Grambling, La. -- It has been one of those long, sticky summer nights in the South where the heat has been unrelenting, the humidity punishing. Eddie Robinson has walked the half-mile uphill from the stadium to the locker room, his Grambling team outlasting rival Alcorn State in a shootout.
Robinson, 75, has on green knit pants rolled up at the bottom. His oxford shoes are covered with dust and the long-sleeved white shirt is drenched. Beads of sweat pour down his round face ending in one huge drop at his chin.
"Oh, don't know how much more of this I can take," says Robinson, shaking his head after the 62-56 final score.
Curtis Armand has heard and seen this before. He played for Robinson in the 1940s.
"You know how it's going to end for him?" says Armand, now Southwestern Athletic Conference officiating observer. "Grambling is going to be at home and its quarterback is going to throw the winning touchdown in the final seconds. Coach Robinson will then walk out to the Big G in the middle of the field and die with a smile on his face. Of course, that could be another 20 years from now."
If one thinks 53 years of coaching has slowed Robinson down, forget it. Robinson has never coached from a tower. Never will.
He proudly claims he called all 65 plays against Alcorn State. Believe it. Robinson is constant motion on the sidelines. Preaching. Teaching. Shuffling plays through receivers and linemen. At the beginning and end of each offensive series, quarterback Kendrick Nord reports to Robinson.
Pronto.
"Coach still has a very sharp mind. The intensity, desire and passion for the game is still there," said Robert Smith, Grambling's defensive line coach, who played at the school from 1980 to 1983. "Coach Rob still runs pass patterns and drops back to pass in practice. The kids go crazy over that kind of stuff."
They hold him in the highest esteem.
After the Alcorn State game, Grambling players still were celebrating when Robinson walked in to the locker room. He cleared his throat once. He did it again. There was silence.
Robinson talked about the game. He thanked God, his coaching staff, the administrators, the film crew, the water boy . . . and finally the team.
"You played like one of the great Grambling teams," Robinson said, concluding the post-game speech.
The players howled, hollered and slapped high-fives.
"That's the greatest compliment you can get," says split end Curtis Ceasar. "Coach has seen all the great Grambling teams. He is Mr. Grambling."
The story of Grambling football is a story of Robinson's patience, dignity and will. For more than 50 years, he has sounded like a Southern Baptist minister telling his players that anything can be accomplished with a strong work ethic.
Robinson has practiced what he preached.
Travel with him in his 1980 brown Cadillac around the Grambling campus and he'll show you where there once stood cotton fields when the school was named Louisiana Normal and Industrial Institute.
Forty-four years ago, the football team didn't have a practice field or a stadium. The ground where Robinson's office now sits was a peach orchard.
The memories gleam in his eyes while the anecdotes and history lessons pour from his lips.
"You go back to when I had Tank Younger, Frank Cornish, Roosevelt Taylor. I didn't even have a car then," says Robinson. "I was the assistant coach, trainer, water boy, sportswriter and even lined the field before games.
"In the off-season, I coached the men's and women's basketball teams as well as the baseball team," he says. "I was athletic director, too. I did it all. But I have always been the type of person that you work with what you've got and go from there."
Robinson, who started out making $63.75 a month, has turned Grambling into one of the most respected programs in the
country.
Robinson has had more than 250 players go on to the NFL, including Younger, the first player chosen from a historically black college, and James Harris, one of the first black starters at quarterback. Robinson also coached Doug Williams, the first black quarterback to play in, and win, a Super Bowl.
The record speaks for itself: College football's all-time winningest coach with a 389-140-15 record, Robinson won or shared 16 SWAC titles and nine national black college championships.
Comparisons come to Bear
There will always be those who challenge Robinson and the legitimacy of his record, especially when compared with that of the late Bear Bryant, who retired in 1982 with the old mark for victories at 323.
Critics say Bryant coached against tougher Division I opponents while Grambling played less talented black schools.
Former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil says Robinson could have coached on any level.
"Eddie could have coached anywhere, of course in the NFL," says Vermeil. "The first thing you must be is a leader and Eddie is that above all else. Eddie has a profound effect on his players. And his football knowledge will compare with anyone else's."
Robinson had to endure through some trying economic situations. In 1945, he piled his players on a bus and picked cotton so two starting running backs could play the next day.
There's another story. Always another story.
