ESPN RISE

The man who has restored the luster to Odessa Permian football was at the same time the perfect choice and an unlikely choice when he was hired for the job before the 2005 season.

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Kevin Buehler/Odesa American

Darren Allman and the Panthers are eyeing a state title.

Darren Allman was the first Son of Mojo to return home to become the Panthers' head coach. The former defensive back (who still holds the record for interceptions in a game at four) inherited a rusted program that had dropped to 4-6 in 2004 and run through three coaches in six previous seasons.

The progress has been steady since, inching up to .500 in 2005, ending a seven-year playoff drought in 2006 and compiling the first unbeaten regular season in 16 years in 2007.

The next hurdle is surviving the third round of the Class 5A playoffs, where Permian's season has ended each of the past two seasons. The ESPN RISE FAB 50 No. 17 ranked Panthers, 12-0 at this stage like last year, will face Allen (11-1) Friday afternoon at Texas Stadium in Division I play. At the end of the regular season, Permian was ranked fourth in 5A, Allen fifth.

"Lot of people excited about going past the third round after the last two years," Allman understated.

Allman was also an unlikely choice for the position. Despite the natural bloodlines, this isn't what he'd planned at all.

Allman had left the oil patch after graduation in 1987, played at Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, met a girl from the piney woods of East Texas at nearby Abilene Christian and married. He began climbing the coaching ladder with stops at storied Texas high school programs like Brownwood and Temple and in 2004 became defensive coordinator for Randy Allen at Highland Park, a 4A power in the exclusive municipality located inside Dallas.

"I'd decided to spend the rest of my career there," said Allman, who replaced someone who had been on Highland Park's staff for more than 30 years. In the short term, Highland Park's Scots were returning 10 junior starters on defense and had one more year remaining from a quarterback named Matthew Stafford.

"When I hired him, he said, 'Coach, you never have to worry about me. I'm never leaving,'" said Highland Park's Allen. "He bought a house about two blocks from the elementary school where his children were going, was teaching P.E. there."

Then came a call from Gary Gaines, Allman's coach as a Permian senior and the man heading the search for the Panthers' new coach.

"That phone call was a shocker," Allman said. "I really had to think about it. I knew it was going to be a big job to get this thing turned around. People here were a little bit restless, and I wasn't real sure that was something that I wanted to go get myself into, especially with the great job that I had at the time."

Allen, aside from hating to lose the coordinator for whom he'd retooled his entire defense, told Allman that he wasn't sure it was the right time for him to take the Permian job.

"Two other coaches had had very successful records before they went to Permian and had been unsuccessful there," Allen said. (That included Allen's predecessor at Highland Park, Scott Smith, who was 35-7 in three seasons with the Scots but 10-10 at Permian.) "If you go back home and you're not successful, you're probably never going to go back again."

Gaines said there was never any concern about Allman's lack of head coaching experience.

"We were impressed by his passion for the job," said Gaines, now athletic director for the Lubbock school district. "There's never been one second of awe in him. He's calculated in everything he does. He's not shooting from the hip."

Said Allen: "He was a captain at Permian, a captain at Hardin-Simmons. He's a natural leader, and he knows how to organize things."

Within a week of Gaines' initial call, Allman was seated at his new desk in Odessa and hiring 10 assistants.

There have been occasional flashbacks (he actually lives on the other side of the attendance zone from where he grew up, in a development that didn't exist when he was a student) and some revelations of how the other half of Permian football lives.

"As a coach, you see and hear so many more things than we did as players," Allman said. "I don't get calls from parents or boosters like people think; those people pretty much leave us alone. But calls, e-mails from people all over the country. It's been a very surreal experience, really a dream come true to come back here and coach."

He played for a state champion in 1984, reached another title game in '85, yet says what is most vivid from his Permian playing days are the coaches.

"I think about it every day, how lucky we were to have a coaching staff of that caliber," he said. "Most of them went on to be 5A head coaches. There was a reason why Permian was so good; they had us ready to play."

Allman's 2007 team was ready and stocked with talent. Senior quarterback Taylor Byrd set the school passing record and, his coach said, was the heart and soul of the team. Yet this year's quarterback, Trevor Adams, has broken Byrd's mark by throwing for 2,526 yards so far. Wideout Ryan Rumbaugh has set the school record for catches. Running back Sherard Ray has set the record for regular-season rushing yards.

Last year's Panthers averaged 43 points. This year's have averaged 44, thanks to playoff wins of 62-14 over El Paso El Dorado and 56-21 over Burleson.

"They've been on fire really since day one," Allman said. "We've found a way to get better every year."

That can be more difficult at Permian than at other schools because so much attention is given to past success. This year in particular, there has been interest from across the country in the 20th anniversary of the team that Buzz Bissinger immortalized in Friday Night Lights. And the 1991 state championship team, Permian's most recent, decided to hold a reunion in conjunction with the home game against rival Midland Lee.

"I hope it has a positive effect on them," Allman said. "We try as a coaching staff not to overdo that stuff. We don't talk a whole lot about the past and past players -- 'This is what they used to do around here.' -- because that does become old to 'em.

"We do say we're not trying to ride the coattails, but we do want to honor the past. And we're fortunate to be in a program that has a tradition we can grab a hold of. A lot of players have parents who played here and understand who they are and what they represent."

Jeff Miller is a freelance writer and can be reached at miller.jeff55@gmail.com.