| PERSONAL DATA |
| BIRTHDATE |
| February 13, 1919 |
| BIRTHPLACE |
| Jackson, Louisiana |
| EDUCATION |
| Master's Degree University of Iowa Iowa City |
| Bachelor's Degree Leland College Baker, Louisiana |
| Diploma Mckinley High School Baton Rouge, LA |
Time and time again Grambling State football coach Eddie Robinson has fielded football teams and sent young men to new heights both on and off the playing field. But the legendary coach doesn't like taking credit for his success, but instead says it has been all those around him who have helped make him the man he is today. His players, his family, his loving wife Doris, the media and fans throughout the country have helped make the name Eddie Robinson synonymous with the best college football has to offer. Even fellow legends credit Robinson with being the best collegiate football has to offer.
"Nobody has ever done or ever will do what Eddie Robinson has done for this game," Penn State coach Joe Paterno said. "Eddie Robinson and Jake Gaither (Florida A&M) stand alone. Our profession will never, ever be able to repay Eddie Robinson for what he has done for the country and the profession of football."
On October 7, 1995, Robinson became the first collegiate coach to break the 400-win barrier. A mark once believed to be unreachable. the 42-6 win came at home in Robinson Stadium against Mississippi Valley State before a nationally-televised audience on ESPN2.
The 78-year-old Robinson said that coaching football has been his life's ambition since he was a child and he focused in on that ambition at an early age. "When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers, Julius Kraft, would dress up his high school players in suits and bring them to the elementary school." Robinson said. "They would talk to us and I was fascinated with all the talk about football."
"My parents would carry us to the high school games and they were always concerned why I wanted to be around the bench all of the time. I wanted to be around the bench to see what the coach was doing. It was then, around the third or fourth grade, that I realized I wanted to be a football coach, so I started reading everything I could about the game". After 56 seasons as head coach of Louisiana's Grambling State Tigers, Robinson's childhood dreams have been realized in a big way. The "winningest coach in collegiate football history" has become the only coach to reach the magical 400-win plateau. But Robinson's inborn drive to be the best he can be won't let him stop there. Neither of Robinson's parents graduated from high school and they encouraged his desire to stay in school and get a college degree. Robinson moved on from high school to become a star quarterback at Leland College under Reuben Turner, a Baptist preacher who introduced Robinson to the concepts of the playbook and coaching clinics. With no coaching opportunities available after college, Robinson took a job in a Baton Rouge feed mill before learning from a relative that there was an open position for a football coach at Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, which later became Grambling State University. After an interview with Dr. Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, Robinson was chosen as the sixth head coach of the Tigers. "Other than my father, Dr. Jones probably had the biggest impact on my life," Robinson said. "I couldnt understand why he gave this job to me. When I got here there wasn't much to look forward to, but they hadn't done anything so there wasn't much to look back on. But he gave the job to me and told me to coach. I just appreciate him giving me a chance to make a living at a job I loved doing". Another person who had a big impact on Robinson is his childhood sweetheart and wife, Doris. "We started courting around the end of elementary school, so she's always been there for me. She's an important part of my foundation". It didn't take Dr. Jones long to realize that he made a good move in hiring the young, but determined coach. "It was a little different in those years," recalls Eddie. "Yes, I was the football coach, but all of us on the staff had to handle more than one task." Adds Robinson, "I had to mow and line the field before each game. At halftime, I had to direct the girl's drill team. After the game, I had to write up an account of the game and then deliver it to the newspapers so that we had a little coverage of our scores. Heck, Dr. Jones directed the band and was coach of the school's baseball team. That's what life was like at our small black colleges. I wouldn't trade a moment of it".
The first season in 1941 could be evaluated as "on-the-job" training for the new coach. His first team posted a 3-5-0 record. Entering his second season, Robinson took command and dismissed some players who were not living up to his expectations. The results were obvious the next season as Robinson's team earned a perfect 9-0 record with the team going unbeaten, untied and unscored upon. Grambling was only the second collegiate team to shut out every opponent, a feat which has not been repeated since. Grambling was establishing a reputation, one that continued to flourish over the next half century and continues to this day. There was no football at Grambling during the war years of 1943-44, but the sport resumed in 1945 and that year Robinson's Tigers went 10-2. During the war years, Robinson had won a high school championship as the Grambling High School football coach, but he faced a different type of obstacle in '45. "That year a daddy pulled his sons, our best running backs, off the team and said they couldn't play anymore because they had to pick cotton," Robinson said. "So I got all of the boys on the team, we packed up and went out there to pick the cotton and went on to win the championship". By 1949, Grambling's football team was receiving national acclaim after Grambling running back Paul "Tank" Younger signed with the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, becoming the first player from a historically black college to be taken by the NFL. In 1955, Grambling took the National Black College Championship by going 10-0 (the best record in school history) and outscored opponents by a 356-61 margin. It was during the 1957 season that Robinson reached the first of many milestones as he picked up his 100th career win with a 20-12 win on Bethune-Cookman. In 1959 Grambling joined the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), of which it is still a member. The next year, Robinson's Tigers captured their first of 17 SWAC championships or co-championships. Another of Robinson's former Tigers made NFL waves in 1963 as the late Junius "Buck" Buchanan became the first player from a historically black college to be chosen in the first round of the AFL draft. In 1966, Robinson earned acclaim when he was named "The Coach Who Made The Biggest Contribution to College Football in the Past 25 Years" and by 1971, Robinson had amassed 200 coaching victories with a 25-15 win over Mississippi Valley. By 1984, Robinson was poised to become one of the winningest collegiate coaches ever. After surpassing Amos Alonzo Stagg's 314 coaching victories, Robinson tied legendary Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's 323 coaching win mark with a 23-6 win over Oregon State before becoming the best ever the next week with a 27-7 defeat over Prairie View. The glare of the national spotlight was on Black College football and Grambling and Robinson in particular. After his historic win over Prairie View, Robinson was asked how he felt about beating Bear Bryant's record. Robinson, in typical fashion, responded, "I've never been concerned with personal records. All the 324 wins means is that I have been around for a long time." There is an old adage in sports that records are meant to be broken. Babe Ruth hit an impossible 60 home runs; Roger Maris slugged 61. Once Cornelius Warmerdam cleared 15 feet in the pole vault; no one, it was believed would ever top that. Vaulters today now clear 19 feet consistently. Hockey's Maurice Richard scored an incredible 50 goals in one season; along came Wayne Gretzky. Get it. Since the 1985 season, Grambling and Robinson added 81 more victories. The 1997 season marked the 128th anniversary of college football. Going into the 1997 season, Robinson's all-time mark stood at 405, only 157 losses and 15 ties. Did Eddie Robinson invent the game? Or does it just seem like it? Old adages be darned, it is most unlikely that any coach will ever remotely approach Eddie Robinson's mark, nor is it likely that in today's high pressure, high-turnover world of college football will anyone ever equal Robinson's record of coaching 57 years at one school. As Robinson himself has said many times, "I guess you could say I'm proud of the fact that I can summarize my life by saying I've had one wife and one job". No, Eddie Robinson did not invent the game of football, he just made it better!
It is a given that we, here at GSU, love and respect Coach Rob for the contributions he has made to the sport of football, to the many athletes that have passed through GSU, and many others. Look at what others have said about Coach Rob:
Gospel Com
Minorities Job
Journal
Washington Post
Jacksonville Daily News