"I was trying to get this Mississippi recruit, and back then you had to eat or you would offend the parents. Me and his daddy ate greens, cornbread, we were racing for that last hamhock. But his daddy said, 'Coach, I don't know. He may not want to work if you take him.'
"I go back to the hotel and the next morning I go to the house again. I see the boy out there breaking the ground. I stopped him, rolled up my sleeves, plowed up the field with one hand and whipped the mule with the other. His daddy saw me getting sweaty and dirty and knew I had done that kind of work. The boy went with me that night."
That's what made Oct. 5, 1985, so special. Grambling beat Prairie View A&M;, 27-7, as Robinson became the all-time winningest coach.
"Bear and I were pretty good friends," says Robinson. "I admired him and I was honored to once get to meet Alonzo Stagg. I've never cared what people said about the record. When I was little they once told me where to go to school, and which places I could attend. I came here, and they gave me a schedule to play. I played the hell out of it and won. That's all I could do."
Childhood; roots of coaching
Robinson was born on a farm in Jackson, La., and moved to Baton Rouge when he was 8. His father was a sharecropper; his mother did domestic work. They divorced when he was 10, but he loved staying with either parent.
"My dad had the quickest belt in Baton Rouge," says Robinson. "He'd get in and out of that thing like a magician. We went to church, Sunday school because we had to go. We need that today. A man has to put fear into his son, let him know when he is right or wrong. Discipline is the key. I was a good boy because of that damn belt."
Robinson says he had wanted to coach since third grade, when local high school coach Julius Kraft made a visit to his class. Robinson later played for Kraft at McKinley High. His other coaching idol was Reuben Turner, at Leland College in Baker, La., who also was a preacher and introduced Robinson to play books.
But after graduating from Leland, which no longer exists, Robinson found himself at the feed mill in Baton Rouge earning 25 cents an hour. He was a 21-year-old newlywed, working the feed mill by day and on an ice wagon at night.
That changed when Dr. Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, then Grambling president, hired Robinson as the school's first football coach in 1941.
"I want these players to appreciate what I didn't have a chance to do," says Robinson. "When a parent sends me their child, they are giving me their most precious gift. In return, I try to get them a degree."
And a little bit more.
Robinson still walks through the athletic dormitory at 6:30 a.m., delivering a wakeup call so his players get to breakfast and class on time. Each player still has to attend Etiquette 101.
"I remember going to meet Tank Younger when he was with the Rams and I noticed there weren't any black players in the restaurant eating steak with the white players," said Robinson. "Tank said they were back in the room eating hamburger because they didn't know how to use silverware. I couldn't believe it.
"So I developed this etiquette class. Grambling guys can eat anywhere," he said. "If we are to succeed in this world, we have to be social, able to communicate and compete. I want these guys to make a positive contribution to society."
Rap music is OK, but Robinson prefers a different message.
"That kind of music reaches millions, but imagine if the lyrics were about going to church, achieving in school or advancing at work," he said.
Earrings are forbidden. Ties and jackets are a must on the road. Short hair is preferred and facial hair must be trimmed and neat.
"If he sees a player with an earring, he just walks up and takes it," says Ceasar, his split end. "He might sound outdated, but we all knew what we were getting into before we came here."
"The records are great, but I remember Coach Robinson more as a human being than a coach," says Williams, now an assistant at Navy. "I really didn't appreciate the lessons in life he taught me until a few years after I left Grambling."
No preferential treatment
Robinson is leaving to go home, but the large crowd still is buzzing outside Robinson Stadium. Traffic is backed up and a police officer is waving all the vehicles to turn right.
As a car approaches the intersection, the officer notices it's Robinson and signals him to go left for a shortcut home.
"No, no, no," says Robinson, winding down the window, flashing that infectious smile. "You let me go left and these people will riot. Just treat me like everybody else, OK?"
The road leads behind a series of two- and three-story brick buildings. A few grocery stores, cafes and laundromats border the dorms. This is Grambling, basically a two-lane stretch off Interstate 20 cut into the pines just outside of Ruston.
Robinson has had many opportunities to leave. The Los Angeles Rams and Tampa Bay Buccaneers talked to him in 1977. The University of Iowa offered him a job as an assistant in the early 1970s.
"I've always felt like Grambling was my mission, my purpose," says Robinson. "I've never wanted to leave, just wanted to be myself and fit in. Would I have been successful as an NFL coach? I'll never know."
