Phog Allen: the Father of Basketball Coaching

Long before coaching great John Wooden won a decade worth of championships and Dick Vitale posed as basketball's P.T. Barnum, there was Kansas coach Forrest C. Allen, affectionately known as Phog to the sporting world. He proved to basketball inventor James Naismith that the game could be coached, then proceeded to do it better than anyone else in the first half of the 20th century. Phog Allen: The Father of Basketball Coaching is the first comprehensive story of college basketball's original coaching genius and dominant personality. In it, author Blair Kerkhoff returns readers to the game's roots, recounting Allen's early days at the University of Kansas where Naismith had become a teacher and coach, as well as looking at Allen's overall basketball experiences, his successes and the personalities he helped shape.