Time (finally) to mark calendars on long-delayed Robinson Museum project
August 18, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Key dates for the long-delayed Eddie Robinson Museum are being talked about in terms of months, instead of years.
For a project now nearly a decade in the making, that's a remarkable achievement in itself.
"We're hoping to have a groundbreaking some time in the fall, and we'll get the ball rolling," said Louisiana Secretary of State Jay Dardenne, whose office would oversee the project. "We're making great progress."
At Grambling State from 1941-97, Robinson retired as the winningest football coach in college history with 408 wins — leading the Tigers to 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles over the years. He passed away in April 2007 at age 88, as the state moved to approve a plan to house a museum in his honor in the former women's gym on the Grambling campus.
Over the intervening year, the museum began to build a belated head of steam.
Organizers are now hailing the opening of bids on the long-delayed project, which are being accepted through Sept. 11 through the state's Office of Facility Planning and Control. A pre-bid conference is slated for Thursday at the former women's gym on the GSU campus.
"The time frame from there goes like this: six weeks to award the bid to the contractor and then a start date is set — and then construction begins," Robinson Museum board chairman John Belton said. "I think the end of October looks good for that date."
Belton, a governor-appointed board member since the project's inception, adds: "God is good."
The bidding follows quick approval by the Louisiana Bond Commission of $1.3 million — $300,000 in cash and a $1 million line of credit — to be used for renovating exhibit space in the women's gym and hiring an exhibit designer.
Those were the first state funds ever specifically earmarked for the effort.
"We are on our way," local museum fundraiser and Robinson family friend Wilbert Ellis enthused. "I'm tickled to death."
This project was first proposed nearly a decade ago in 1999 — two years after Robinson's retirement at Grambling and several before the onset of the Alzheimer's-related symptoms that ultimately led to his death.
But a series of setbacks followed, including budget cuts and a since-resolved argument over where the museum would be located.
"You know it's often very difficult to get in line for capital outlay projects," Dardenne admitted.
Robinson's passing spurred renewed interest in the concept.
"It has taken off," said Eddie Robinson Jr., the coach's only son and a former player and assistant under his father.
"That's so great for the family. It's an inspiration to all of us. We're all so very happy about that."
The Secretary of State's office has also been consistent in its support for a proposed Robinson Museum.
"I had just been elected right before he died and had already been committed to try and move that project along," Dardenne said, "because I was very interested in it, personally. And I think the combination of those two events helped kick start it to get to the point where we're now going to have it as a reality in the next year or so."
Word came last week that a groundbreaking ceremony has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Sept. 20 at the proposed museum site. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Dardenne and other state and local officials are scheduled to attend, said Ray Higgins, museum curator.
Higgins recently reviewed the state's extensive collection of Robinson-related material, including a priceless briefcase containing materials from the coach's final season at Grambling.
That's part of a months-long project he's undertaking to collect and catalogue items for inclusion in the exhibit space — yet another tangible sign the museum, though it's taken a while to get here, is no longer a faraway point on the horizon.
"We've had Coach with us that whole time," Ellis said. "I think he's working right along with us on this. I feel Coach's hand in all of it."
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Organizers praised for ushering long-delayed Robinson Museum forward
August 29, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Members of the Eddie Robinson Museum Commission are hailing the opening of bids on their long-delayed project.
They met on Thursday for the first time in a location dedicated to the museum, the former women's gymnasium on the Grambling State University campus where Robinson coached for nearly 60 years.
"A long time coming," marveled John Belton, a governor-appointment board member since the project's 1999 inception. "We're almost there."
After the commission met, prospective contractors then toured the facility, used more recently as university office space and for practice by GSU cheer groups, as part of a pre-bid question-and-answer session.
Bids will be taken beginning Sept. 11 to underwrite a retrofit of the gym and a sweeping plan — on display during the meeting — to showcase Robinson through memorabilia and interactive exhibits.
"You should all be very proud of your tenacity," said Cliff Deal, coordinator of museums with the Louisiana Secretary of State's office, which will oversee the project. "Your energy got it where it is today. Your desire and your hope got us here — no other reason."
A museum in Robinson's honor was first approved by the Louisiana Legislature nine years ago, just after Robinson's retirement from a career that ended with a Division I record of 408 career football victories. But a series of disagreements over where the exhibits would be housed slowed the project to a near standstill until more recently.
Robinson died in April 2007 from complications related to Alzheimer's at age 88, and that too gave an emotional charge to the efforts. The museum received its first state funding earlier in the year, and has now begun setting projected dates for groundbreaking and opening ceremonies.
"It's a terrific feeling," said Eddie Robinson Jr., who played for and coached with his father. "The hay is almost in the barn."
Deal was joined by Sailor Jackson of the Louisiana State Archives, who helped set an agenda for the coming months. The museum, for instance, still has to work out a loan agreement for memorabilia with the Robinson family.
"This is not the end; it's just the beginning," Jackson said. "Next, we'll open bids, then we're on a fast track. We're talking mid-October when hammers start swinging."
Exhibit designer Jules Babineaux outlined his plans for the space, which include a special exhibit for former players called "Tigers in the Pros," an interactive database, a large bronze statue of Robinson and a re-creation of his office.
"We're trying to make it like the man was, bigger than life," said Babineaux, of Exhibits Etc.
Organizers hope to hold a groundbreaking on the weekend of Grambling's first home football game this season, and open the doors on the weekend it returns to play at Robinson Stadium in 2009.
The museum would include free admission, Deal said. "Our interest is in celebrating the memory of Coach," he said, "and to let everyone who can enjoy it."
Former Grambling coach and athletic administrator Wilbert Ellis, a family friend and principal local fundraiser for the museum effort, praised a number of major donors — including the Dallas alumni chapter and the Shack Harris-Doug Williams Foundation.
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Eddie Rob Museum groundbreaking gets emotional
September 21, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — A groundbreaking ceremony for the proposed Eddie Robinson Museum, nearly a decade in the making, moved many to tears.
"Coach used to say: 'Nobody can outwork me, if God gives me the strength,'" said former Grambling State University baseball coach and athletic administrator Wilbert Ellis. "And God gave him the strength. He gave us that strength, too."
Ellis was one of a handful of locals who worked tirelessly toward this goal of honoring Robinson, who died in 2007 at age 88 after setting a still-standing Division I mark for college football victories.
They gathered Saturday to unveil plans for the exhibit space, to be housed at the former women's basketball gymnasium on the Grambling State campus where Robinson coached for most of six decades.
But a largely ceremonial moment took on a deeper emotion after so many years of struggle.
"It's a great day, an unbelievable day," Eddie Robinson Jr. said, smiling even as he cried. "We are so blessed as a family."
Recent dental work limited comments from Doris Robinson, the former GSU coach's widow. But she was in great spirits, presenting the state's renovation plans and then — after donning a hardhat affixed with the familiar Grambling "G" logo — turning over the initial mounds of dirt with a golden shovel.
As many as a half a dozen people were dabbing tears by then.
Robinson's legend, established over a career that spanned 1941-97, still holds that kind of startling power. Grambling President Horace Judson on Saturday called his school "the house that Eddie Robinson built," to widespread applause.
