Kentucky football’s newest quarterback is a familiar one: Beau Allen returns home
Kentucky football’s quest for 2024 quarterback depth has led the Wildcats to a familiar face.
Two years after leaving UK in search of more playing time, former Lexington Catholic quarterback Beau Allen is returning home. Allen spent the 2022 season at FCS Tarleton State. He transferred to Georgia Southern for the 2023 season but was denied a waiver from the NCAA to play immediately as a second-time transfer.
On Monday night, he announced he’s returning to the Blue and White.
“I would like to thank Coach Stoops and the entire University of Kentucky football family,” Allen said in a post on the social media platform X. “I am extremely excited to announce I will be continuing my academic and athletic career at the University of Kentucky. I can’t wait to get to work.”
A three-star prospect in the high school class of 2020, Allen lost a preseason competition for the starting job to future Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis in 2021. With Levis set to return for the 2022 season, Allen left Kentucky in search of a starting position.
“There wasn’t a ‘final straw’ at Kentucky. There wasn’t any act by anyone else that caused me to want to transfer,” Allen told the Herald-Leader in October 2022. “It was kind of a self-realization of what I thought would be the best for me. It just kind of took me awhile to figure that out. The absolute best thing (for me) was to find a place where I was playing. With the transfer portal today, you can do something like I did and transfer five days before camp.
“It was definitely a little bit of a leap of faith. But I’m happy I trusted myself. I really couldn’t be happier with something I’ve chosen to do just in terms of how much I care about football and how much I enjoy football nowadays compared to what I did when I wasn’t playing.”
Allen transferred down a level to Tarleton State, where he completed 57% of his passes for 2,836 yards, 23 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 11 games. That performance was enough to earn him a scholarship offer from Georgia Southern, which plays in the Sun Belt Conference, but the NCAA’s denial of his waiver request for immediate eligibility and subsequent decision to re-enter the transfer portal means Allen has still not proven himself at the FBS level.
The situation Allen is returning to at UK is not substantially different than the one he left since Kentucky has already landed a commitment from former five-star recruit and Georgia backup quarterback Brock Vandagriff from the transfer portal. Barring injury, Vandagriff is almost certain to start for UK next season.
But Kentucky’s top three backup quarterbacks from this season have all announced plans to transfer or entered the transfer portal already. Allen’s familiarity with Liam Coen’s offense would position him as a much-needed backup for Vandagriff while four-star Lexington Christian Academy quarterback Cutter Boley, who plans to enroll at UK in January, adjusts to college football.
Prior to his first transfer, Allen appeared in five games across two seasons at Kentucky, completing 11 of 19 passes for 132 yards.
This story was originally published December 11, 2023 at 7:27 PM.