Bryan Broaddus Football Analyst/Scout
Editor’s Note: As former Cowboys’ Pro Bowl lineman Larry Allen approaches this weekend’s Pro Football Hall of Fame announcement, where it’s expected “LA” will get the prestigious honor in his first year of eligibility, the staff at DallasCowboys.com will reflect on his career all week. Today, football analyst and former Cowboys scout Bryan Broaddus caught up with scouting director Tom Ciskowski, who recalled his first visit with Larry Allen.)
The dream for every scout that travels on the road is to find that one player that has that type of career that is worthy of the Hall of Fame. Before Tom Ciskowski was the assistant director of player personnel for the Dallas Cowboys, he was a scout on the West Coast. His territory was the largest of all the scouting regions which meant that not all of his days were at USC looking at players. There were plenty of days spent at schools with the football budget less than what the Trojans spend on uniforms.
One day when Ciskowski was in Oregon calling on Portland State, he ran into a coach on the staff named Tim Walsh who just got the head coaching job after a successful run at Sonoma State. It was Walsh that alerted Ciskowski of a potential prospect with the Cossacks named Larry Allen.
Walsh gave Ciskowski Allen’s background and told him how if he was one year younger that he could have played at anyone of the PAC 10 schools at the time but because of his grades, the only opportunities he had were with Sonoma State or a junior college, with Allen choosing to go the route of Sonoma. Ciskowski remembers Allen being a very quiet kid almost to the point he questioned whether he really loved football but when he studied him that day, he knew that was not going to be a problem.
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