Jeremiah Allison had two dreams while growing up in Los Angeles: play football and become a lawyer. He achieved both, and now the dreams have converged.
Allison (’16 Crim. Just.) joined the legal team for the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings last summer, with both an outstanding football career—in high school, with Washington State University, and in Italy—and experience in law.
Allison was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and moved with his mother, Lucille, and siblings to Los Angeles when he was six. A promising athlete from a young age, he eventually went to Dorsey High School, where he earned football all-league and all-city honors for three straight seasons and maintained a 4.0 GPA.
Since Dorsey High is a magnet school, students had to choose math and science or law as an academic path. Allison gravitated to law, in part because “I have been playing chess since I was three years old, and law reminded me of chess.”
It wasn’t easy for the family, he says. Lucille was a single mother who worked hard and supported her children’s school and sports, eventually raising the family out of homelessness.
“She just made sure that we were always in a house of love,” Allison says. “She made it to all the sporting events for me, my sister, and my brother.”
Allison had a number of college offers, but WSU Coach Mike Leach, with a law degree and a mind for the game, proffered the one that most appealed to him. Allison says the coach told him, “We’ll definitely make sure law is a focal point on your journey even after your football days.”
Allison met with Assistant Coach Dennis Simmons on December 14, 2011, and WSU made him an offer. However, tragedy struck Allison’s family that same day, when his mother suffered a massive heart attack and fell into a coma.
Lucille died one week before Allison’s first game as a linebacker with WSU. There was an outpouring of support for the freshman and, as Allison wrote in 2016, “everyone associated with WSU wrapped me in a giant crimson and gray blanket.”
As part of Leach’s first Cougar team, Allison appeared in 49 games between 2012 and 2015, including 25 starts and 175 tackles throughout his last two seasons.
Off the field, Allison set records for public service, which he dedicated to his mother’s memory. He received national recognition with selection to the 2014 Allstate Good Works Team and the 2015 Wuerffel Trophy Watch List for his work with Habitat for Humanity, WSU Reading Buddies, Special Olympics, Butch’s Holiday Bash, and other activities.
In 2016, Allison didn’t join the professional league during the draft and later appeared on the NFL Network documentary series Undrafted. Leach, though, kept his promise to Allison to support his quest for a law degree, with recommendation letters and an introduction to then-Washington State Senator Michael Baumgartner (’99 Econ.).
Baumgartner, now a US representative for eastern Washington, hired Allison as a legislative session aide in 2017 to learn more about government and law.
Around that time, former Nevada coach Chris Ault recruited him to play professional football for the Milano Rhinos in Milan, Italy. Allison was hesitant at first, but Baumgartner encouraged him to see the world. “He told me, ‘Go play football in Italy. Just promise me you’ll go to law school this year.’”
Allison played for the Rhinos for four and a half months and traveled around Europe. He then moved to Minnesota in May 2017, attended a pre-law program, and matriculated at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Saint Paul. Allison passed the bar in February 2021 and joined the legal team at medical device giant Medtronic, where he worked for several years.
His football days weren’t over yet. Although he wasn’t playing on the field, Allison applied to the Vikings legal office in 2024. “I felt like it was just a perfect opportunity for me to learn so much in the industry because I still love the game of football.”
He was hired in July 2024 and became one of just three attorneys for the team.
“It’s been an amazing journey back to football,” Allison says. “A friend told me, ‘You didn’t make a 53-man NFL roster, but you made roster of three, which is tougher.’”
Allison says, “I want to make sure I’m a pro in all the work,” with his north-star goal to someday become a general counsel on an NFL team.