'Coach Rob' did Grambling and himself proud

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"I'd coach to 100 if I could. ... I'm a football coach. This is the only thing I've ever done and the only thing I've ever wanted to do."

-- Eddie Robinson

So said the Grambling State football coach on the eve of his retirement in November 1997. By that time, Eddie Robinson's achievements over more than five decades at the former Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute were truly legendary.

He started in 1941 at a salary of $63.43 a month -- lining the field, taping ankles and heaven knows what else in addition to devising strategy and imposing discipline. His only assistant coach was the night watchman. That first season, the Tigers were 3-7. The next they were unbeaten.

Then "Coach Rob," an earnest, black-haired young man who could give rousing pregame speeches on Saturday like the best of preachers on Sunday, stayed, stayed and stayed some more.

He stayed six years longer than Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics. He stayed until Grambling was playing before occasional crowds of 70,000 rather than a few hundred. He stayed until he had won 408 games, then the most of any college football coach in history, leaving in his statistical dust the likes of Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner and Bear Bryant.

Two of his teams were undefeated, and the 1942 squad was unscored-upon. Twenty-one of his teams won nine or more games; another eight teams won at least eight games. He captured or shared 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and eight black-college national championships. His final record was 408-164-15, a winning percentage of .708.

All those victories were only part of the story, though. He sent 210 players to the NFL, starting at a time when few from traditionally black colleges were drafted. The list included seven-first-round picks, four eventual Pro Football Hall of Famers (Charlie Joiner, Willie Davis, Willie Brown, Buck Buchanan) and the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl (of course, the Washington Redskins' Doug Williams, who succeeded him as Grambling's coach).

In later years, awards poured down on Robinson. He received honorary degrees from (in addition to Grambling) Yale, Southwestern, Louisiana Tech and Springfield College. The NAACP, VFW, Boy Scouts and B'nai B'rith hailed him. He was inducted into the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.