But plans to honor him with a museum, first mentioned in 1999, hit a series of roadblocks involving funding, arguments over location, then shifting commission dynamics.
That changed over the last few years as a rejuvenated board — helmed by John Belton, a governor-appointed member, with help from former Robinson assistant coach Doug Porter — began to pick up key support from Louisiana officials.
Robinson's passing, after years of battling complications related to Alzheimer's, gave the efforts a final push.
In a matter of months, the University of Louisiana System, which oversees Grambling, worked out a deal to house the exhibits on campus. The Louisiana Legislature then funded the museum for the first time since its inception.
Throughout the long journey, the Secretary of State's Office — through the administrations of Fox McKeithen, Al Ater and now Jay Dardenne — has remained a strong advocate.
"I appreciate the work that has gone on for the past 10 years," Dardenne said. "Their sweat and tears made this possible."
Choudrant businessman James Davison, a longtime family friend of the Robinsons, was one of several in attendance wearing specially made shirts inscribed with the motto: "Coach Rob — we kept the faith."
Like many, he paused several times during his remarks to compose himself.
"This is a collective achievement, a historic occasion," Belton said. "Many asked: Will it ever happen? The answer is yes, and praise God for it."
He specifically mentioned others besides Robinson who had not lived to see this belated ceremony, including original board chair Lottie Green; former Grambling professor David Lewis; and McKeithen, an early advocate.
A surprise guest was former state Sen. Randy Ewing — who in 1999 introduced Senate Bill No. 919, which created the Robinson Museum commission.
"We come here to honor Coach Robinson, but also his wife," Ewing said, gesturing to Robinson's partner of 64 years. "That was a winning team, too."
Familiar faces from Grambling lore dotted the audience, including NBA Hall of Famer Willis Reed.
"I am proud to have gone to a university where such a great man coached," Reed said.
Respected school architects were represented by Mary Hobdy, widow of Reed's former basketball coach Fred Hobdy and secretary to the school's second president, R.W.E. Jones; along with Ophelia Nicholson, widow of the school's renowned former sports information director, Collie J. Nicholson.
Several ex-players were in attendance, including Albert Dennis III and Eddie Scott, who has formed an alumni group called Eddie Robinson's Boys.
Grambling Mayor Martha Andrus ruminated on the emotional reunion of so many faces from the area's storied past.
"History is born again today, as we break ground for this museum," she said. "We are humble, fortunate and oh-so-very proud to see this come to fruition."
State Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe) and state Rep. Rick Gallot (D-Ruston) both spoke as part of the official program, as well.
"How sweet it is," Gallot said, "that this day has finally come."
Other officials on hand included Ruston mayor Dan Hollingsworth, University of Louisiana System president Randy Moffett, District Attorney Bob Levy and Ruston-Lincoln Convention and Visitors Bureau president Kyle Edmiston.
The Rev. Julius R. Sumler, pastor at Grambling's New Rocky Valley Baptist — Robinson was a member there — gave the invocation: "We thank you, Lord, for a dream that you wouldn't allow to die."
Grambling's Tiger Marching Band performed, both before and after the ceremony — playing Bill Wither's classic soul favorite "Lovely Day" as the program got under way and then the school's alma mater and fight song to conclude the event.
"I'm pleased to be a part of history," Ellis said, as more tears welled up again. "This is a day I will always remember. I can see Coach now — and he's smiling."
Showing posts with label Eddie Robinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eddie Robinson. Show all posts
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
Remembering: Grambling's first game at Northwestern State
Historic first meeting between Grambling, Northwestern was defensive slugfest
September 11, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
The stands, that night, were separated by color.
Fans sporting black and gold filled one set of bleachers, while purple and white populated the other.
But there was something else that divided them, as Grambling played its first-ever game against Northwestern State on Sept. 14, 1974.
"What was unique was not just the color of the shirts; you had all white people on one side and all black on the other," said Jack Brittain, an NSU special teams player in '74. "That was not something I was used to seeing. It was a different point of view."
The newly expanded State Fair Stadium — now Shreveport's Independence Stadium — was packed to the lid, as 30,000 fans joined together despite their differences for a night of stirring football action.
"We knew it was big, especially playing a school of different race from Louisiana," said Sammy White, then a junior wingback for the historically black Grambling college. "We knew the level of competition would be a step up for our program, and we wanted to give it everything we had to pull it out."
At the time, the late legendary GSU sports information director Collie J. Nicholson said this "could become a regular series for the two clubs."
But the Tigers wouldn't play another Southland Conference-affiliated program until falling to Arkansas State in the 1985 lower-division playoffs. Grambling, despite more recent efforts going back at least five seasons, hasn't played Northwestern since.
That changes Saturday at GSU travels to Natchitoches for a long-awaited Louisiana rivalry game that's stirred powerful memories of their first meeting more than 30 years back.
"It was actually a barrier breaker, as far as those things go," said Brittain, now Northwestern's sideline reporter. "As a freshman, it was my first football game, so my knees were shaking before we went out for the kickoff. Then, we were facing Grambling, who had such a great reputation for sending players to the professional leagues. We figured it was going to be an epic battle."
Was it ever.
'TIGHT, TIGHT, TIGHT'
Senior Grambling quarterback Joe Comeaux, a Westlake native, opened the scoring with a four-yard TD scramble. He'd hit Dwight Scales on a 43-yard pass to the NSU 7 on the second play from scrimmage.
Rodney Zeno, a senior GSU defensive back, added the extra point, but the 7-0 lead wouldn't stand for long.
A White fumble on the Grambling 13 gave the ball back to Northwestern's Butch Ballard, who answered with his lone touchdown pass of the night — hitting Gene Knecht on an eight-yard strike.
That followed a series of stuffs on off-tackle runs by Mario Cage, who couldn't get past Grambling seniors Gary "Big Hands" Johnson and Robert Barber.
In a harbinger of kicking problems to come, NSU's extra-point attempt then failed.
NSU's Cage — coming off a 1,000-yard, all-Gulf South season in 1973 — then made a dramatic second-quarter touchdown run on a pitch back from Ballard. (There are lingering discrepancies on the exact length of his run: Monroe's Morning World had it at 57 yards, The Times of Shreveport reported 61 and NSU's yearbook said 52.) Danny Foret's point-after attempt was true this time, giving Northwestern a 13-7 lead at the half.
Neither team, however, could gather itself for a knock out on offense. It was all body blows.
"That game," said White, "was tight, tight, tight."
Nicholson once marveled over NSU's 1974 defense, saying "they make up for a lack of size with speed, aggressiveness and a desire to hit."
Grambling's unit, meanwhile, featured James "Hound" Hunter as a secondary anchor along with the All-American Johnson, who late Grambling coaching legend Eddie Robinson had taken to calling "the best lineman in college football."
Both teams would punt seven times over the course of the contest, with Grambling earning just four first downs and outgaining NSU by a total of only 74 yards. Northwestern fumbled seven times, losing three — while picking off GSU a total of four stunning times.
"I was deep protection on the punts," Brittain said, laughing, "and we punted a lot. I just remember 'Big Hands' running past our center, right behind the snap as it was coming back. He would come in low, about one foot off the ground. All I could do is dive at his shoelaces. He would just shove me to the ground and trample right over me."
