At Skyline Sports, we love the stories and characters that emerge from one of the most authentic conferences in the West. The Big Sky Conference is steeped in history and heroes, holding a mystique that is unique to a conference featuring as many rural yet state-funded institutions in the United States.
One of our primary goals at Skyline Sports is the archiving of history across the state of Montana and across the Big Sky. In an effort to make sure we never forget some of the most pivotal and influential figures in the 58-year history of the league, we are introducing a quick-hitting series about those who once graced the Big Sky.
We will touch on players we’ve been able to cover (particularly in photograph) during our seven years covering the league as an entity (categorized as “Skyline Era”. We will also remember players from Colter Nuanez’s first seven years covering the league (2006-2013) during his time working in newspapers and magazines (categorized as Modern Era).
And we will also chronicle memorable figures from before we covered the league professionally, before we watched the league at all or even from before we were born thanks to the help of our great friends and colleagues from across the Big Sky (categorized as “Archived Era”).
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Big Sky Conference created a Hall of Fame in 2020. On July 24, 2022, the league inducted its inaugural class, a group of 14 legends that included Idaho State’s Jared Allen.
THE CHARACTER
Jared Allen, Idaho State’s wild man defensive end who dominated offensive lines for four years in the Big Sky Conference before going on to an NFL career that will eventually end in the Hall of Fame.
Allen, born in Dallas and raised in Silicon Valley, hated Idaho State at first. He almost transferred out – which was ironic because he was a perfect fit for Pocatello. He grew up on a ranch. He hunted. He partied hard. And he led the Bengals closer to the glory days of the early 1980s than they had been in years, making first-team all-conference three straight years and winning the Buck Buchanan Award as a senior in 2003. ISU has won eight games in a season just four times since winning the national title in 1981. Allen was on two of those Larry Lewis-coached teams.
THE TIMELINE
Allen came to Idaho State in 2000 after a decorated prep career in Northern California that saw him play for multiple high schools and lose a scholarship offer to Washington after he had already verbally committed to the Huskies. His freshman year, he was a rotational defensive end, and made honorable mention all-Big Sky despite not starting any games. As a sophomore, he was a first-team all-conference player; as a junior, an All-American. By the time he was a senior, Allen was something else entirely — an unholy blend of power and speed, the indescribable phantom who lives in the darkest corner of every quarterback’s nightmares.
His 28 tackles for loss, 17.5 sacks and six forced fumbles in 12 games made him the Big Sky’s first-ever Buck Buchanan Award winner as Idaho State won eight games, went undefeated at Holt Arena — including instant-classic double-overtime wins over Eastern Washington and Montana two weeks apart — and narrowly missed the playoffs.
Allen’s pre-draft scouting reports weren’t glowing, but the Kansas City Chiefs took him in the fourth round of the 2004 NFL Draft, and he played for the Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers in an 11-year pro career that saw him lead the league in sacks twice, make five Pro Bowls and come within a sack of breaking Michael Strahan’s single-season record.
He officially retired from the NFL in 2016 and has gone on to a career as a competitive curler, chasing Olympic dreams along the way.
THE MEASURABLES
Allen measured 6-foot-6 and 265 pounds before the 2004 NFL Draft, when DraftScout.com rated him the 28th-best defensive end and projected him to go in the sixth or seventh round. He ran a 4.72 40-yard dash at that year’s combine, which was 10th among defensive ends who attended, but managed a disappointing 13 reps on the bench press, last among D-ends (he was tied with a running back and two corners).
Allen’s other combine measurements included:
- 4.34 seconds in the 20-yard shuttle
- 7.11 in the three-cone drill
- A 33-inch vertical leap
- 10 feet in the broad jump
THE LANDSCAPE
After winning the fourth-ever national title in FCS history with a magical run in 1981, Idaho State immediately embarked on a 40-year run of futility and irrelevance.
The Bengals have had just eight winning seasons since, with one FCS playoff appearance (in 1983) and one Big Sky title (in 2002, Allen’s junior year).
Larry Lewis’s early-2000s run, when the former Boise State linebacker led ISU to three winning seasons, including two with eight wins, in his first five years at the helm, is by far the best stretch the Bengals have had since that I-AA crown.
Lewis got his biggest star to Pocatello through a stroke of luck – bad for Allen, good for Idaho State. Already a California high school star, Allen was kicked out of Live Oak High School after his junior year for allegedly selling stolen yearbooks, after which his Pac-12 interest cooled and ISU was the only school still willing to offer him a scholarship.
