Robinson, Eddie

Born Edward Gay Robinson, February 13, 1919, in Jackson, LA; died April 3, 2007, in Ruston, LA. Football coach. As the first football coach in the history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association to win 408 games, Eddie Robinson made his mark not only as a winning coach, but as a role model for many African-American youths. His work with the Grambling State University football team raised the college from a small school to a college that produced more than 200 players in the National Football League (NFL). His successes opened up the walls of segregation when Grambling played at Tulane Stadium, a place where, at one time, African Americans were not allowed entry.

Robinson was a star quarterback at Leland College, where he earned his bachelor’s degree and was encouraged to become a coach. He was the son of a sharecropper and a domestic servant, neither of whom had finished high school. After college, Robinson could not find a coaching job, so he took work in a feed mill, making 25 cents an hour. He married his high school sweetheart, Doris Mott, in 1941, the same year there was an opening for a college football coach at Grambling State University, then known as Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute. He was hired to coach football, basketball, and baseball, as well as to mow the fields, treat minor sports-related injuries, and write accounts of the games for a local newspaper. In his first season, the team had a rough record, but by the second season, it finished with nine wins and zero losses and had not allowed a single point.

The football team did not play from 1943 to 1944, due to World War II, and in 1945 it faced a different challenge. Two of Robinson’s star players were needed by their father to pick cotton. Rather than submit to defeat, Robinson organized the whole team to go out and work in the field, and that year Grambling won the championship. During the early 1960s, due to the number of Grambling graduates who had gone on to the NFL, the all-black college became a major recruiting ground for African-American players. When many of the major southern colleges began to integrate, he did not dissuade his players from leaving, torn between wanting the best team and his support for civil rights. Robinson continued to coach until 1997, when he retired.

His players remember him for more than his football knowledge. Robinson also taught his players etiquette and encouraged them to show faith; he required them to dress in suits and ties when they traveled to games and gave them their laundry stipends at church. He was “a great motivator,” Super Bowl most valuable player Doug Williams was quoted as having said in the New York Times. “He could build you up and make you believe you could do anything.” Everson Walls, a Grambling corner-back who went on to the NFL, told the Los Angeles Times, “He gave us a way of looking at life. He always wanted us to look for a way to succeed, not a reason to fail.” Robinson served as a role model beyond those who played for him at Grambling. Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith, one of the first African-American coaches to take his team to the Superbowl, told the Chicago Tribune, “For most young black men coming up, it was Eddie Robinson who we saw. When you would think about becoming a great coach and who you wanted to pattern yourself after and who looked like you, it was Eddie Robinson.”

Robinson was a devoted husband and a devoted patriot. During the civil rights era, he insisted that his players stand and respect the flag during the playing of the national anthem. “I don’t believe anybody can out-American me,” he was quoted as having said in the Los Angeles Times. The Chicago Tribune quoted a comment he once made: “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. Blacks have had a hard time, but not many Americans haven’t.” Married for 65 years, Robinson often told his players that “having one job and one wife” were his proudest accomplishments, according to the Los Angeles Times. Robinson, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died on April 3, 2007. He was 88. Sources: Chicago Tribune, April 5, 2007, sec. 4, p. 1, p. 4; Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2007, p. A1, p. A20; New York Times, April 5, 2007, p. A17.

—Alana Joli Abbott