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Eddie Robinson, who in 55 seasons at Grambling State University in Louisiana became the first college football coach to win more than 400 football games, more than any other college coach in history, died on Tuesday in Ruston, La. He was 88.
His death was confirmed to The Associated Press by Doug Williams, one of his former players, who became a Super Bowl M.V.P. He had entered the hospital earlier Tuesday. The cause of death was not immediately announced but he had been in declining health since learning he had Alzheimer’s disease in 2004.
Robinson helped build Grambling from a tiny all-black school to an important predominantly black university with about 5,000 students. He helped represent Grambling and make it famous while coaching teams to a record of 408-165-15. He was at Grambling for 57 years, but the university had no teams in 1944 and 1945 because of World War II. (In 2003, Robinson’s record of 408 victories was broken by John Gagliardi, head football coach of the Division III school St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.)
Grambling’s success slipped in Robinson’s final coaching years, and some university officials and alumni wanted to replace him. He finally agreed to retire after the 1997 season, not because of his team’s performance, he said, but because it was time.
His greatest fault may have been single-minded devotion to his job. In October 1997, when he had trouble catching his breath, he was hospitalized for three days. “He’s just tired,” a hospital official said. He agreed, but he also had a VCR and game tapes brought to his hospital bed so he could prepare for the coming Saturday’s game.
“I can’t stay away from football,” he said.
After Robinson gained his 324th victory, which gave him the most any college football coach had ever achieved, he apologized to his players for his frequent absences in the weeks leading up to the event. The media demands upon the Grambling coach had been continual and for understandable reasons. His was a good story involving the South, education, integration, opportunity and football for young, black men.
This record came on a Saturday night in Dallas, Oct. 5, 1985, before a crowd of 36,652 in the Cotton Bowl that saw Robinson’s Grambling team defeat Prairie View, 27-7. Robinson was 66 years old and in his 44th season as head coach of the Tigers from central Louisiana.
“I can coach with anyone,” he once said, but there was much more to Robinson than football.
Doug Williams, the quarterback and one of more than 200 Grambling alumni who played in the National Football League, succeeded Robinson as head coach at Grambling and is now a personnel executive with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Williams once said: “Coach Rob is a great motivator. He could build you up and make you believe you could do anything. He never told us life was unfair. He always told us this was America and we could be anything we wanted to be.”
Robinson, when he began coaching, was not so sure. Born in Jackson, La., the son of a sometime sharecropper and a domestic servant, he played football at Leland College in Baker, La., and then worked in a feed mill. He had a connection at Grambling because his sister knew the wife of Dr. Ralph W.E. Jones, president of the college, a state institution then known as the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute.
Dr. Jones, the longtime baseball coach as well as president, hired the earnest, quiet and serious young man who in his second season produced an undefeated team. The college took the name Grambling in 1946, the year after a huge, swift halfback named Paul (Tank) Younger appeared on the campus.
The Tigers won 35 of 46 games in Younger’s four seasons. He became Robinson’s first black college all-America choice and first N.F.L. player, with the Los Angeles Rams.
Younger was also the first of four Robinson players to be named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the others being Willie Brown, Buck Buchanan and Willie Davis.
The fame of such Grambling alumni, and others like James Harris, Ernie Ladd, Roosevelt Taylor and Willie Williams, in the N.F.L. during the 1960s brought enormous attention to Grambling as a cradle of pro players. Dr. Jones and Robinson took advantage of the publicity, and soon Grambling was playing other black college teams in major cities before big crowds in places like New York’s Yankee Stadium. An added attraction was the entertaining Tiger marching band, which appeared at halftime.
After Grambling played at Tulane’s Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, Robinson said, “I remember when blacks couldn’t even sit in the Sugar Bowl.”
“We promoted Grambling like a circus,” said Collie Nicholson, Grambling’s sports information director, who died in 2006. , By 1974, football had produced $400,000 for the college , which had grown to 4,000 students, and in 1983 a new stadium opened, the $7.5 million, 23,000-seat Robinson Stadium.
Although a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, whose members were all predominantly black colleges, Grambling was able to schedule an occasional major intersectional opponent, like Oregon State or Southern Methodist, because the Tigers were such a good gate attraction.
The 1960s and 1970s brought integration of the large state universities with major football programs. They included the University of Alabama, whose coach, Paul (Bear) Bryant, held the record for most victories that Robinson broke. Black high school players from the Deep South, of whom Robinson once had almost exclusive selection, became recruiting targets everywhere.
Grambling, and old rivals like Southern University and Florida A.& M., survived, but dropped out of the national picture and played increasingly among themselves at the lesser Division I-AA level.
Robinson is survived by his wife, Doris; son, Eddie Robinson Jr.; daughter, Lillian Rose Robinson; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren, The Associated Press said.
Some say that Robinson’s victories meant less than Bryant’s because Grambling achieved them against a lower grade of competition, wrote William H. Rhoden in The New York Times in 1985. Others said they meant more because Robinson had to work harder and under more difficult conditions.
Robinson simply felt he had done what he had to do.
“When I first started coaching, my state dictated to me where I had to go, when I played and who I played,” Robinson said. “I hold no grudges and I don’t have a chip on my shoulder,” he continued. “You can’t unring a bell. I played as long as I could play, whenever I could play and as hard as I could play. How else can you judge me, except for what I accomplish?”