Allen’s story in Pocatello wasn’t as clean as that loyalty might have hinted at. Aside from nearly transferring out, he got in so many fights that certain Poky dive bars still point at the holes he punched in the walls. He was arrested for DUI in 2002. In four years at Idaho State, he was never named a team captain, not even as a senior in 2003 when he was already an All-American.
THE ACCOLADES
Allen’s Buck Buchanan Award win in 2003 made him the first Big Sky player and second defensive end to win the award, then in its ninth year of existence.
He was a preseason All-American in 2001, 2002 and 2003, and a postseason All-American in the latter of those two years, only Idaho State’s sixth multiple-time All-American selection.
Allen was also named All-Big Sky in all four years of his ISU career, with an honorable mention nod as a freshman followed by three straight first-team selections. The available defensive records for Idaho State are not comprehensive, but his 17.5 sacks in 2003 are the most in a single season in school history.
Allen’s college achievements pale in comparison to what he did in the NFL, where he made five Pro Bowls and was named first-team All-Pro four times, including three years in a row from 2007 to 2009.
His 22 sacks for the Minnesota Vikings in 2011, his fourth and final All-Pro year, is tied for third in NFL history, beaten only by Michael Strahan in 2001 and T.J. Watt in the just-completed 2021 season.
His 136 career sacks are 12th all-time. He’s tied for the record for most safeties in both a single season (2, in 2008) and a career (4, tied with obscure late-1970s nose tackle Doug English, legendary Raiders linebacker Ted Hendricks and the still-active Justin Houston).
At the time he signed it in 2008, Allen’s six-year, $72.4 million contract with the Vikings was the richest given to a defensive player in NFL history.
THE PRESS
VIDEO: Jared Allen does a deep dive on his unforgettable career
Jared Allen: The longest road to Canton
APPEARANCES IN BIG SKY RECORD BOOK
- One of eight Buck Buchanan Award winners in Big Sky Conference history
- Second in Big Sky history in career tackles for loss and sacks. Allen held both records for over a decade until broken by Southern Utah’s James Cowser.
- Second in Big Sky history in single-season tackles for loss. Cowser broke this record by half a tackle in 2014.
- Fourth in Big Sky history in single-season sacks
- Idaho State record holder in career tackles for loss, and single-season TFLs and sacks
- Two-time All-American
- Three-time first-team all-Big Sky
WHY YOU SHOULD REMEMBER
Jared Allen, owner of one of the most unlikely Hall of Fame careers – and make no mistake, he will end up in Canton – in the history of football. At just about every point in Allen’s career, if somebody told you that the mustachioed, mulleted edge rusher would nearly crack the top 10 in NFL history in sacks…well, you would either slap them or burn them at the stake for being a witch.
Despite his Buck Buchanan Award, Allen was evaluated primarily as a long snapper coming out of Idaho State. Think about that. A long snapper…coming out of a historically futile FCS school…with character issues. He still went in the fourth round, and had nine sacks as a rookie for the Kansas City Chiefs. Even after making the league – and averaging over nine sacks per season for his first three years – Allen nearly torpedoed his career with two DUIs in six months in 2006, right as his first contract with the Chiefs was expiring.
Despite that, he ended up as one of the most dominant defensive players in the NFL since the turn of the millennium. There’s no competition as to who’s been the best pro coming out of a Big Sky school – it’s Allen and then everybody else.
Allen was just as idiosyncratic as his career. Plenty of NFL players hunt. Not many walk down bayed wild pigs and stab them in the heart. His Wikipedia page references the time when, as a young player, he carved a racing stripe into his mullet for every sack. Right after this story was published, we received a text message that read, “Favorite Jared Allen memory: Getting kicked out of game in bozo as a sophomore and throwing his shoulder pads off as he walked out.”
Hell, I wrote the phrase “has gone on to a career as a competitive curler” earlier in this piece and that’s fully, 100% true.
Looked at that way, the fact that he came out of Idaho State – and not Montana or Montana State or Idaho or any of the half-dozen Big Sky schools with a better pedigree than the Bengals – makes perfect sense.
Every NFL player who’s come out of a Big Sky school has been an underdog. Jared Allen was the biggest one of them all and, for all his flaws, the perfect avatar for the underdog conference.
