Ernest Duncan "Pokey" Allen Jr. (January 23, 1943 – December 30, 1996) was an American football player and coach in the United States and Canada.

[2] He accepted a scholarship to play college football at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City under head coach Ray Nagel.

[15] Following his CFL playing career, Allen became an assistant coach in 1968 at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., Canada.

[16] In 1983, Allen signed on as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Express of the USFL, a newly formed professional league which played its games in the spring during the NFL offseason.

Allen coached the Vikings to their first playoff appearances, including back-to-back trips to the Division II finals in 1987 and 1988, though the team lost both games.

He took part in a humorous series of television commercials to sell tickets for Portland State games, with stunts such as dancing the Hokey Pokey, betting a month's salary on attendance at the game, allowing fans to vote on whether to pick heads or tails at the coin toss, and most famously, a series of commercials in which Allen promised to have a meteor, an elephant, or himself (shot out of a cannon) land in the backyard of anyone not buying Portland State season tickets.

BSU lost 24–14 to Jim Tressel's Youngstown State Penguins at Huntington, West Virginia, and finished the season at 13–2.

[30][31] The tumor in his upper right arm was removed in March and he underwent extensive chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant in July at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle.

[32] He returned to coach the Broncos in 1995 while going through treatment, and the cancer was declared in remission in December 1995, but the doctors warned of likely recurrence.

[33] Defensive coordinator Tom Mason filled in as interim head coach in 1996, the Broncos' first in the Big West Conference and Division I-A, and they stumbled to just one win in their first ten games.

[35][36] While visiting family in Montana over the holidays, Allen fell and his condition worsened; he died at St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula at the age of 53.