By Staff
Coaching Management, 8.1, February 2000, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0801/qajackallen.htm
Q&A
Jack Allen
Tarleton State University
Over a career spanning 33 collegiate seasons, Tarleton State University Head Coach Jack Allen has seen a lot of baseball. He also has compiled an amazing overall record of 1,149-630-3, which he has accumulated during stints at both the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) and NCAA levels.
His coaching career began in 1963 at Ranger (Tex.) Junior College, where he achieved a record of 814-399, two national championships (1973 and 1978), seven regional championships, and nine conference titles. In 1989, Allen was named Head Coach at Tarleton State University, where he earned his 1,000th career win in 1995 and led the school to its first NCAA Division II Regional Playoff in 1998.
Now a member of the NJCAA Hall of Fame and a January 2000 inductee into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, Allen talks to us about his coaching philosophy, the challenges of running a Division II program, and how his civic duties have influenced his coaching style.
CM: How would you assess the changes in college baseball since you began your coaching career?
Allen: When I first started, we just played old cow-pasture baseball. I’m still a traditionalist—I believe a pitcher ought to hit and we ought to be swinging wooden bats. I think the souped-up bats hurt baseball from a coaching standpoint. That and the DH take every bit of the coaching out of the game. Now you just sit back in the dugout and wait for a big, strong guy to hit a ball 500 feet.
That must be frustrating for a coaching strategist.
When I was coaching back in junior college, you had to be thinking at least two or three innings ahead—thinking about the score, whether you’ll hit for the pitcher, whether you’ll use a right-hander or left-hander out of the bullpen. It was a constant thinking match, and to me, games went a whole lot faster as a coach because you were continually thinking. Now, it seems to me, when we start a ball game we play all day.
When you’re recruiting, how do you sell prospective student-athletes on a Division II program?
I like to sell them on the fact that they can come to a Division II school and, in all probability, play immediately. Whereas, if they go to Division I—unless they’re superstars, and if they are, I don’t try to recruit them—they’ll probably sit on the bench for a year or two at that level. If they come to D-II, they can play immediately in nearly as good a baseball program and get just as good an education.
What are your thoughts on motivating your players?
Motivation is one of the toughest things we do. You can’t tell a kid, “If you work hard, you’ll have a chance to play professional baseball,” because that doesn’t work. You can’t tell him, “If you play hard, you’ll have an opportunity to get an education and make something of yourself,” but that doesn’t necessarily get their attention. You can say, “If you work hard and play hard, you’ll play every day in this program,” but even that doesn’t get their attention. So I don’t know if I’m so old I’ve outgrown being able to communicate with youngsters, or whether it’s just an impossibility to communicate with them.
I was fortunate to win a couple of national championships in junior college, and I could scream at those kids or do something else to get them motivated. But three years ago my club was exactly like a dead fish. I tried everything known to man to motivate those youngsters, but I never did get them motivated. Yet it was probably one of the best clubs I’ve had. So you’re asking a guy who, at one time, was considered to be a super motivator, but can’t answer that question now.
How do you utilize the NCAA-permitted fall practices?
We had seven weeks this fall that we could work out for 20 hours a week, and we didn’t miss a day. It’s a great time to get a ton of work done. I try to focus on team unity, letting kids get to know each other and accustomed to playing with each other. We spend 90 percent of our time in intrasquad games—letting infielders get accustomed to handling the ball as a tandem, letting outfielders work with each other, and getting players accustomed to the batting order (we try to use the batting order that we’ll start with in the spring). We played 46 intrasquad games this fall, and in my mind that’s a 46-game advantage over other teams that haven’t played them.
We do very little instructional work in the fall. If the kids can’t play baseball by the time they reach this level—and I’m talking about the basic fundamentals—it’s too late to coach them. Naturally, we’ll go through the cutoffs, relays, and bunt coverage, but we don’t spend time working on fundamentals in their swing or pitching technique.
You’ve been involved in a variety of civic organizations and even served as the mayor of Ranger, Tex., for a few years. Have those activities influenced your coaching style?
Ranger was a small town, but being mayor taught me responsibility and how to take care of it. Up until then, I was kind of a harum-scarum, rant-and-rave, bitch-and-holler type of guy, but I found out real quick that when you start working with the public, that doesn’t work. So that influenced my coaching style some—and changed it for the better.
Do you have an overall coaching philosophy?
The only one I’ve ever had, and I carry it with me today is, “Work hard, play hard, study hard.” If a kid doesn’t want to do those three things, when he comes to my office during recruiting, I tell him, “You don’t need to come to school here; you don’t need to go to school anywhere. You need to get out, get a pick and shovel and follow the pipe line for a couple of years. Then you’ll get interested in those three things.”
I have a particular style I like to play, but as far as developing a philosophy that spells out this is what we’re going to do, and this is how we’re going to do it, I can’t have one because I never know who’s going to be here from one year to the next. Each and every year I’m dealing with a different group of kids. As coaches, if we can’t adapt to the kids we have, we’re in trouble.
What are your remaining goals as a coach?
I’ve always told my wife, “When the fire goes out, I’ll quit.” I’ve been lucky to have been part of two national championships and to have been inducted into two Halls of Fame, but we all would like to win another national championship. First, we want to win the conference, then regionals, then the national. The day I quit having goals will be the day I go to the golf course and give up coaching. And I have too much sense to go to the golf course, because I don’t play that well.