Grambling returned to the field after halftime with a new quarterback, and Shreveport sophomore Terry Brown reeled off a dramatic 82-yard pass to White.
"They were blitzing us a lot, so we had a one-on-one match up," said White, now an assistant coach at Grambling. "Terry threw a nice long ball on that one."
Zeno's kick gave the Tigers their final margin of victory, 14-13.
But not before a memorable NSU field goal attempt, blocked by Hunter, as time expired.
Hunter's playmaking through that junior season had already drawn raves from Robinson, who called the Texan "Mr. Clutch." A canny pass defender and zippy returner, Hunter was "generally spoken of with a reverence reserved exclusively for legendary Saturday heroes," the late Nicholson once said.
That legend was built on plays like the final one against Northwestern State.
NSU got the ball back after an interception by linebacker Dan Boddie, who dashed back to the Grambling 34 with 4:03 left in the game. Ballard then drove down to the GSU 3 as time grew short, setting up a 20-yard attempt by Foret. Demons coach George Doherty, in a gutsy move, had ordered the try on third down with just 39 seconds remaining.
Hunter got a finger on it, as perhaps did Johnson, and the attempt missed.
'WAY BEYOND FOOTBALL'
Cage, who went down to injury during that final push, rushed for 97 yards — though much of that was given back in the final team stats because of lost yardage by other players.
Ballard finished the day 11-of-16 for just 88 yards and a score for NSU. Comeaux and Brown, meanwhile, combined for a 7-of-21 performance — a lack of efficiency under center that eventually led to the now-famous insertion of a redshirt freshman named Doug Williams three games later against Prairie View A&M.
"We had our opportunities," Williams said. "We scored 14 points, but we were still largely ineffective. It wasn't one of those good old Grambling offensive days. You could give some of that to Northwestern, too. They had a good team."
Doherty, entering his last season in Natchitoches after winning the Gulf South in 1972, had brought A.L. Williams in as offensive coordinator — and installed his new assistant's more pass-oriented offense in anticipation of handing over the reigns.
NSU, which had already dropped its second straight game in 1974, was in the midst of consecutive 1-10 campaigns. Williams would coach at Northwestern for eight seasons, boasting ranked teams in 1980 and '82 when his teams finished 8-3 and 7-4 respectively.
Williams went on to pass for 1,150 yards (nearly 400 more yards than Comeaux and Brown combined) over the remainder of the 1974 season. Grambling finished 11-1, claiming the ninth of 17 total Southwestern Athletic Conference championships under Robinson. (Williams later returned to coach at his alma mater, and played host to the first Southland foe ever at Grambling's Robinson Stadium — McNeese State in 2003.)
Grambling's lone '74 stumble was a 19-14 loss to Alcorn, and they shared the SWAC crown. Robinson would finish the season at 236 career wins on the way to 408 total, a still-standing Division I record.
The Northwestern victory, thrilling in its playing and encouraging in its social significance, holds a special place among them.
"The perspective of this game is way beyond the football field," Brittain said. "In our lives, both at Grambling and at Northwestern, it had a big effect. What a great time to try something like that, to break through some of those unknowns."
September 11, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
The stands, that night, were separated by color.
Fans sporting black and gold filled one set of bleachers, while purple and white populated the other.
But there was something else that divided them, as Grambling played its first-ever game against Northwestern State on Sept. 14, 1974.
"What was unique was not just the color of the shirts; you had all white people on one side and all black on the other," said Jack Brittain, an NSU special teams player in '74. "That was not something I was used to seeing. It was a different point of view."
The newly expanded State Fair Stadium — now Shreveport's Independence Stadium — was packed to the lid, as 30,000 fans joined together despite their differences for a night of stirring football action.
"We knew it was big, especially playing a school of different race from Louisiana," said Sammy White, then a junior wingback for the historically black Grambling college. "We knew the level of competition would be a step up for our program, and we wanted to give it everything we had to pull it out."
At the time, the late legendary GSU sports information director Collie J. Nicholson said this "could become a regular series for the two clubs."
But the Tigers wouldn't play another Southland Conference-affiliated program until falling to Arkansas State in the 1985 lower-division playoffs. Grambling, despite more recent efforts going back at least five seasons, hasn't played Northwestern since.
That changes Saturday at GSU travels to Natchitoches for a long-awaited Louisiana rivalry game that's stirred powerful memories of their first meeting more than 30 years back.
"It was actually a barrier breaker, as far as those things go," said Brittain, now Northwestern's sideline reporter. "As a freshman, it was my first football game, so my knees were shaking before we went out for the kickoff. Then, we were facing Grambling, who had such a great reputation for sending players to the professional leagues. We figured it was going to be an epic battle."
Was it ever.
'TIGHT, TIGHT, TIGHT'
Senior Grambling quarterback Joe Comeaux, a Westlake native, opened the scoring with a four-yard TD scramble. He'd hit Dwight Scales on a 43-yard pass to the NSU 7 on the second play from scrimmage.
Rodney Zeno, a senior GSU defensive back, added the extra point, but the 7-0 lead wouldn't stand for long.
A White fumble on the Grambling 13 gave the ball back to Northwestern's Butch Ballard, who answered with his lone touchdown pass of the night — hitting Gene Knecht on an eight-yard strike.
That followed a series of stuffs on off-tackle runs by Mario Cage, who couldn't get past Grambling seniors Gary "Big Hands" Johnson and Robert Barber.
In a harbinger of kicking problems to come, NSU's extra-point attempt then failed.
NSU's Cage — coming off a 1,000-yard, all-Gulf South season in 1973 — then made a dramatic second-quarter touchdown run on a pitch back from Ballard. (There are lingering discrepancies on the exact length of his run: Monroe's Morning World had it at 57 yards, The Times of Shreveport reported 61 and NSU's yearbook said 52.) Danny Foret's point-after attempt was true this time, giving Northwestern a 13-7 lead at the half.
Neither team, however, could gather itself for a knock out on offense. It was all body blows.
"That game," said White, "was tight, tight, tight."
Nicholson once marveled over NSU's 1974 defense, saying "they make up for a lack of size with speed, aggressiveness and a desire to hit."
Grambling's unit, meanwhile, featured James "Hound" Hunter as a secondary anchor along with the All-American Johnson, who late Grambling coaching legend Eddie Robinson had taken to calling "the best lineman in college football."
Both teams would punt seven times over the course of the contest, with Grambling earning just four first downs and outgaining NSU by a total of only 74 yards. Northwestern fumbled seven times, losing three — while picking off GSU a total of four stunning times.
"I was deep protection on the punts," Brittain said, laughing, "and we punted a lot. I just remember 'Big Hands' running past our center, right behind the snap as it was coming back. He would come in low, about one foot off the ground. All I could do is dive at his shoelaces. He would just shove me to the ground and trample right over me."
Grambling returned to the field after halftime with a new quarterback, and Shreveport sophomore Terry Brown reeled off a dramatic 82-yard pass to White.
"They were blitzing us a lot, so we had a one-on-one match up," said White, now an assistant coach at Grambling. "Terry threw a nice long ball on that one."