One of the keys to Robinson's success has been his ability to adjust. He started out using a single wing then moved to the rTC T-formation to the pro set. His offenses have always been wide open with strong-armed quarterbacks such as Harris, Williams and now Nord.
As the pros became trendy on defense, so did Robinson. He hasn't missed a coaching clinic since he started at Grambling.
"He's always been flexible. It's evident through all the years," says Harris, now an assistant general manager with the Jets. "He can adapt to any situation. He's always been able to challenge a player and get him to meet that challenge."
A week before Grambling played Alcorn State, Robinson told Nord to go stand beside Alcorn quarterback Steve McNair, a Heisman Trophy candidate.
"I wanted him to see he was bigger and stronger," said Robinson. "I wanted him to know the only difference between them was attitude. McNair wanted to be the best in college and pro football. Nord was just happy to be the Grambling starter."
Nord completed 17 of 33 passes for 485 yards and seven touchdowns against Alcorn State.
From FDR to miracles
When Robinson first started coaching, Franklin D. Roosevelt was just starting his third term as president, and Paul Brown still was coaching at Ohio State.
Robinson seems to enjoy himself more now. He earns more than $50,000 a year in base salary and lives in a spacious house with Doris, his wife of more than 50 years, on the outskirts of town. He likes recalling the old days and the old coaches, even telling the tales about racial prejudices without bitterness in his voice.
Robinson has passed the state's mandatory retirement age of 70 and says he will keep coaching until he feels he no longer can make a contribution.
"I've ridden on the street car that when you got on, you'd have white and colored sections. I've drank at segregated fountains. I'm not trying to make anybody pay. All I wanted was an opportunity, and I got that at Grambling.
"I don't want to wake up one morning, and not have people wanting to see me or me not wanting to see them," says Robinson. "I've dodged a bullet for 53 years. I've earned the right to coach, and I don't owe anybody anything except my players. If I do retire, then I'm going to find a job."
Williams says the retirement will be on Robinson's own terms.
He recalls one day when a downpour threatened to cancel practice. The players were inside, waiting to get the afternoon off. Robinson walked in.
"Let's practice," he said.
"It's raining," the players said.
"Not anymore," Robinson said. And the rain stopped.
"When Coach Robinson wanted to practice, we practiced," Williams says. "The guy never ran out of miracles."
EDDIE ROBINSON FILE
Born: Feb. 13, 1919, in Jackson, La.
Education: Bachelor's degree, Leland College in Baker, La.; master's degree, University of Iowa.
Coaching career: 389-140-15 in 53 seasons at Grambling.
Highlights: Inducted into the NAIA, Sugar Bowl, Pop Warner, Louisiana Sports, Southwestern Athletic Conference and Grambling halls of fame.
Personal: Married his high school sweetheart, Doris. The Robinsons have two children, five grandchildren and one great-grandson. His son, Eddie Jr., is an assistant coach at Grambling.
HEAD OF THE CLASS
College football's 10 winningest coaches, including those who won games at four-year colleges, regardless of whether the college was an NCAA member at the time. Bowl and playoff games included:
Coach Years W L T Pct.
Eddie Robinson 51 389 140 15 .729
(Grambling, 1941-42, 1945-present)
Bear Bryant 38 323 85 17 .780
(Maryland, 1945; Kentucky, 1946-53; Texas A&M;, 1954-57; Alabama, 1958-82)
Pop Warner 44 319 106 32 .733
(Georgia, 1895-96; Cornell, 1897-98; Carlisle, 1899-1903; Cornell, 1904-06; Carlisle, 1907-14; Pittsburgh, 1915-23; Stanford 1924-32; Temple, 1933-38)
Amos Alonzo Stagg 57 314 199 35 .605
(Springfield, 1890-91; Chicago, 1892-1932; Pacific, 1933-46)
John Gagliardi 45 307 96 10 .755
(Carroll (Mont.), 1949-52; St. John's (Minn.), 1953-present)
Ron Schipper 33 261 62 3 .805
(Central Iowa, 1961-present)
Joe Paterno 28 259 69 3 .787
(Penn State, 1966-present)
Roy Kidd 30 248 89 8 .730
(Eastern Kentucky, 1964-present)
Bobby Bowden 28 241 78 3 .753
(Samford, 1959-62; West Virginia, 1970-75; Florida State, 1976-present)
Woody Hayes 33 238 72 10 .759
(Denison, 1946-48; Miami (Ohio), 1949-50; Ohio State 1951-78)
Source: NCAA Football