MORGANTOWN — Tyler Allen’s road to where he is now was full of stops and starts, bumps and potholes that probably resemble the country roads he now uses as West Virginia’s new quarterbacks coach. Allen was promoted to the Mountaineers’ quarterbacks coach this off-season after spending the last two seasons as an offensive analyst.
“I’ve known for a long time I wanted to coach,” Allen said. “Even back in high school, in my off time, I just liked helping younger people.”
Allen was also at WVU in 2019 as a graduate assistant coach. Between his stints in Morgantown, Allen spent two seasons as the quarterbacks coach at Jacksonville State and one as an assistant offensive line coach at Rice.
Moving around every couple of years and even returning to a place you’ve already been is business as usual for assistant coaches climbing the ranks of college football. Where the twists and turns in Allen’s story all come, however, is before he was ever paid a dime.
A 2014 quarterback prospect out of St. Stanislaus High School in Bay Saint Louis, Miss., Allen went to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College to continue his playing career.
“Out of high school I was really too small,” he said. “South Alabama always told me they were going to take me after JUCO, as long as I was able to get bigger. I got to about 170 and it just wasn’t happening.”
An ESPN recruiting profile from the time lists Allen at only 148 pounds. A player page on MGCCC’s website eventually has Allen at 175 pounds. However, what ended Allen’s playing wasn’t his size, but injuries to the elbow and shoulder of his throwing arm.
“Playing junior college, I tore up my elbow and it was a decision basically to get surgery or go into coaching,” he recalled. “After I hurt my elbow, I had chances to walk on at a Group of 5 or go play at an FCS. It was like, what do I really want to do? Am I going to play in the NFL at 170 pounds? Probably not.”
Having only spent two seasons in college up to that point, Allen started exploring coaching opportunities. He eventually interviewed with Cam Cameron, then the offensive coordinator at LSU, the team Allen grew up rooting for.
“I had an opportunity where I interviewed with Cam Cameron at LSU,” Allen said. “He hired me to finish my undergrad, but really to be the quarterback (graduate assistant). I really got to jump-start my career because of that.
“I grew up an LSU fan so it was really cool to have the opportunity to go coach there. We actually had LSU season tickets growing up. If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.”
Cameron was fired four games into the 2016 season but his successor, Matt Canada, kept Allen in tow for the 2017 season, still just technically as a student volunteer.
“I ended up working for Matt Canada and they were both great to me,” Allen said.
This is where Allen starts on that path that eventually ends in Morgantown. During that 2017 season, LSU hosted Troy, then coached by current WVU head coach Neal Brown. The Trojans pulled off a 24-21 upset over the Tigers. That game, in part, contributed to Canada’s exit from LSU at the end of the season and Allen’s along with it.
“When Matt got fired from LSU in December of 2017, (former LSU head coach Ed) Orgeron said I couldn’t be there anymore either because I was Canada’s guy,” Allen said. “I was working for free and Orgeron basically fired me. So I got fired before I ever got paid a dime.
Allen graduated from LSU in 2018 and set out to find his first paying coaching job.
“I was at the (American Football) Coaches Convention and I ran into someone saying the GA job at Troy was coming open so Matt called Neal for me,” Allen said.
Brown interviewed Allen and hired him to work at Troy. Soon after, Canada was hired as the offensive coordinator at Maryland and asked Allen to join him.
“Canada ended up getting the OC job at Maryland about a month later and he offered it to me, but I was already at Troy,” Allen said. “I ended up staying at Troy even though it was going to be double the money and a Power 5 compared to Group of 5, but my big thing was I needed to get in another network.”
After one season at Troy, Brown was hired as WVU’s head coach in the beginning of 2019 and brought Allen along with him to Morgantown.
Thus began Allen’s much-more-normal coaching career of working his way up the coaching ranks — and actually being paid while doing so — that eventually brought him back to WVU as the Mountaineers’ quarterbacks coach for the 2024 season.
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