Boston Celtics assistant coach Jerome Allen took a wrong turn in his career that very nearly cost him his future in coaching, and he’s since written a book — “When the Alphabet Comes: A Life Changed by Exposure,” — to try and help others avoid the same mistake.
Part of the so-called “Varsity Blues” college coaching scandal that saw federal agents bring charges against a number of prominent coaches for taking money to give preferential treatment to the children of wealthy parents, Allen accepted $300,000 to help get an applicant into Ivy-League Penn.
And then one day the Feds showed up at one of Allen’s youth basketball camps with a lot of questions for the future Celtics assistant.
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“I wasn’t really sure how the day was going to end up,” he shared in a recent interview with Boston Globe reporter Gary Washburn.
“So much was going through my mind. What happens if they take me away in handcuffs? Who’s going to be there to meet them when they get off the bus? Who’s going to be there to pick my kids up when they get out of school? I tried to emphasize the fluctuations in my emotions going from sitting in that room for 3½ hours being interrogated to thinking I was going to be taken away to not being charged at that time to being allowed to leave and meet the kids coming off the bus.”
The experience was life-changing, and inspired him to write the book detailing his telling of what got him to that point.
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It is not supposed to be an exculpatory story, but one that helps the reader how he got himself in the position of accepting a bribe — and how to approach the stewardship inherent in the role of coaching he’d betrayed.
“I wanted people to get a better understanding of the flaws that I carried around,” he explained.
“I had to really think about the impact decision-making has on you, not just as individual but [on] those that are around you. It was a painful exercise, but I felt it was needed because only in being transparent I could deliver something that could possibly help someone else.”
The penalties incurred by Allen were harsh — a 15 years “show-cause” ruling that requires any school wanting to hire the former Penn standout to clear it with the NCAA with justification for the hire or risk incurring penalties of their own, making him near-unemployable at that level.
He was also fined $200,000.
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More than anything else though, he regrets the example he set.
“Whether we like it or not, we have an extra sense of responsibility,” explained Allen.
“Prior to me getting the opportunity, there was only two African-American coaches in the history of the Big Five [Temple, La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph’s, and Villanova]. And to have this failure in character on top of all the other groups that I represented starting with my family first — that was a tough pill to swallow. I felt like I let a lot of people down.”
“I always used to tell my [players] everything we do should never result in a forfeit of an opportunity for someone else,” he added.
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