Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
It’s not often that Jeff Stoutland gets to see his wife teach. But when he does, he marvels at the sight. Allison Stoutland — “Miss Allison” — can command a room of 20 or 200. And the students, some as young as 4 or 5, aren’t just attentive. They’re entranced. She’ll read from one of her published children’s books, and talk about the insights tucked inside. They are simple but enduring; little lessons like, ‘Monkeys taught me to hang in there,’ and ‘Apples taught me there is a star within each of us.’ She’ll share her journey to becoming an author, and how it all started with her husband getting a job in a city far from home. How she felt alone in that moment, and wondered if her life would take a turn for the worse, only for it to turn better. “People are crying everywhere,” Jeff said. “Kids are crying, teachers are crying. I said to her, ‘I wish I had the ability to motivate the way you do.’” This is high praise from Stoutland, 63, who is widely considered one of the best position coaches in the NFL. For 13 seasons, he has led the Eagles’ offensive line to sustained excellence, guiding seven players to 26 combined Pro Bowl appearances, and five to 15 All-Pro teams. He has coached football for 42 years, in an array of places: Cornell, Syracuse, the University of Miami, Michigan State, Alabama, and Philadelphia. The Stoutlands have been married for most of that time — 33 years — and Allison quickly realized that sustaining a teaching career would be difficult. As Jeff continued to move to different schools, she would move with him. She’d not only have to find a new job but also take a new state certification exam. It was unsustainable. So, Allison decided to pivot. In 1999, she and her late friend, Cathy Hofher, wife of former Cornell head coach Jim Hofher, published their first children’s book, Reach for the Sky: And Other Little Lessons for a Happier World. The coaches’ wives began giving presentations in schools all over the country. They collaborated on three more books before their daily schedules became too busy to continue. In the same way her husband was born to coach, Allison, 61, was born to teach. She misses the classroom, but writing has allowed her to reach more children than she ever could in the past. And the warmth she once brought to her students, she now brings to the Eagles. Allison sends players texts on their birthdays. She makes the linemen homemade blankets as Christmas gifts, and delivers a steady stream of baked goods throughout the year. Many of them read her books to their own children. Allison — nicknamed “Mama Stout” — has hosted players at her house for dinner, and their wives on overnight trips down the Shore. “Even from the jump, when I first met her, it felt like she was already my second mom,” said left tackle Jordan Mailata. “It was like a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’m your new mama,’ is basically what she said. And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I believe it.’” ‘What’s your real job?’ Jeff and Allison met at a bar in New Haven, Conn., in 1990. She was working as a teacher, while getting her doctorate from Southern Connecticut State University. He was serving as the school’s offensive coordinator at the time. Allison didn’t know much about football. She was raised by a single mother in Paterson, N.J., and Hamden, Conn. Sundays were spent cleaning and running errands, not watching games. So, when Jeff told her he was a coach, the teacher had some reservations. “No,” she said, “I mean, what’s your real job?” “I am a Division II football coach,” Jeff replied. “I do that for a living.” He asked for her number, but didn’t write it down. The next morning, at 6 o’clock, the phone rang. A groggy Allison picked it up. “I just wanted to prove to you that I would remember,” Jeff said. “Go back to bed.” The Wexler School, where Allison taught kindergarten, was located in the shadow of Yale University. Most of her students were Black and Latino, and came from low-income households. It was a challenging but fulfilling job, and Allison embraced it wholeheartedly. She wanted to equip her kids for the outside world, a world she knew wouldn’t always be friendly to them. She began to come up with little lessons that her students could use if they were ever in trouble. The teacher found that they clicked. In 1991, while Allison was putting up a bulletin board outside her classroom, a former pupil came running down the hall. It was 7-year-old Marquis Prescott. He grabbed her shoulders with excitement. “Miss Allison,” he said. “I did the turtle!” She gave him a bewildered look. “Don’t you remember?” he said. “Every single day, when I left school, you would tell me to do the turtle. To protect myself.” Marquis was a bigger kid. At times, it attracted the wrong kind of attention. But thinking about the turtle, with its engulfing shell, helped him walk away from a brewing scuffle. Allison gave him a hug and cried. “I felt like I had arrived,” she said. “Like nothing was going to get better, as a teacher, than that moment.” After seeing Marquis’ reaction, Allison set out to write a children’s book. She began to scour her lesson plans and journals, in search of more one-liners. She looked for an illustrator but had trouble finding the right fit, and the project fell by the wayside. Long before they got engaged, Jeff asked his future wife if she was comfortable with moving. She thought the discussion was premature, assuming that if he did his job well, they could stay in Connecticut forever. This was not the case. Jeff proposed in 1991, and they got married in 1992. They left Connecticut less than a year later, when Jeff was hired to coach