From The Coaches Bookshelf – Eddie Robinson The Martin Luther King of Football

Covering six decades, Eddie Robinson’s coaching career paralleled the Jim Crow era of segregation in the Deep South and every major event of the Civil Rights Movement. His tenure spanned 11 U.S. Presidencies and four wars involving American troops – 57 years at the same university: Grambling. His football teams won 408 games and nine black national championships. Robinson opened the NFL to players from historically black colleges and sent more than 200 players into pro football. In Eddie Robinson, Denny Dressman documents a man who was called, ‘the Martin Luther King of football.’

Life ended for Eddie Robinson on April 3, 2007. By then, early in his eighty-ninth year, his legacy as a record-setting football coach had long been confirmed. Yet the fullness of his contribution as a historic black American role model in the context of the tumultuous Civil Rights Era had not been recorded for future generations. Upon the passing of ‘Coach Rob,’ writers everywhere tried to express what he meant to America along the sidelines as well as outside the stadium walls. News media across the nation sought reaction from his colleagues and former players, and many who admired him – even some who never met him in person – shared their personal appreciation with online responses to published commentary. Praise and admiration poured forth, tributes of every sort to a humble man whose reach was greater than he ever cared to claim or have emphasized.

    “Nobody has ever done or will ever do what Eddie Robinson has done for the game,” Joe Paterno has said, Paterno himself a legend after almost a half-century as Penn State’s head coach. “Our profession will never, ever be able to repay Eddie Robinson for what he has done for the country and the profession of football.”

    “As a person, he used the sport he loved to teach young men and women how to become good citizens and to succeed in athletics and life,” declared the Southwestern Athletic Conference in part of its prepared statement.

    “I don’t know if I would be where I am today if there had been no Eddie Robinson,” said Doug Williams, the only black quarterback to win a Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award, echoing hundreds of Grambling football players from Robinson’s fifty-seven seasons. “He put that spark into everyone, that will to be more, to be the best.”

    On the Internet, total strangers unleashed a spontaneous stream of appreciation and admiration. “He made this country better through his commitment to the next generation of leaders,” wrote one. “What a role model for everyone.” Added another: “Coach Robinson stood for what is right about sports and what’s right about our country. I’m sure he has a Gate keeper.” Still another offered: “Thank you Eddie Robinson…for teaching us that we can accomplish anything despite the obstacles.”

    Of all the testimonials, the most thought provoking was a 10-word comment from W. C. Gorden, one of Eddie’s most challenging sideline opponents for almost twenty years, as well as a good friend. “To me,” said Gorden, “He was the Martin Luther King of football.”

    There are undeniable parallels to the lives of Coach Rob and Dr. King, just as there are contrasts. Both men believed in the inherent strength of goodness; you could be good and achieve. Both approached the campaign for racial equality nonviolently; they were assimilationists. As a result, both were called derogatory names on occasion within the black community; in some eyes they weren’t racial enough. They differed in the way they chose to lead. Dr. King used the pulpit and his exceptional gift for oratory to challenge racism openly and publicly. Eddie Robinson, meanwhile, assumed a lower profile and relied on football as his vehicle for spreading his gospel. He preached the importance of education and preparation, the value of hard work, and the need for personal responsibility and self-discipline. And he expressed unwavering faith in the opportunity America afforded everyone who was willing to pay the price and never give up. Personally, Dr. King had well-documented human weaknesses. Eddie Robinson, according to virtually all who knew him, exhibited values and behavior with an almost too-good-to-be-true consistency.

    Overcoming racial prejudice and debunking Negro stereotypes became a defining theme for most of Eddie Robinson’s life. In his own way, he helped to undermine Jim Crow across the South; helped to open doors for black citizens and soften the hearts of many white ones; helped to bring about meaningful change by his example of success. And he did it all while developing scores of usually poor young black men who completed college and went on to successful careers and successful lives – outside of football as well as in the sport. He overcame tremendous prejudice, demeaning discrimination, and meager financial resources, and never complained or made excuses, nor allowed his players to do so.
   

Eddie Robinson will forever be known as the coach who took the little all-black school from northern Louisiana on the road, and played before hundreds of thousands of spectators coast to coast – even in Tokyo, Japan. He made Grambling a household name among football fans in every region of the country. He will always be known as the coach who made it reasonable, even necessary, to use Grambling in the same sentence with Notre Dame when talking about the best college football programs in the land, the ones that sent the most players into the pros. And he will always be known as the first college coach to win more than 400 games, the first black coach to become president of the American Football Coaches Association and the man who put black college football on the map in the eyes of pro football scouts and coaches. Yet this is but one dimension of a remarkable figure. He helped his race achieve opportunity and dignity, as well.  


Reprinted with permission of ComServ Books and Denny Dressman. Eddie Robinson can be ordered directly from the www.ComServBooks.com  site and is also available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and the Grambling campus bookstore.