Zeno's kick gave the Tigers their final margin of victory, 14-13.
But not before a memorable NSU field goal attempt, blocked by Hunter, as time expired.
Hunter's playmaking through that junior season had already drawn raves from Robinson, who called the Texan "Mr. Clutch." A canny pass defender and zippy returner, Hunter was "generally spoken of with a reverence reserved exclusively for legendary Saturday heroes," the late Nicholson once said.
That legend was built on plays like the final one against Northwestern State.
NSU got the ball back after an interception by linebacker Dan Boddie, who dashed back to the Grambling 34 with 4:03 left in the game. Ballard then drove down to the GSU 3 as time grew short, setting up a 20-yard attempt by Foret. Demons coach George Doherty, in a gutsy move, had ordered the try on third down with just 39 seconds remaining.
Hunter got a finger on it, as perhaps did Johnson, and the attempt missed.
'WAY BEYOND FOOTBALL'
Cage, who went down to injury during that final push, rushed for 97 yards — though much of that was given back in the final team stats because of lost yardage by other players.
Ballard finished the day 11-of-16 for just 88 yards and a score for NSU. Comeaux and Brown, meanwhile, combined for a 7-of-21 performance — a lack of efficiency under center that eventually led to the now-famous insertion of a redshirt freshman named Doug Williams three games later against Prairie View A&M.
"We had our opportunities," Williams said. "We scored 14 points, but we were still largely ineffective. It wasn't one of those good old Grambling offensive days. You could give some of that to Northwestern, too. They had a good team."
Doherty, entering his last season in Natchitoches after winning the Gulf South in 1972, had brought A.L. Williams in as offensive coordinator — and installed his new assistant's more pass-oriented offense in anticipation of handing over the reigns.
NSU, which had already dropped its second straight game in 1974, was in the midst of consecutive 1-10 campaigns. Williams would coach at Northwestern for eight seasons, boasting ranked teams in 1980 and '82 when his teams finished 8-3 and 7-4 respectively.
Williams went on to pass for 1,150 yards (nearly 400 more yards than Comeaux and Brown combined) over the remainder of the 1974 season. Grambling finished 11-1, claiming the ninth of 17 total Southwestern Athletic Conference championships under Robinson. (Williams later returned to coach at his alma mater, and played host to the first Southland foe ever at Grambling's Robinson Stadium — McNeese State in 2003.)
Grambling's lone '74 stumble was a 19-14 loss to Alcorn, and they shared the SWAC crown. Robinson would finish the season at 236 career wins on the way to 408 total, a still-standing Division I record.
The Northwestern victory, thrilling in its playing and encouraging in its social significance, holds a special place among them.
"The perspective of this game is way beyond the football field," Brittain said. "In our lives, both at Grambling and at Northwestern, it had a big effect. What a great time to try something like that, to break through some of those unknowns."
Monday, July 21, 2008
Grambling greats: College Hall of Famer Doug Porter
College Hall of Fame beckons Grambling resident Douglas Porter
May 7, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Grambling resident Douglas Porter, who had a five-decade long career in coaching and athletic administration, will be inducted into the College Hall of Fame.
The National Football Foundation is expected to announce the 2008 class today. Porter appeared on the lower-classification ballot.
A former assistant at Grambling State under Eddie Robinson, Porter was a head coach at former Division I-AA programs Mississippi Valley (from 1961-65) and Howard University (from 1974-78) and finally at Division II Fort Valley State (from 1979-94). He was a longtime administrator at Fort Valley, as well.
Porter’s helped establish a Valley program that had not had a winning season in five years before his first in 1963, and has only matched his three in a row (through 1965) two other times — once in the 1950s, and another under Archie Cooley beginning in 1983. His .550 winning percentage has only been bested once among MVSU coaches who stayed five or more years.
He then coached for nine seasons under Robinson, running an offense that featured future Pro Football Hall of Famer Charlie Joiner and quarterbacks James “Shack” Harris and Doug Williams, later a Super Bowl MVP.
Every Grambling senior was drafted by the NFL in 1969. In 1971, 43 GSU players were in pro football camps.
“Even when I got to Fort Valley, the lead story was always that I was formerly an assistant under Coach Eddie Robinson,” Porter said recently. “That’s what they would start with. That gave you credibility, the fact that you had worked with Coach Rob.”
Porter, who won 61 percent of the games he coached, was 30-21-2 in five seasons at Howard — part of a career record of 166 victories.
At Fort Valley, a Division II program in Georgia, Porter won six conference championships and made two NCAA playoff appearances on his way to seven league coach of the year honors.
Porter retired back to Grambling in 1997, where he became a trusted advisor to both former GSU coaches Doug Williams and Melvin Spears and current coach Rod Broadway. He has also been a steady presence in the efforts to establish a museum in Robinson’s honor.
Porter has already been inducted into the Mississippi Valley State Hall of Fame.
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OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Legendary Grambling assistant built Hall of Fame resume as a head coach too
May 12, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Until this week, Douglas Porter was most often referred to as a former assistant under Grambling State’s mythical Eddie Robinson.
Porter stood, without complaint, inside the dark outline of that coaching legend’s shadow — despite having assembled a terrific, if seldom decorated, career of his own.
“That couldn’t have been easy with a person of his skill,” said James “Shack” Harris, Porter’s first quarterbacking protégé at GSU. “He was able to do it without ego, and to do it well.”
Porter, in fact, had been a part of a larger storyline in shaping successful programs, even in the most trying of situations. He had won nearly 170 games during a trio of head coaching stints at Mississippi Valley State, Howard and Fort Valley State — a resume built far from the red clay hills of Grambling.
Recognition for those efforts came on Wednesday when Porter was announced as part of the College Hall of Fame’s 2008 divisional class for lower-classification coaches and players.
“He has never been in the limelight,” said Doug Williams, who later received mentoring from Porter at Grambling as a redshirt freshman passer. “This is one time when he gets his 15 minutes. He deserves it.”
Nothing could stop Porter’s Hall of Fame journey: Not the crushing disparities found at rural black schools like Mississippi Valley State and Grambling, the benign neglect rampant even at metropolitan institutions like Howard, the forgotten backwaters of Division II ball at Fort Valley, or even a shocking moment when his body betrayed him.
BUILDING A FOUNDATION
Porter, so happy to be taking over a program, didn’t ask too many questions upon assuming his first head coaching job at Valley.
Once he got to Itta Bena, though, the gravity of the situation became apparent.
“Hadn’t beaten Jackson, hadn’t beaten Alcorn — in ages,” Porter said, sizing up Mississippi Valley State’s performance against key league foes. “Two years before, Grambling had beaten us 93 to nothing.”
He set about building a foundation of pride. That would require more than scoring 94 points on a Saturday afternoon.
“It took us a couple of years,” Porter said. “We played a lot of freshmen, played a lot of young people. But then, it began to pay off for us.”
Though Valley had not had a winning season in five years before Porter’s first in 1963, he reeled off three in a row through 1965 — something that has only been matched in Itta Bena on two other occasions.
Grambling, it’s no surprise, was a measuring stick. That time when Robinson’s squad had nearly hung a Benjamin on the Delta Devils stuck with Porter.
