Facing possible service cuts and reports of safety issues, the Chicago Transit Authority needs a hug, or at least some positive publicity.
We’re only too happy to help, and so we offer the story of Jeff Allen, a young football player who used public transit to make a tough decision.
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As an 8th grader in spring of 2004, Allen leaned toward enrolling at Hubbard, a Southwest Side school. His mother, Lalibala, a King graduate, wanted him to attend that school, which was closer to their Southeast Side home and, she believed, a better academic fit. Rather than issue an order, though, she took a more subtle approach.
She took Jeff via the CTA to Hubbard and back to sample what would be his daily commute. The journey took more than two hours, and by the time it ended the son had come to the mother’s conclusion.
From a football perspective, it seemed like a bad deal. Hubbard is a Chicago Public League power that had recently reached the state playoff semifinals.
King, meanwhile, was rebuilding its program after not enrolling freshmen from 1999 through 2001 as part of a switch to becoming a selective-enrollment school. Allen would be joining a team with no seniors that was 1-6 in 2003 despite playing in the Public League’s weak Intra-City South league.
Allen’s mom, though, had the right idea. He has played on three winning teams, and last season King reached the state playoffs for the first time since 1993 after moving up to the Illini Heartland. Thursday it defeated Corliss 14-10 in an Illini Land of Lincoln game to improve to 3-2 this season.
The senior two-way lineman, meanwhile, has developed into a solid student as well as one of the top offensive tackles in the Chicago area.
Allen is a study in contrasts. He is huge — 6 feet 5 inches, 320 pounds — yet fast and agile. And he is jovial, but with a serious side.
He attributes that seriousness to losing his father, Jeffery, to a heart attack when Jeff was 9 years old.
“I became more responsible,” he said. “I didn’t want to make my mom’s job harder than it was.
“It made me study harder, be a better student, and that transferred over to the football field.”
Lalibala Allen said sports played a crucial part in helping her raise Jeff as a single mom.
“They had a positive role in his life and kept him grounded and disciplined,” she said.
She had her son playing football by the time he was 6 years old. On one youth team, he played with future Hubbard stars Nate Lyles, now a Virginia safety, and Chris Patterson, now a Kansas State linebacker.
Both were older than he was, and seeing them become college recruiting targets motivated him to follow their path.
“I started to think about college in 7th grade,” he said. “I had been around football so long, and I saw people making it to college … and I knew them.
“I thought, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.'”
And now he will. In June, while driving home with his mother after attending an Illinois football camp, he received a call with a scholarship offer from the Illini. He accepted immediately, choosing Illinois over North Carolina State.
This, of course, was happy news, but King coach Lonnie Williams wants to make sure Allen doesn’t see it as a happy ending. Williams views Allen as a solid football player, student and person, but still a work in progress in all three areas.
“You have to watch high school kids sometimes because they think they’ve made it when they haven’t made it,” he said. “We’re trying to keep him motivated.”
That includes producing more consistent results on and off the football field, especially when it comes to being a leader and role model on a team that has only a handful of seniors.
“I don’t worry about his football ability,” Williams said, “but I keep pressing him to be the best person he can be, not just here but also at Illinois. He’s a joker, a kidder, just a real fun-loving kid, and I don’t want him to take that too far and get off track in life.
“He’s so big and fast, it’s unreal the potential he has. He has just got to keep focused, keep working hard and not let the fun of the game and the fun of life get you away from what is real important in life.”
Senior quarterback Michael Houston knows Allen’s playful side well but believes he is growing into his leadership role.
“He’s a captain, and he takes that responsibility seriously,” Houston said. “He gives the younger players someone to look up to. He’s a great example for them.”
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Allen wants to leave King considered as good a lineman as his uncle, Shon Williams, who attended King two decades ago and is now an assistant coach there. He wants even more, though, to be remembered for helping turn King football around.
“I think that’s what it’s all about, building a foundation, leaving something behind for other kids,” he said. “I’d rather build something, be known for leaving a legacy, if you can call it that.”
He has, he said, no regrets about taking that bus ride to Hubbard.
“We’ve had a lot of success here,” he said. “I think this turned out well.”
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*Read Barry Temkin’s blog “Upon Further Review” at chicagosports.com/temkin