Eddie Robinson spent nearly 60 years at Grambling State University, where he set a standard for victories with 408 and nearly every season saw his top players drafted by NFL teams. Doug Williams, a Super Bowl MVP quarterback was one of them. Williams said Robinson died shortly before midnight Tuesday.
Robinson had been admitted to Lincoln General Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.
“For the Grambling family this is a very emotional time,” Williams said Wednesday. “But I’m thinking about Eddie Robinson the man, not in today-time, but in the day and what he meant to me and to so many people.”
Robinson’s career spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil-rights movement. His older records are what people will remember: In 57 years, Robinson compiled a 408-165-15 record. Until John Gagliardi of St. John’s, Minn., topped the victory mark four years ago, Robinson was known as the winningest coach in all of college football.
“The real record I have set for over 50 years is the fact that I have had one job and one wife,” Robinson said.
Robinson had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, which was diagnosed shortly after he was forced to retire following the 1997 season, in which he won only three games. His health had been declining for years and he had been in and out of a nursing home during the last year.
Robinson said he tried to coach each player as if he wanted him to marry his daughter.
He began coaching at Grambling State in 1941, when it was still the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, and single-handedly brought the school from obscurity to international popularity.
Robinson sent over 200 players to the NFL, including seven first-round draft choices and Williams, who succeeded Robinson as Grambling’s coach in 1998. Others went to the Canadian Football League and the now-defunct USFL.
