Coaching legend Robinson dies

Published Wednesday, April 4, 2007

RUSTON, La. (AP) - Former Grambling Coach Eddie Robinson, who created a football powerhouse at the small, black college in northern Louisiana, has died. He was 88.

The soft-spoken coach spent nearly 60 years at Grambling State University. Robinson died shortly before midnight last night. Robinson had been admitted to Lincoln General Hospital yesterday afternoon.

"For the Grambling family, this is a very emotional time," former Grambling quarterback and Coach Doug Williams said today. "But I’m thinking about Eddie Robinson the man, not in today time, but in the day and what he meant to me and to so many people."

Robinson’s career spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil-rights movement. His older records are what people will remember: In 57 years, Robinson compiled a 408-165-15 record. Until John Gagliardi of St. John’s, Minn., topped the victory mark four years ago, Robinson was the winningest coach in all of college football.

"The real record I have set for over 50 years is the fact that I have had one job and one wife," Robinson said.

Robinson had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, which was diagnosed shortly after he was forced to retire following the 1997 season. His health had been declining for years, and he had been in and out of a nursing home.

He began coaching at Grambling State in 1941, when it was still the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, and single-handedly brought the school from obscurity to international popularity.

Robinson was forced to retire after the 1997 season, after the program fell on tough times. His final three years on the sidelines brought consecutive losing seasons for the first time, an NCAA investigation of recruiting violations and four players charged with rape.

Robinson’s teams had only eight losing seasons and won 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and nine national black college championships.

When he began his career, Robinson had no paid assistants, no groundskeepers, no trainers and little in the way of equipment. He had to line the field himself and fix lunchmeat sandwiches for road trips because the players could not eat in the "white only" restaurants of the South.

He was not bitter, however.

"The best way to enjoy life in America is to first be an American, and I don’t think you have to be white to do so," Robinson said. "Blacks have had a hard time, but not many Americans haven’t."

Robinson said he tried to teach his players about opportunity.

"The framers of this Constitution, now they did some things," Robinson would say. "If you aren’t lazy, they fixed it for you. You’ve got to understand the system. It’s just like in football, if you don’t understand the system, you haven’t got a chance."