Jennifer Allen

Jennifer Allen is an American author and commentator, and the daughter of football coach George Allen.

Family

Jennifer Allen grew up the only daughter of a professional football coach (George Allen) who was known for total commitment to his team and sport.

She has three brothers. George is a former Republican United States Senator and former governor of Virginia. Bruce is currently the general manager of the Washington Redskins, and the former general manager of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Although touched on only obliquely in the book, Jennifer's mother came from French Tunisia and was of a Jewish background, which would become an issue in her brother's 2006 senatorial re-election campaign in Virginia.^[1]

Book

She wrote a book describing her childhood as a coach's daughter entitled Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter. She claimed that George attacked his younger siblings during his childhood.^[2] The memoir contains claims that George held her by her feet over Niagara Falls,^[3] struck her boyfriend in the head with a pool cue,^[4] threw his brother Bruce through a glass sliding door, tackled his brother Gregory, breaking his collarbone,^[5] and dragged Jennifer upstairs by her hair. In the book, she wrote, "George hoped someday to become a dentist...George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession– getting paid to make people suffer."^[5] She also wrote about the closeness that her family had with the members of the Los Angeles Rams and the Washington Redskins that her father coached.

In May 2006, Jennifer qualified some of the claims made in the book.^[6] With regards to the pool cue incident, she claimed it was a joke and that "Allen was simply testing her boyfriend's reflexes." With regards to the dentist quote, Jennifer claims that the book was a "novelization of the past" and written from the perspective of a young girl "surrounded by older brothers and a larger-than-life father." She claims to have a great relationship with her brother and noted that George stepped in for their father to walk her down the aisle at her wedding.^[7]

Career

She has appeared as a commentator on the NFL Network and written for the NFL website. In January 2006, Jennifer appeared on the NFL Network to discuss how the firing of a head coach affects the coach's family, basing her commentary on her own experiences when her father was fired. She would later narrate the "Fearsome Foursome (American football)" episode of A Football Life. Jennifer has contributed articles to Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and The New Republic.

Notes and references