Manhattan, Kan. – There once was a time when Allen Webb’s life was one long fly pattern, when the field was clear and the skies were blue and his spirals were tight.
He played quarterback for Chatfield High School’s state championship team. He had LenDale White, the LenDale White, at tailback. And Webb had Denver’s most powerful man as a grandfather.
In those moments, life not only seemed fair. It seemed flawless, like racking up a five spot on John Madden 2005. Webb’s friends certainly thought so. Occasionally he would be in the back seat of a car and a cop would pull them over for a minor traffic violation. Before the cop asked for license and registration, a friend would point to Webb and gush: “Don’t you know who that is? That’s the mayor’s grandson!”
If only life was that easy.
The cops never cut Webb’s friends any slack, and life hasn’t cut him any, either. Sure, his classmates never got to shake hands with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and their granddads never took them to Mexico on business. But the spotlight Wellington Webb worked under from 1991-2003 as Denver’s mayor stretched its shine on his extended family. Occasionally, they would get burned. Allen’s father, Allen Webb Sr., was arrested three times and dragged the family name through the papers.
Allen Jr. transferred from Denver’s South High to Chatfield his senior year and experienced his first brush with racism. He was arrested and charged with battery in his first summer at Kansas State, and paid both athletically and financially.
And now, as Kansas State (4-3, 1-3 Big 12) prepares to host the Colorado Buffaloes (5-2, 3-1) on Saturday, he has been demoted. The junior lost his starting job three weeks ago to Allan Evridge, a redshirt freshman who might keep Webb on the bench for a long time.
Then again, life has put Webb farther down the bench than this. With steely resolve, Webb falls back on sage advise from his grandfather.
“Always smile and always have a good attitude, and when you are faced with adversity to always be resilient,” he says. “That’s one of his favorite words. Mine, too.”
No stranger to adversity
Webb is sitting at Bobby T’s Sports Bar & Grill wearing a chunky crown medallion. Bobby T’s is a long punt from KSU Stadium, where a year ago he appeared to be the Wildcats’ quarterback of the future. He started five games in place of injured Dylan Meier, beating Nebraska with four rushing touchdowns and coming off the bench to lead a comeback victory at Missouri.
Webb hasn’t played in 11 quarters, not since throwing a first-quarter interception against Kansas when coach Bill Snyder pulled on an obviously short leash.
“All my life, me and my family have always had to deal with things, controversial things, and we always had to bounce back from it,” says Webb, cutting into a Kansas City strip steak. “Being the mayor’s grandson, it was always in the spotlight. Everybody knew.”
Even in elementary school. In 1995, his father, Allen Sr., was arrested for possession of illegal drugs in February and that June for attempted sexual assault and robbery. This came a year after he entered a drug rehabilitation center in Pueblo. The sexual assault and robbery charges were dropped, but a 2001 arrest for marijuana possession revoked a deferred judgment on the first drug charge. Any other father would not have made the papers. Not every father, however, is named Webb.
“I was always getting into a lot of fights when it happened,” Allen Jr. said. “They’d tease me like: ‘Your dad can’t stay out of the paper. You’ll be the same way.’ And it’d be like, Whap!”
His parents had divorced in 1994 and, fortunately, he had a strong support system. This is no rags-to-riches story, because there are no rags in Park Hill, where he grew up. Besides his mother, Carola, who works at Denver Health, he has two older brothers, Diallo Thompson, 29, who works at City Corp., and Michael Thompson, 35, who’s in the mortgage business. Along with step- father Derrick Holmes, who owns a watch company, they all helped fill the moral void.
His father was no absentee dad. Through all the problems, he always has kept close contact with his son.
“He’s an inspiration for me,” Allen Jr. says, “and I’m an inspiration for him.”
However, the pitfalls are obvious.
“Webbs are not normal,” says Wellington, who has a consulting firm. “We are always in the paper. That’s a positive and a negative because you don’t have the opportunity to grow up anonymous and define who you are as a person without somebody saying that’s the mayor’s kid or mayor’s grandkid.”
Here’s how the Webbs define Allen Jr.: When he was in elementary school, his mother gave him a ski jacket for Christmas. When he got to school, he gave it to a child he barely knew who needed it more. At Kansas State, he once was required to spend 90 minutes addressing kids at an elementary school. He stayed all day. He may no longer lead the Wildcats in passing, but he does lead in postgame autographs.
“When you are in the limelight, people aren’t always so nice,” Carola Webb says. “But I always try to teach my children you have to be nice regardless. If you don’t like what people are saying, instead of lashing out, just be quiet and walk away or say, ‘That’s your opinion.”‘
He handled that fine after transferring to Chatfield, where he and White missed an early practice and heard, through a third party, that a player said, according to Webb, “They’re glad we didn’t come to practice because they’re thugs with tattoos and they’re probably somewhere picking cotton where they belong.”
If only Webb had used that same restraint at Kansas State. When he arrived after transferring from Indiana, he was arrested for battery after hitting a man in an alley. Webb said he and two friends tried to help a drunk student to his feet and a passerby thought they were roughing him up. When the passerby, whom Webb said also was drunk, pushed him, Webb hit him.
“He tried to flex like was trying to be intimidating or something,” Webb says. “I didn’t know what he was about to do.”
When the flurry finished, one man suffered an eye injury from a blow by Webb’s friend and, Webb said, he took the fall for it when the friend skipped town. Besides the community service, Webb had to pay more than $1,000 and do twice-weekly 6 a.m. runs that included 300 yards of bear crawls and 11 laps around the field.
“It was a valuable lesson,” Wellington Webb says.
The lessons have not cut into his fierce loyalty to Snyder, despite the second-string status. After the Kansas game, Carola, who joins the family in driving the seven hours to nearly every home game, greeted him outside and asked, “How come you don’t play?” He answered: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The season is into its second half, and a smile still parts Webb’s face. He doesn’t mope.
“I like Snyder,” he says. “One thing about him is he’s a businessman and he does things he really believes in. I think he’s a great coach. His past shows that.”
Webb puts a third of his steak in a to-go box. He’s still wearing his crown.
Webb still smiling
The most action Webb saw this past Saturday was slapping Evridge’s hand after one of his three touchdown passes. Evridge shows promise but K-State’s running game is a mere rumor and the defense can’t stop Texas A&M quarterback Reggie McNeal in a 30-28 loss.
Afterward, Snyder is asked what he saw in Evridge that he didn’t see in Webb. Evridge has thrown for 166 yards a game on 56 percent passing with five touchdowns and three interceptions. Webb is averaging 146 yards on 58 percent passing with eight touchdowns and five picks.
“Probably his ability to manage some of the things we do in our offense, getting in and out of our plays and getting us in the right things more frequently,” Snyder says. “Not that Allen Webb can’t do that.”
Meanwhile, Webb walks out of the locker room and into the cold air as dusk falls on rural Kansas. Dressed in a coat and tie, he poses for pictures. He signs autographs. He greets children.
He has a big smile. The smile is more than gleaming. It’s resilient.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