He finally began to gain on Valley’s cross-conference rivals and, in the process, to earn Eddie Robinson’s respect.
Porter had gotten blown out by Grambling during their first trio of meetings — and by a combined score of 149-12. But Porter was gaining, losing by an average of about two touchdowns over the last three games
“We came down in 1965, we played in Grambling —- and we led at halftime,” Porter said. “We lost 34-20, but we had been ahead 14-7. That was a measure of where we had come. We had gotten to the point where we could play anybody on our schedule. That was what I had hoped to do when I came there.”
A year later, he was running Robinson’s offense.
Porter said the chance to work alongside an American legend at Grambling — and to mentor future Louisiana Sports Hall of Famers like Harris and Frank Lewis — made what amounted to a demotion to offensive coordinator an attractive offer.
“He was very effective in a variety of situations,” Harris said. “He was someone who really knew the game. Coach Porter was a leader in his own right. You respected him.”
Grambling won six SWAC titles in the eight years Porter served under Robinson — three of them with Harris, who compiled a 31-9-1 record at Grambling.
That period of profound success, however, was leavened by the emerging reality that Robinson was becoming professionally and personally entwined in Grambling.
This relationship, already nearly 35 seasons old, was set for life.
Porter would have to move on in order to get an opportunity to run a program. After considering an offer from Florida A&M, he left in 1974 for the Washington, D.C.-based historically black college program Howard.
“I wanted to be a head coach,” he said. “I saw that, after a few years here, there was not going to be a chance for that.
“Change,” Porter added, laughing now, “wasn’t coming.”
Porter and Robinson, in fact, both would work for another 24 seasons, but while Porter moved from Howard to Fort Valley in coaching and administrative positions, his old boss never left the helm at GSU.
UPS AND DOWNS
Porter said he soon learned that the administration at Howard didn’t have the same commitment to athletics that he had become used to at Grambling under Robinson and then-president R.W.E. Jones.
Porter would finish with a winning record, but he’s always been left with the sense that he could have done better than his 30-21-2 mark over five seasons in D.C.
“I thought at that time that the best move for me and my future in football was Howard,” Porter said. “It didn’t turn out to be that way.”
Just over the horizon, however, was Fort Valley, where Porter would coach — save for one year — from 1979-97, and serve as athletics director from 1981-97.
“In all things that I have been involved with — people might think this is a little sanctimonious — I felt that the Lord has a way of directing you to go certain places and do certain things,” Porter said. “I was glad to get out of that situation.”
The then-current athletics director at Fort Valley was one of Porter’s college coaches. The school president had a child who attended Grambling during Porter’s tenure there.
And middle Georgia residents, like those in rural north Louisiana, boast a deep-seated love affair with football.
“There weren’t the same resources they had at Grambling, but the commitment to support the program was just as great,” Porter said.
He’d capture seven Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships between 1980-92, including four in a row from 1982-85.
“It definitely didn’t surprise me that he was able to leave and do well,” said Harris, now a top front-office executive in the NFL. “Some people are destined for success; he was one of those kinds of people.”
Five years after taking over, Fort Valley was winning its league title with both the offensive and defensive players of the year.
But Porter, after so long on the sidelines, was beginning to fray. An in-season heart attack during his seventh campaign at Fort Valley sent him into spiraling introspection.
'A GREAT FOOTBALL MIND'
Fort Valley has begun that impressive string of championships in the 1980s running an offense that bore little resemblance to the attack associated with Robinson’s Grambling teams.
Recruiting into a Division II program had something to do with it.
“I didn’t have the offensive linemen that it would take to run the Wing T,” Porter said. “You need guys who have a lot of athletic ability to be successful. It was easier for us to find kids we could teach to pass block and drive block.”
By ‘85, Fort Valley had developed a powerful defense to match that offensive power, too, leading the lower classification in several categories. Opponents were often held under a touchdown, and to minus-yards rushing.
But these low-scoring matches — coupled with newly founded, Grambling-like expectations of winning — took their toll, creating a pressure-cooker environment.
Fort Valley, ranked No. 2, came into a game against No. 1 Central State and fell 14-7.
A coach known for his easy-going nature — in fact, some at Fort Valley had once criticized him for not being emotional enough — was taking all of this personally.
Too personally.
“It was a hard, hard loss,” Porter said. “We were going into our last two games with just one loss. To maintain that puts you under a tremendous amount of pressure that you don’t really realize.”
He ended up flat on his back in a hospital room, with doctors trying to get his heart fixed.
Porter kept asking about the scores, tried to keep his head in the game.
But the doctors recommended a year off.
The time away refocused Porter on what was important. He still loved football, but in a different way. He learned to let things go.
“At the end of that, I was in the best shape I have been in, other than when I was in the Army,” Porter said. “But I wanted to coach. Coaching is all I have ever really wanted to do.”
He would win more titles at Fort Valley, would serve as chairman of the Division II Football Committee and as president of the National Athletic Steering Committee and, after retiring, would play a key advisory role in smoothing the transition for Robinson successor Doug Williams at Grambling.
“Fort Valley was a good fit for me,” Porter said. “We found that they had a strong group of followers, and they had established a good winning tradition. As with Grambling, I was happy to be a part of that.”
Even if it always seemed to come second on his resume. Until Wednesday, when the College Hall of Fame called.
“It’s one of the greatest honors that can be bestowed,” said Williams, himself a 2001 inductee. “Nobody deserves to be rewarded more than Coach Porter.”
Porter attended the Hall of Fame ceremonies honoring Williams seven years ago, and Williams will join a burgeoning list of former students who will return the favor this summer. Porter said several Fort Valley players are organizing a group trip to South Bend, as well.
“Most people don’t know how special a coach he is,” said Harris, a Monroe native. “He coached at small schools, and that sometime means you get overlooked, but he did an outstanding job with those programs. He’s well deserving. What a great football mind.”
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For Grambling’s Porter, Hall of Fame career was about the kids
July 19, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
For Doug Porter, today will be the capstone on a career spent working with young people.
Of course, the new College Football Hall of Famer won some games along the way, too.
But that was never the point for Porter, a Grambling resident.
"To be able to touch young people," Porter said, "to get them to believe in something, that always meant so much."
The 79-year old earned membership in the College Hall’s 2008 divisional class after a 42-year career, which included 26 seasons as head coach at three small colleges. Porter also served eight seasons as an offensive coach during the legendary tenure of Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, and was athletics director at Fort Valley from 1981-97.
"He was a top football mind, someone who really knew the game," said one of Grambling’s passers at the time, James "Shack" Harris —- now a general manager with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars. "Coach Porter is a leader in his right."
The National Football Foundation considers players and coaches from the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA), Divisions II, III, and the NAIA National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for induction in the College Hall of Fame’s divisional classes.
Porter is joined in 2008 by W.C. Gorden, who coached at Grambling’s conference foe Jackson State from 1976-91.
Four players are also to be inducted in ceremonies held today at South Bend, Ill.: Quarterback Jim Ballard (Mount Union, 1991-93); linebacker Ronald McKinnon (North Alabama, 1992-95), defensive end John Randle (Texas A&M-Kingsville, 1988-89) and halfback Brad Rowland (McMurry College, 1947-50).
