Pokey Allen
Gridiron football player and coach (1943-1996)
Ernest Duncan "Pokey" Allen Jr. (January 23, 1943 – December 30, 1996) was an American football player and coach in the United States and Canada. He played college football for the Utah Utes before going on to play professionally for the BC Lions and the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League (CFL) in the 1960s.
Allen began a coaching career after retiring as a player in 1968. His early assistant and position coaching jobs included several NCAA football teams and the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League. He was the head coach at Portland State University from 1986 to 1992 and at Boise State University from 1993 to 1996, compiling a career college football record of 87–41–2 (.677). Allen led Portland State to consecutive appearances in the Division II championship game in 1987 and 1988 and guided Boise State to the Division I-AA title game in 1994.
In 1994, Allen was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare form of muscle cancer. He continued coaching until shortly before his death in 1996.
Playing career
Born in Superior, Montana, Allen attended Missoula County High School in Missoula and was a high school athlete in football, basketball, and track.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pokey Allen” is gridiron football player and coach (1943-1996). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pokey, Allen and Gridiron, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7208635. VIAF identifies the subject as 8375149198273374940001. The Library of Congress control number is no2017037195. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1996, 1968 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pokey Allen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.