the offensive line at Cornell. It was a difficult transition. “When I’m sad, I bake,” Allison said. “And when I got there, I had nothing. No job, no mother, no sister, no best friend. And so I was baking like a lunatic.” She sent her cookies and cakes to Cornell’s football office with Jeff, but was gently advised to forward them to the local farmers market instead, because the staff was gaining weight. Allison did — naming her stand the “Sunflower Bakery” — and in the winter of 1993, she saw a familiar face: Cathy Hofher. They didn’t know each other well, but Hofher could tell Allison was struggling. She came with a gift to cheer her up. It was a birdhouse with a giant sunflower painted on the roof. The teacher asked where Hofher had bought it. She told her that she’d made it herself. All of a sudden, everything clicked. “I have these words,” Allison said. “They’re just words. And I really think they’d be a beautiful children’s book. Do you think maybe one day you could ever want to possibly, maybe, draw pictures for them?” Hofher paused. Tears welled in her eyes. “‘All my life, I’ve dreamed of being a children’s illustrator,’” Allison recalled her saying. Coaches’ wives and published authors The coaches’ wives got to work. They began calling publishers all over the U.S., and flew to New York to meet a few in person. But nobody wanted to sign a deal. Some companies preferred to use an in-house illustrator. Others thought Allison’s words were too advanced for a young reader. She and Hofher decided to publish the book themselves. They took pride in the details, from the paper quality to the flap that wrapped around the hardcover. It would cost $15,000 to publish 5,000 copies, but neither woman could afford that price. The project stalled until Allison’s uncle, Ira Gouterman, lent them the money. On Aug. 1, 1999, six years after they’d started working together, the book was delivered to them. It was a surreal moment. “This was not easy,” Allison said. “We were just two football coaches’ wives, trying to make our dreams come true, while raising a family, moving, running a household [with two kids], all while our husbands were coaching.” They published three more children’s books over the next six years. Allison and Cathy continued collaborating even after Jeff was hired to coach the offensive line at Michigan State in 2000. This was not easy. We were just two football coaches’ wives, trying to make our dreams come true, while raising a family, moving, running a household [with two kids], all while our husbands were coaching. Allison Stoutland The people in their everyday lives — children, husbands, mail carriers, trash men, neighbors — became characters on the page. Each book represented a chapter of the coaching carousel, chronicling all of the places they moved. But the message throughout was always the same. “I [thought I] was good, and then my life was upended by football,” Allison said. “And now, when I go to schools, I can speak to so many feelings and different cultures and different foods and different locations. I’m a bigger person now. “And I think it’s good for kids to see that. Especially if they’re sitting in their chair thinking, ‘I don’t want to move. I’m good where I am.’ When, in reality, the sad things that happen are going to get you somewhere better. You’ll be better for it, if you have the right attitude.” ‘Mama Stout’ Over time, Allison began to treat her husband’s players like her former students. She’d make sure they knew she’d protect them. She’d sneak them sweet treats and gifts, with the goal of creating a familial atmosphere. There were occasional mishaps, like the time Cornell’s offensive line broke her dining room table. Or when she hosted Thanksgiving for Alabama’s football team, and asked each player to pick a favorite meal from home. Former NFL wide receiver Amari Cooper requested pigeon peas. Allison obliged, but noticed he left the dish untouched on his plate. “Tell me, honestly,” she asked Cooper. “How are they?” He looked at her sheepishly. “They ain’t my mama’s,” he said. “OK, good,” Allison replied, before throwing the pot out. “Because I thought they were disgusting, too.” If the linemen needed a place to stay, they would sleep in the Stoutland basement. If they needed surgery, Allison would accompany them to the hospital, calling their parents after the procedure was done. She brought the same maternal approach to the Eagles when the team hired her husband as its offensive line coach in 2013. Former center Jason Kelce was on the roster at the time, and can still remember how it resonated. “She just has this ‘Don’t mess with one of mine,’ Mama Bear [attitude],” Kelce said. “She absolutely loves the players her husband coaches, and takes them on in a way that’s more motherly.” Kelce said this type of environment is typically found in college. But Stoutland believes that every player — at every level — could use the support his wife is providing. “It doesn’t matter how old you are,” Jeff said. “Everybody needs somebody. And she’s always there for those guys.” There is no better example of this than Mailata. The left tackle was born in New South Wales, Australia, and grew up playing rugby. When the Eagles selected him in the 2018 NFL draft, he knew nothing about professional football. Mailata had never played it, not even as a child, and barely watched NFL games outside of the Super Bowl. Stoutland took him on, but it wasn’t easy. Mailata was a newcomer in every sense of the word. The coach had to be tough on him, to prepare the tackle for the adversity he’d face in the pros. Living in a foreign country, nearly 10,000 miles away from home, only made things harder. She would always tell me, ‘Hang in there. It’s not going to be bad. He’s not all bad.’ Jordan Mailata on conversation with Allison Stoutland So, Mailata did what anyone enrolled in “Stoutland University” would do. He leaned on “Mama Stout.” “She would always tell me, ‘Hang in there. It’s not going to be bad. He’s not all bad,’” Mailata said. “She would coach me up on Coach Stout. Because I was like, ‘This guy hates me. He’s so hard on me. What do I do? Who hurt him?’ “And she’s like, ‘He’s not all that bad. But if he gets to be too much, you let me know.’” There were other ways Allison showed her support. When Kelce told her he’d met someone — his future wife, Kylie — the team mom was initially skeptical. She worried that Kylie would “screw over Jason.” They met after a game in 2015. Allison didn’t hold back. The 5-foot-1 former teacher looked up at the 5-11 former field hockey player and motioned at her to come closer. I felt it was my responsibility to tell her I was watching her and that if she did anything wrong, I’d find her and I’d [expletive] her up. Allison Stoutland on Kylie Kelce “I felt it was my responsibility to tell her I was watching her,” Allison said, “and that if she did anything wrong, I’d find her and I’d [expletive] her up. “She wasn’t offended. Jason hugged me and was like, ‘I love you.’ And I’m like, ‘I love you, too.’ And I said [to Kylie], ‘I’m watching you.’ And she seemed lovely.” Allison and Kylie remain close. This is true of her relationship with virtually all of the offensive linemen’s wives — despite the fact that they got the same talking-to that Kylie did. A few months ago, Allison hosted them for a weekend getaway down the Shore. She hired a masseuse to give massages, made them dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. It was a gesture she learned during her time at Alabama. Every year, Nick Saban would give the coaches’ wives cash for Christmas, to repay them for all the help they’d given his team. The Shore trip was Allison’s way of doing something similar. “Without them supporting their person, then their person can’t support their teammates,” she said. “And their teammates can’t support the team, and the coaches, and the plan. “It all comes down to winning. And all of us have a little hand in it.” The linemen get their recognition, too. Every December, during a 10- to 15-minute window after practice, Allison and the two Stoutland children, Jake and Maddie, drop off Christmas presents for each of Jeff’s players. For a long time, they received homemade king-sized blankets, colored gray and green, with their names stitched in, alongside one of Jeff’s quotes (like “Hungry Dogs Run Faster”). But Allison figured that some players were getting tired of the same gift every year, so last Christmas, she switched it up. The linemen received a candle set. Mailata stepped in. “Mama,” he told her, “I’ll take 18 blankets. I want another blanket.” Added guard Brett Toth: “The blanket is amazing. Absolutely a coveted item.” Added Kelce: “I have enough that all of my kids have Allison Stoutland blankets.” Added Jeff: “They all want the damn blanket.” The linemen were also given a bucket full of cookies, caramel corn, chocolate-covered pretzels, and gingerbread. Some players, like Mailata — a fan of the pretzels — bartered baked goods with his teammates. Kelce did this, too. “One year, I was going to other guys’ cookies and taking that specific cookie,” he said. “It was either the oatmeal or the snickerdoodle. I think it might have been the oatmeal. And I’m not even a big oatmeal guy.” The rest of the locker room quickly learned of Allison’s baking prowess. Last year, in the days leading up to Jalen Hurts’ birthday, Jeff heard that the quarterback was a fan of red velvet cake. He called his wife. “I put her on,” Jeff said. “And I said [to Jalen], ‘Tell my wife what you just said.’ And she’s like, ‘I got you, Jalen.’” Allison remembers this story differently. “He’ll just call me,” she said. “‘Jalen wants a red velvet cake.’ And I’m like, ‘What am I, a baker? You can’t just demand that — I can’t just get that for you, lickety-split.’” She added: “[Jalen] doesn’t ask for it often, because he can’t eat like that. But when he feels like being bad, he has a red velvet cake. It’s usually during the offseason. “I think DeVonta [Smith] likes the cinnamon rolls, but the last batch I made were dry. I’ll probably never hear from him again.” Many current and former Eagles reached for Allison’s books once they became fathers, including Toth, Kelce, former offensive tackle Halapoulivaati Vaitai, and former guard Todd Herremans. Kicker Jake Elliott said he and his wife, Annie, have been giving them as gifts to friends and family. “Those were some of the first books that we read to our son [Beau],” Elliott said. “She had little notes in there for him, so it was really sweet. It just felt personalized to him. The stories hit close to home.” Miss Allison’s classroom Allison’s bond with these NFL stars does not come as a surprise to Prescott. He’s 41, living in South Carolina with his wife and children, and to this day, still talks to Miss Allison. “They’re like, ‘Man, you still have conversations with your kindergarten teacher?’” Prescott said. “And I’m like, ‘Yep, I sure do.’” The same goes for Jeff’s former players, from Herremans to Kelce to Cooper, and countless others. They’re all graduates of Stoutland University. But like Prescott, they’ve felt the compassion of Miss Allison, too. Her classroom is now a locker room, with students who are 300 pounds, not 30. Yet through it all, the teacher’s approach remains the same. “She makes it more homey,” said Toth. “Whenever you’re going through stuff, it’s one, you’re not alone, but two, we care about you. And that’s huge.”
