allen. The relationship between Allen and Naismith is detailed in Bernice Larson Webb, The Basketball Man: James Naismith (1973). Allen's career coaching data can be found in Gary K. Johnson, comp., NCAA Men's Basketball ' s Finest (1998). An obituary is in the Kansas City Star (16 Sept. 1974).

Jon E. Taylor