Porter, who won 61 percent of the games he coached, recorded 166 career victories —- the bulk of them at Fort Valley.
There, Porter earned seven Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships between 1980-92, including four consecutive crowns from 1982-85. He advanced to the NCAA Division II semifinals in 1983 — when his team boasted the league’s offensive and defensive players of the year in Kelvin Parker and Taqwan Taylor, respectively — and to the quarterfinals in ‘85.
"I have as much respect for Coach Porter as any one I have been around," said Harris, a Monroe native who later played for the NFL’s Bills, Rams and Chargers. "As good a coach as he was, he always played his role in shadows. That couldn’t have been easy for a person of his skill."
Even working at that tiny Georgia Division II program, Porter coached three future NFL Draft picks, including first-rounder Tyrone Poole and Pro Bowl linebacker Greg Lloyd. (He also mentored some Grambling’s top quarterbacks in Harris, Matthew Reed and then Doug Williams, the future Super Bowl MVP.)
"Coach Porter is a special coach in that he would always tell you the honest truth, about football and about life," Harris said. "It sounds simple, but it’s rare. So often a coach will tell you what you want to hear. When you get a chance to work with people like Coach Porter, you become a better person yourself."
Named SIAC coach of the year seven times, Porter earned a lifetime achievement award from the All-American Football Foundation in 1998 and induction in the Mississippi Valley State Hall of Fame in 2006.
"The recognition is overwhelming," Porter said. "But the most important thing to me was to affect the lives of young people. That was satisfying."
COACH DOUG PORTER
Born: Aug. 15, 1929 in Memphis
Personal: Lives in Grambling, with wife Jean
Head coaching career: Mississippi Valley State (1961-65), Howard (1974-78), Fort Valley State (1979-85, 1987-96); also served as an offensive assistant at Grambling (1966-73) under Eddie Robinson, and has been a key advisor to each of his successors.
Career record: 166-107-5, only five losing seasons out of 26
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A SHARED EXPERIENCE: Grambling's duo of Dougs — Porter and Williams — boasts Hall of Fame friendship
July 20, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
A familiar face could be found among the crowd.
Doug Porter was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, with former player and protégé Doug Williams in attendance.
The roles had been reversed in 2001, when Williams was named to the hall's divisional class as a player. Seven years later, Porter was recognized in South Bend, Ill., for head coaching work at a trio of lower classification programs.
Porter also served from 1966-73 as an offensive assistant during the career of Grambling State's Eddie Robinson.
There, he met Doug Williams, then a young quarterback. Later, after retirement, Porter returned to become a key mentor when Williams succeeded Robinson as head coach at Grambling.
"It was big for me when Coach Porter showed up for my induction," Williams said. "When I found out that he was going in, I thought that was one of the greatest things. I got a chance to repay Coach by being there for him."
Porter won 61 percent of the games he coached, recording 166 career victories at former Division I-AA programs Mississippi Valley State (1961-65) and Howard (1974-78), then at Division II Fort Valley State (1979-97). He also served as athletics director at Fort Valley from 1981-97.
He might have won more still, had Williams followed Porter to Howard.
Williams certainly wanted to, back then.
"He was frustrated as a red shirt," Porter said. "He was running the scout team, but he felt he was better. He wasn't playing."
Porter, then as now a wise and fair man, knew the steep coaching climb ahead at Howard. But he wasn't willing to pluck Williams out of a more favorable situation.
"It wasn't in Doug's best interest to come," Porter said. "He wouldn't have been surrounded with the kind of people he had with Eddie: He wouldn't have had Dwight Scales; he wouldn't have had Sammy White — and those people were big contributors to his success. Had Williams come to us, he would have been a great quarterback, but throwing it to a group of receivers who made a lot of drops. That wouldn't have helped him."
Williams would win a pair of league championships under Robinson, success that launched him into the race for the Heisman Trophy. Williams then became a first-round NFL draft pick, and eventually earned Super Bowl MVP honors in 1988.
A lasting relationship, built as much on trust as on gridiron concepts, was forged.
Fate brought them back together in 1997, when Porter returned to Grambling upon retirement. Williams was in the midst of launching the difficult post-Robinson era — something nearly unthinkable after his stirring 57-season tenure — and Porter's guiding hand again played a key role Williams' success.
"It was Doug Porter who helped me though the whole transition," Williams said. "He wasn't looking for publicity for what he did. It wasn't hard for me to see that I needed Doug Porter close by me."
Long after retirement, Porter — the son of a coach, Memphis prep legend W.P. Porter — still possessed a keen passion for football.
"We'd sit down every day after practice and I would tell him what I felt," Porter said. "He was very amenable, though sometimes we would disagree. I could accept that, because it was his football team. The only thing I wanted to do was help him be successful."
He was: Williams, with Porter on the sidelines in an advisory role, would win a trio of Southwestern Athletic Conference titles in 2000-02, and was one game away from the championship match in both 1999 and 2003.
They now boast another bond, another shared memory in a lifetime filled with them.
"He had such an impact on my life," Williams said. "He had a lot to do with the success that I had. In my life, Coach Porter has been a Hall of Famer for a long time."
May 7, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Grambling resident Douglas Porter, who had a five-decade long career in coaching and athletic administration, will be inducted into the College Hall of Fame.
The National Football Foundation is expected to announce the 2008 class today. Porter appeared on the lower-classification ballot.
A former assistant at Grambling State under Eddie Robinson, Porter was a head coach at former Division I-AA programs Mississippi Valley (from 1961-65) and Howard University (from 1974-78) and finally at Division II Fort Valley State (from 1979-94). He was a longtime administrator at Fort Valley, as well.
Porter’s helped establish a Valley program that had not had a winning season in five years before his first in 1963, and has only matched his three in a row (through 1965) two other times — once in the 1950s, and another under Archie Cooley beginning in 1983. His .550 winning percentage has only been bested once among MVSU coaches who stayed five or more years.
He then coached for nine seasons under Robinson, running an offense that featured future Pro Football Hall of Famer Charlie Joiner and quarterbacks James “Shack” Harris and Doug Williams, later a Super Bowl MVP.
Every Grambling senior was drafted by the NFL in 1969. In 1971, 43 GSU players were in pro football camps.
“Even when I got to Fort Valley, the lead story was always that I was formerly an assistant under Coach Eddie Robinson,” Porter said recently. “That’s what they would start with. That gave you credibility, the fact that you had worked with Coach Rob.”
Porter, who won 61 percent of the games he coached, was 30-21-2 in five seasons at Howard — part of a career record of 166 victories.
At Fort Valley, a Division II program in Georgia, Porter won six conference championships and made two NCAA playoff appearances on his way to seven league coach of the year honors.
Porter retired back to Grambling in 1997, where he became a trusted advisor to both former GSU coaches Doug Williams and Melvin Spears and current coach Rod Broadway. He has also been a steady presence in the efforts to establish a museum in Robinson’s honor.
Porter has already been inducted into the Mississippi Valley State Hall of Fame.
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OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Legendary Grambling assistant built Hall of Fame resume as a head coach too
May 12, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Until this week, Douglas Porter was most often referred to as a former assistant under Grambling State’s mythical Eddie Robinson.
