Eddie Robinson (American football coach)

Biography

Robinson was born in Jackson in East Feliciana Parish in South Louisiana, to the son of a sharecropper and a domestic worker. He graduated in 1937 from McKinley Senior High School in the capital city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and briefly attended Southern University there. He then played quarterback and earned his bachelor's degree in English at Leland College in Baker, Louisiana, before obtaining his master's degree in 1954 from the University of Iowa in Iowa City—at which he was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Career

Robinson dreamed of becoming a college football coach himself, but he faced an enormous drawback—he was black in the days of Jim Crow discrimination. The only college position he could possibly hope to obtain would be at a traditionally all-black school, and these were all well staffed. Having earned his bachelor's degree at Leland, Robinson returned to Baton Rouge and took a job at a feed mill for 25 cents an hour. Not long after that, he heard that the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute—now Grambling State University—was searching for a new football coach. He applied for the job and was hired by the school's president and baseball coach, Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones.

In 1941 the 22-year old Robinson assumed his duties as head football coach at Grambling State. The days of assistant coaches, offensive and defensive coordinators, and specialty coaches were long in the future, so Robinson did everything: he taught offense and defense, mowed the football field, fixed sandwiches for road trips through towns that would not serve blacks in restaurants, taped his players' sore joints, and even wrote game stories for the newspapers. He had strict standards of personal conduct and educational achievement for his players. In his first year the team went 3–5–1, but the following season—during which he recruited new players and dismissed those who did not live up to his expectations—the Tigers had a perfect 9–0 season, going unbeaten, untied, and unscored upon.

More than 200 of his players went on to play in the American Football League, CFL, and NFL. Robinson coached three American Football League players who would later be inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame: the Kansas City Chiefs' Buck Buchanan; the Oakland Raiders' Willie Brown; and the Houston Oilers' Charlie Joiner. Robinson also coached James Harris, who with the AFL's Buffalo Bills became the first black quarterback in modern Pro Football history to start at that position in a season opener. He also coached Packers defensive end and Hall of Famer Willie Davis and the Super Bowl XXII MVP, Redskins quarterback Doug Williams, who would ultimately succeed Robinson as Grambling's head coach in 1998.

During his coaching career, Robinson compiled 45 winning seasons, including winning or sharing 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference championships and nine black college football national championships.

Enormous publicity attended Robinson's record-breaking win with Grambling State in 1985. Some observers feared that the coach would become the target of white hatred, much as Henry Aaron had when he broke Babe Ruth's home run record. Instead Robinson reported that he did not receive a single hate letter, even from the legion of southern fans who worshiped Bear Bryant. When asked if his record was somehow tarnished by the fact that his team played most of its games against Division I-AA caliber competition, Robinson told Sports Illustrated: "I grew up in the South. I was told where to attend elementary school, where to attend junior high school, where to attend high school. When I became a coach, I was told who I could recruit, who I could play, where I could play and when I could play. I did what I could within the system." He added that his philosophy had always been "whatever league you're in, whatever level, win there."

Eddie Robinson held several jobs other than football coach, including teaching at Grambling High School, and coaching the girls basketball team during World War II. His girls team lost the state championship by 1 point. He also coached boys basketball, baseball, directed the band, and was in charge of the cheerleaders—with a budget of $46.

Robinson recorded just one losing season between 1960 and 1990; however, after three consecutive losing seasons in the mid-1990s, pressure mounted for the now 78-year old coach to resign. Fellow college coach Joe Paterno is quoted in the Grambling State press guide as saying, "Nobody has ever done or ever will do what Eddie Robinson has done for the game... Our profession will never, ever be able to repay Eddie Robinson for what he has done for the country and the profession of football."

In 1997 news escaped that Grambling was planning to dismiss him in mid-season. Public outcry—including condemnation from Louisiana elected officials like then-Gov. Mike Foster—led Grambling to retain Robinson's services through the remainder of the season.

Robinson developed Alzheimer's disease after his retirement. He died on April 3, 2007, at Lincoln General Hospital in Ruston, Louisiana, after having been admitted earlier in the day.

Robinson and his wife, Doris, who died at the age of ninety-six in September 2015, had two children; Eddie, Jr. and Lillian Rose Robinson.

Awards and honors

Grambling named its football facility, built in 1983, Eddie Robinson Stadium. A street on GSU's campus is also named for him. In 1985 South 13th Street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was renamed for him. The Los Angeles Football Classic Foundation's black college football national championship trophy was named for Robinson in 1988. Beginning in 1994, a separate Eddie Robinson Trophy was awarded in Atlanta to the top HBCU player of the year. The Eddie Robinson Classic (held from 1997–2002) was named for him, as was the Eddie G. Robinson Classic (begun in 2015). In 1997 the Football Writers Association of America's Eddie Robinson Award was renamed for him. Robinson was awarded the General Robert R. Neyland trophy by the Knoxville Quarterback club in 1999. The American Urban Radio Networks named its HBCU coach of the year trophy for Robinson.

Robinson received the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award from the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) in 1982 and the Amos Alonzo Stagg Coaching Award from the United States Sports Academy in 1985. Robinson was the 1992 winner of the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Award, which was established to honor the NCAA Division I football coach whose team excels on the field, in the classroom, and in the community. The award is named for Bobby Dodd, longtime head football coach of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets; it was established in 1976 to honor the values that Dodd exemplified.

Super Bowl XXXII, played at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, was dedicated to Robinson. He was accompanied onto the field by Williams and Joe Gibbs to perform the ceremonial coin toss.

Museum

In 2010, the Eddie G. Robinson Museum opened on GSU's campus. The museum chronicles and celebrates the major accomplishments of the G-Men football program and former head coach Eddie Robinson. The museum is 18,000 square feet and costed approximately $3.3 million to complete.

In media

In the 1981 TV movie Grambling's White Tiger set in late 1960s, about the true story of Jim Gregory, the first white quarterback at Grambling, Robinson is played by Harry Belafonte.

Football

Today's Grambling State University was Grambling College from 1946 through 1973.
It was Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute (commonly Louisiana Normal) from 1928 through 1945.