His death was confirmed to The Associated Press by Doug Williams, one of his former players, who became a Super Bowl M.V.P. He had entered the hospital earlier Tuesday. The cause of death was not immediately announced but he had been in declining health since learning he had Alzheimer’s disease in 2004.
Robinson helped build Grambling from a tiny all-black school to an important predominantly black university with about 5,000 students. He helped represent Grambling and make it famous while coaching teams to a record of 408-165-15. He was at Grambling for 57 years, but the university had no teams in 1944 and 1945 because of World War II. (In 2003, Robinson’s record of 408 victories was broken by John Gagliardi, head football coach of the Division III school St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.)
Grambling’s success slipped in Robinson’s final coaching years, and some university officials and alumni wanted to replace him. He finally agreed to retire after the 1997 season, not because of his team’s performance, he said, but because it was time.
His greatest fault may have been single-minded devotion to his job. In October 1997, when he had trouble catching his breath, he was hospitalized for three days. “He’s just tired,” a hospital official said. He agreed, but he also had a VCR and game tapes brought to his hospital bed so he could prepare for the coming Saturday’s game.
“I can’t stay away from football,” he said.
After Robinson gained his 324th victory, which gave him the most any college football coach had ever achieved, he apologized to his players for his frequent absences in the weeks leading up to the event. The media demands upon the Grambling coach had been continual and for understandable reasons. His was a good story involving the South, education, integration, opportunity and football for young, black men.
This record came on a Saturday night in Dallas, Oct. 5, 1985, before a crowd of 36,652 in the Cotton Bowl that saw Robinson’s Grambling team defeat Prairie View, 27-7. Robinson was 66 years old and in his 44th season as head coach of the Tigers from central Louisiana.
“I can coach with anyone,” he once said, but there was much more to Robinson than football.
Doug Williams, the quarterback and one of more than 200 Grambling alumni who played in the National Football League, succeeded Robinson as head coach at Grambling and is now a personnel executive with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Williams once said: “Coach Rob is a great motivator. He could build you up and make you believe you could do anything. He never told us life was unfair. He always told us this was America and we could be anything we wanted to be.”
Robinson, when he began coaching, was not so sure. Born in Jackson, La., the son of a sometime sharecropper and a domestic servant, he played football at Leland College in Baker, La., and then worked in a feed mill. He had a connection at Grambling because his sister knew the wife of Dr. Ralph W.E. Jones, president of the college, a state institution then known as the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute.
Dr. Jones, the longtime baseball coach as well as president, hired the earnest, quiet and serious young man who in his second season produced an undefeated team. The college took the name Grambling in 1946, the year after a huge, swift halfback named Paul (Tank) Younger appeared on the campus.
The Tigers won 35 of 46 games in Younger’s four seasons. He became Robinson’s first black college all-America choice and first N.F.L. player, with the Los Angeles Rams.
Younger was also the first of four Robinson players to be named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the others being Willie Brown, Buck Buchanan and Willie Davis.
The fame of such Grambling alumni, and others like James Harris, Ernie Ladd, Roosevelt Taylor and Willie Williams, in the N.F.L. during the 1960s brought enormous attention to Grambling as a cradle of pro players. Dr. Jones and Robinson took advantage of the publicity, and soon Grambling was playing other black college teams in major cities before big crowds in places like New York’s Yankee Stadium. An added attraction was the entertaining Tiger marching band, which appeared at halftime.
After Grambling played at Tulane’s Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, Robinson said, “I remember when blacks couldn’t even sit in the Sugar Bowl.”
“We promoted Grambling like a circus,” said Collie Nicholson, Grambling’s sports information director, who died in 2006. , By 1974, football had produced $400,000 for the college , which had grown to 4,000 students, and in 1983 a new stadium opened, the $7.5 million, 23,000-seat Robinson Stadium.
Although a member of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, whose members were all predominantly black colleges, Grambling was able to schedule an occasional major intersectional opponent, like Oregon State or Southern Methodist, because the Tigers were such a good gate attraction.
The 1960s and 1970s brought integration of the large state universities with major football programs. They included the University of Alabama, whose coach, Paul (Bear) Bryant, held the record for most victories that Robinson broke. Black high school players from the Deep South, of whom Robinson once had almost exclusive selection, became recruiting targets everywhere.
Grambling, and old rivals like Southern University and Florida A.& M., survived, but dropped out of the national picture and played increasingly among themselves at the lesser Division I-AA level.
Robinson is survived by his wife, Doris; son, Eddie Robinson Jr.; daughter, Lillian Rose Robinson; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren, The Associated Press said.
Some say that Robinson’s victories meant less than Bryant’s because Grambling achieved them against a lower grade of competition, wrote William H. Rhoden in The New York Times in 1985. Others said they meant more because Robinson had to work harder and under more difficult conditions.
Robinson simply felt he had done what he had to do.
“When I first started coaching, my state dictated to me where I had to go, when I played and who I played,” Robinson said. “I hold no grudges and I don’t have a chip on my shoulder,” he continued. “You can’t unring a bell. I played as long as I could play, whenever I could play and as hard as I could play. How else can you judge me, except for what I accomplish?”
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