Porter stood, without complaint, inside the dark outline of that coaching legend’s shadow — despite having assembled a terrific, if seldom decorated, career of his own.
“That couldn’t have been easy with a person of his skill,” said James “Shack” Harris, Porter’s first quarterbacking protégé at GSU. “He was able to do it without ego, and to do it well.”
Porter, in fact, had been a part of a larger storyline in shaping successful programs, even in the most trying of situations. He had won nearly 170 games during a trio of head coaching stints at Mississippi Valley State, Howard and Fort Valley State — a resume built far from the red clay hills of Grambling.
Recognition for those efforts came on Wednesday when Porter was announced as part of the College Hall of Fame’s 2008 divisional class for lower-classification coaches and players.
“He has never been in the limelight,” said Doug Williams, who later received mentoring from Porter at Grambling as a redshirt freshman passer. “This is one time when he gets his 15 minutes. He deserves it.”
Nothing could stop Porter’s Hall of Fame journey: Not the crushing disparities found at rural black schools like Mississippi Valley State and Grambling, the benign neglect rampant even at metropolitan institutions like Howard, the forgotten backwaters of Division II ball at Fort Valley, or even a shocking moment when his body betrayed him.
BUILDING A FOUNDATION
Porter, so happy to be taking over a program, didn’t ask too many questions upon assuming his first head coaching job at Valley.
Once he got to Itta Bena, though, the gravity of the situation became apparent.
“Hadn’t beaten Jackson, hadn’t beaten Alcorn — in ages,” Porter said, sizing up Mississippi Valley State’s performance against key league foes. “Two years before, Grambling had beaten us 93 to nothing.”
He set about building a foundation of pride. That would require more than scoring 94 points on a Saturday afternoon.
“It took us a couple of years,” Porter said. “We played a lot of freshmen, played a lot of young people. But then, it began to pay off for us.”
Though Valley had not had a winning season in five years before Porter’s first in 1963, he reeled off three in a row through 1965 — something that has only been matched in Itta Bena on two other occasions.
Grambling, it’s no surprise, was a measuring stick. That time when Robinson’s squad had nearly hung a Benjamin on the Delta Devils stuck with Porter.
He finally began to gain on Valley’s cross-conference rivals and, in the process, to earn Eddie Robinson’s respect.
Porter had gotten blown out by Grambling during their first trio of meetings — and by a combined score of 149-12. But Porter was gaining, losing by an average of about two touchdowns over the last three games
“We came down in 1965, we played in Grambling —- and we led at halftime,” Porter said. “We lost 34-20, but we had been ahead 14-7. That was a measure of where we had come. We had gotten to the point where we could play anybody on our schedule. That was what I had hoped to do when I came there.”
A year later, he was running Robinson’s offense.
Porter said the chance to work alongside an American legend at Grambling — and to mentor future Louisiana Sports Hall of Famers like Harris and Frank Lewis — made what amounted to a demotion to offensive coordinator an attractive offer.
“He was very effective in a variety of situations,” Harris said. “He was someone who really knew the game. Coach Porter was a leader in his own right. You respected him.”
Grambling won six SWAC titles in the eight years Porter served under Robinson — three of them with Harris, who compiled a 31-9-1 record at Grambling.
That period of profound success, however, was leavened by the emerging reality that Robinson was becoming professionally and personally entwined in Grambling.
This relationship, already nearly 35 seasons old, was set for life.
Porter would have to move on in order to get an opportunity to run a program. After considering an offer from Florida A&M, he left in 1974 for the Washington, D.C.-based historically black college program Howard.
“I wanted to be a head coach,” he said. “I saw that, after a few years here, there was not going to be a chance for that.
“Change,” Porter added, laughing now, “wasn’t coming.”
Porter and Robinson, in fact, both would work for another 24 seasons, but while Porter moved from Howard to Fort Valley in coaching and administrative positions, his old boss never left the helm at GSU.
UPS AND DOWNS
Porter said he soon learned that the administration at Howard didn’t have the same commitment to athletics that he had become used to at Grambling under Robinson and then-president R.W.E. Jones.
Porter would finish with a winning record, but he’s always been left with the sense that he could have done better than his 30-21-2 mark over five seasons in D.C.
“I thought at that time that the best move for me and my future in football was Howard,” Porter said. “It didn’t turn out to be that way.”
Just over the horizon, however, was Fort Valley, where Porter would coach — save for one year — from 1979-97, and serve as athletics director from 1981-97.
“In all things that I have been involved with — people might think this is a little sanctimonious — I felt that the Lord has a way of directing you to go certain places and do certain things,” Porter said. “I was glad to get out of that situation.”
The then-current athletics director at Fort Valley was one of Porter’s college coaches. The school president had a child who attended Grambling during Porter’s tenure there.
And middle Georgia residents, like those in rural north Louisiana, boast a deep-seated love affair with football.
“There weren’t the same resources they had at Grambling, but the commitment to support the program was just as great,” Porter said.
He’d capture seven Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships between 1980-92, including four in a row from 1982-85.
“It definitely didn’t surprise me that he was able to leave and do well,” said Harris, now a top front-office executive in the NFL. “Some people are destined for success; he was one of those kinds of people.”
Five years after taking over, Fort Valley was winning its league title with both the offensive and defensive players of the year.
But Porter, after so long on the sidelines, was beginning to fray. An in-season heart attack during his seventh campaign at Fort Valley sent him into spiraling introspection.
'A GREAT FOOTBALL MIND'
Fort Valley has begun that impressive string of championships in the 1980s running an offense that bore little resemblance to the attack associated with Robinson’s Grambling teams.
Recruiting into a Division II program had something to do with it.
“I didn’t have the offensive linemen that it would take to run the Wing T,” Porter said. “You need guys who have a lot of athletic ability to be successful. It was easier for us to find kids we could teach to pass block and drive block.”
By ‘85, Fort Valley had developed a powerful defense to match that offensive power, too, leading the lower classification in several categories. Opponents were often held under a touchdown, and to minus-yards rushing.
But these low-scoring matches — coupled with newly founded, Grambling-like expectations of winning — took their toll, creating a pressure-cooker environment.
Fort Valley, ranked No. 2, came into a game against No. 1 Central State and fell 14-7.
A coach known for his easy-going nature — in fact, some at Fort Valley had once criticized him for not being emotional enough — was taking all of this personally.
Too personally.
“It was a hard, hard loss,” Porter said. “We were going into our last two games with just one loss. To maintain that puts you under a tremendous amount of pressure that you don’t really realize.”
He ended up flat on his back in a hospital room, with doctors trying to get his heart fixed.
Porter kept asking about the scores, tried to keep his head in the game.
But the doctors recommended a year off.
The time away refocused Porter on what was important. He still loved football, but in a different way. He learned to let things go.
“At the end of that, I was in the best shape I have been in, other than when I was in the Army,” Porter said. “But I wanted to coach. Coaching is all I have ever really wanted to do.”
He would win more titles at Fort Valley, would serve as chairman of the Division II Football Committee and as president of the National Athletic Steering Committee and, after retiring, would play a key advisory role in smoothing the transition for Robinson successor Doug Williams at Grambling.
