Allen offers insight during Hawk Honors

Aurora native and Husker standout Austin Allen helped recognize Hampton students for their academic achievement Monday morning, adding in some words of advice he has learned during a journey that may soon take him to the NFL.
Invited as a guest speaker for the end-of-the-year Hawk Honors assembly, Allen congratulated the honorees before answering a few questions about his life in football and beyond.
“You guys need to know that your accomplishments in the classroom don’t go unnoticed,” he began. “It makes a lot of people in this community proud. You guys represent this county in more ways than you think.”
Supt. Holly Herzberg invited Allen to be Monday’s guest speaker, reminding a gymnasium packed with students, faculty and community members that the former Husker star came to Hampton last year to help referee a two-day youth basketball tournament. She invited “Oz,” as he’s known to teammates and fans, to share insight about how others can develop the skills and character he’s shown on and off the field.
“In high school there were a lot of times when I didn’t necessarily want to put in the work to be a great student,” he admitted. “I just wanted to focus on athletics. So looking back I realize how important academics is.”
Though he is on the verge of launching a career in professional football, Allen said the lessons he learned in school, early on, have been invaluable.
“When you’re starting to find jobs they’ll look at what you did in high school and they’ll see how much work you put in,” he advised.
One key ingredient everyone should focus on, he said, is getting quality sleep.
“I’m kind of superstitious about getting 8-1/2 hours,” he said. “I consider that my cutoff point. If I don’t get 8-1/2 hours then I’m going to have a bad day. I don’t know what it is, but that’s just the way it works for me. You can spend your time playing video games or hanging out with your friends, but sometimes you don’t get your sleep and one of the most important things in your academic preparation is sleep.”
Speaking directly to a young audience hanging on his every word, Allen said a good day also begins with a good breakfast.
“I didn’t really eat breakfast growing up in elementary and middle school,” he said. “A piece of toast was the extent of my breakfast. Now I realize how much that helped me be locked in in the morning. When 2:30 rolls around and everybody wants to fall asleep in class, I’ve been there. It’s important to give these teachers respect in the classroom. You need to put in the work there.”
Allen also spoke about the need for good time management, helping students understand that how they spend their time matters.
“Right now you guys are probably swamped with a lot of things, whether it’s athletics, honor society, quiz bowl, land judging, and by the way you guys winning state is awesome,” he said. “Then you start going to college or getting a job it’s all on you. No more reminders from your teachers every day when projects are due. You guys have big responsibilities now, but it becomes greater in your next step, whatever that may be.”
And finally, he said, be disciplined in everything you do.
“Be disciplined to get up every morning and do the right things, in and out of the classroom, on the field or court or gym, whatever it is, be disciplined to be a good person,” he said. “It costs zero cents to be a great person.”
Allen said his motto in life is to be aware of how you treat others, because you never know what impact you may have on them.
“Whether it’s the worker at Casey’s or a worker at Hudl, you never know the impact you are going to have,” he said. “Once you get to college you kind of realize that networking is one of the biggest things to help you find a job, meeting people to help you out. It costs zero cents to be a great person and don’t ever stop being a great person.”

Football Q&A
After handing out medals and certificates for academic achievement to students of all ages, Allen took the mic again for a little Q&A. Having finished his playing time at Nebraska, big No. 11 announced his plans in November to take a shot at the NFL. He plans to head to Florida after the first of the year, where he’ll spend the next few months training and preparing for the NFL combine.
So, where would you most like to play in the NFL?
“Ideally, I’d want to play with Tom Brady and the Buccaneers, but the smart guy tells me that I should go to a state that has no state income tax so I won’t have to pay state taxes on my income,” Allen said. “But honestly, at this point I’ll go to wherever someone will sign my check.”
Do you like “trucking people” -- or blowing people up on the field?
“There’s a joy in playing football because on the football field you get to hit people and in real life you could go to jail for that,” he said. “So it’s kind of a joy, I guess, but you don’t get to do that a lot in the Big Ten because in the Big Ten a lot of times people are the same size or bigger than you.”
How do you control that when you’re not on the field?
“You just have to know your surroundings and the people you’re with,” Allen answered. “It’s a little different on the football field when you look across the line and you’ve got a guy drooling or growling at you. It’s a little easier to say, okay, I’m going to hit this guy. For a guy like me, it’s nice to be able to play football, to be able to truck somebody, and being a really nice person in the community.”
Have you ever caught a pass one-handed?
“Yes,” he said. “My dad always said if you can touch it, you can catch it, whether one hand, two hands or whatever it takes. It’s kind of like in life, if you have a goal you have to go for it, whatever it takes.”
What is your most memorable catch?
Surprisingly, Allen said it wasn’t in a Husker uniform, but rather his junior year with the Aurora Huskies.
“It was the McCook game in the state semifinals with less than a minute left,” he recalled. “My quarterback, Grant Fox, threw a perfect ball to me (for a touchdown) and it was a catch that took our team to state (finals).”
How did you stay motivated during the 2021 season while going 3-8?
“It was a frustrating year all around,” he responded. “It was frustrating to be part of it. Every year I’ve been here it was really frustrating, but it was easy for me to stay motivated because I knew I had so much support in this community, in this county, in this state. I know this state gives us their all so it’s easy for me to give them my all.”
What made you want to become a football player?
Explaining that baseball was his favorite sport in middle school, Allen said he had decided to become a one-sport athlete as a sophomore, and that sport was going to be basketball.
“A teammate of mine, one of my friends, Todd Honas, said ‘Hey, you stay out for football and I’ll go out for basketball,’” he said. “I said okay. Luckily, I had a good enough year and managed to pick up a couple offers for football. People encouraged me to keep doing something I loved and it worked out for the best.”
What is your Super Bowl prediction?
“My favorite team is the Titans, so I want to see the Titans in the Super Bowl,” he said. “I don’t care who they play because they can beat any team they play.”
How do you handle negative things you see on social media?
“I don’t really notice it,” Allen concluded. “As soon as I became a captain, I realized people can do whatever they want behind a computer screen, but they are not face to face. It took me a couple of jabs to realize that. Joe Schmo from 0134, he’s got no way to impact that game, so the only person I can take care of is me and if I do the right things, no matter what anybody says, it shouldn’t affect me.”