“Fort Valley was a good fit for me,” Porter said. “We found that they had a strong group of followers, and they had established a good winning tradition. As with Grambling, I was happy to be a part of that.”
Even if it always seemed to come second on his resume. Until Wednesday, when the College Hall of Fame called.
“It’s one of the greatest honors that can be bestowed,” said Williams, himself a 2001 inductee. “Nobody deserves to be rewarded more than Coach Porter.”
Porter attended the Hall of Fame ceremonies honoring Williams seven years ago, and Williams will join a burgeoning list of former students who will return the favor this summer. Porter said several Fort Valley players are organizing a group trip to South Bend, as well.
“Most people don’t know how special a coach he is,” said Harris, a Monroe native. “He coached at small schools, and that sometime means you get overlooked, but he did an outstanding job with those programs. He’s well deserving. What a great football mind.”
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For Grambling’s Porter, Hall of Fame career was about the kids
July 19, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
For Doug Porter, today will be the capstone on a career spent working with young people.
Of course, the new College Football Hall of Famer won some games along the way, too.
But that was never the point for Porter, a Grambling resident.
"To be able to touch young people," Porter said, "to get them to believe in something, that always meant so much."
The 79-year old earned membership in the College Hall’s 2008 divisional class after a 42-year career, which included 26 seasons as head coach at three small colleges. Porter also served eight seasons as an offensive coach during the legendary tenure of Grambling’s Eddie Robinson, and was athletics director at Fort Valley from 1981-97.
"He was a top football mind, someone who really knew the game," said one of Grambling’s passers at the time, James "Shack" Harris —- now a general manager with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars. "Coach Porter is a leader in his right."
The National Football Foundation considers players and coaches from the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA), Divisions II, III, and the NAIA National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for induction in the College Hall of Fame’s divisional classes.
Porter is joined in 2008 by W.C. Gorden, who coached at Grambling’s conference foe Jackson State from 1976-91.
Four players are also to be inducted in ceremonies held today at South Bend, Ill.: Quarterback Jim Ballard (Mount Union, 1991-93); linebacker Ronald McKinnon (North Alabama, 1992-95), defensive end John Randle (Texas A&M-Kingsville, 1988-89) and halfback Brad Rowland (McMurry College, 1947-50).
Porter, who won 61 percent of the games he coached, recorded 166 career victories —- the bulk of them at Fort Valley.
There, Porter earned seven Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships between 1980-92, including four consecutive crowns from 1982-85. He advanced to the NCAA Division II semifinals in 1983 — when his team boasted the league’s offensive and defensive players of the year in Kelvin Parker and Taqwan Taylor, respectively — and to the quarterfinals in ‘85.
"I have as much respect for Coach Porter as any one I have been around," said Harris, a Monroe native who later played for the NFL’s Bills, Rams and Chargers. "As good a coach as he was, he always played his role in shadows. That couldn’t have been easy for a person of his skill."
Even working at that tiny Georgia Division II program, Porter coached three future NFL Draft picks, including first-rounder Tyrone Poole and Pro Bowl linebacker Greg Lloyd. (He also mentored some Grambling’s top quarterbacks in Harris, Matthew Reed and then Doug Williams, the future Super Bowl MVP.)
"Coach Porter is a special coach in that he would always tell you the honest truth, about football and about life," Harris said. "It sounds simple, but it’s rare. So often a coach will tell you what you want to hear. When you get a chance to work with people like Coach Porter, you become a better person yourself."
Named SIAC coach of the year seven times, Porter earned a lifetime achievement award from the All-American Football Foundation in 1998 and induction in the Mississippi Valley State Hall of Fame in 2006.
"The recognition is overwhelming," Porter said. "But the most important thing to me was to affect the lives of young people. That was satisfying."
COACH DOUG PORTER
Born: Aug. 15, 1929 in Memphis
Personal: Lives in Grambling, with wife Jean
Head coaching career: Mississippi Valley State (1961-65), Howard (1974-78), Fort Valley State (1979-85, 1987-96); also served as an offensive assistant at Grambling (1966-73) under Eddie Robinson, and has been a key advisor to each of his successors.
Career record: 166-107-5, only five losing seasons out of 26
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A SHARED EXPERIENCE: Grambling's duo of Dougs — Porter and Williams — boasts Hall of Fame friendship
July 20, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
A familiar face could be found among the crowd.
Doug Porter was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on Saturday, with former player and protégé Doug Williams in attendance.
The roles had been reversed in 2001, when Williams was named to the hall's divisional class as a player. Seven years later, Porter was recognized in South Bend, Ill., for head coaching work at a trio of lower classification programs.
Porter also served from 1966-73 as an offensive assistant during the career of Grambling State's Eddie Robinson.
There, he met Doug Williams, then a young quarterback. Later, after retirement, Porter returned to become a key mentor when Williams succeeded Robinson as head coach at Grambling.
"It was big for me when Coach Porter showed up for my induction," Williams said. "When I found out that he was going in, I thought that was one of the greatest things. I got a chance to repay Coach by being there for him."
Porter won 61 percent of the games he coached, recording 166 career victories at former Division I-AA programs Mississippi Valley State (1961-65) and Howard (1974-78), then at Division II Fort Valley State (1979-97). He also served as athletics director at Fort Valley from 1981-97.
He might have won more still, had Williams followed Porter to Howard.
Williams certainly wanted to, back then.
"He was frustrated as a red shirt," Porter said. "He was running the scout team, but he felt he was better. He wasn't playing."
Porter, then as now a wise and fair man, knew the steep coaching climb ahead at Howard. But he wasn't willing to pluck Williams out of a more favorable situation.
"It wasn't in Doug's best interest to come," Porter said. "He wouldn't have been surrounded with the kind of people he had with Eddie: He wouldn't have had Dwight Scales; he wouldn't have had Sammy White — and those people were big contributors to his success. Had Williams come to us, he would have been a great quarterback, but throwing it to a group of receivers who made a lot of drops. That wouldn't have helped him."
Williams would win a pair of league championships under Robinson, success that launched him into the race for the Heisman Trophy. Williams then became a first-round NFL draft pick, and eventually earned Super Bowl MVP honors in 1988.
A lasting relationship, built as much on trust as on gridiron concepts, was forged.
Fate brought them back together in 1997, when Porter returned to Grambling upon retirement. Williams was in the midst of launching the difficult post-Robinson era — something nearly unthinkable after his stirring 57-season tenure — and Porter's guiding hand again played a key role Williams' success.
"It was Doug Porter who helped me though the whole transition," Williams said. "He wasn't looking for publicity for what he did. It wasn't hard for me to see that I needed Doug Porter close by me."
Long after retirement, Porter — the son of a coach, Memphis prep legend W.P. Porter — still possessed a keen passion for football.
"We'd sit down every day after practice and I would tell him what I felt," Porter said. "He was very amenable, though sometimes we would disagree. I could accept that, because it was his football team. The only thing I wanted to do was help him be successful."
He was: Williams, with Porter on the sidelines in an advisory role, would win a trio of Southwestern Athletic Conference titles in 2000-02, and was one game away from the championship match in both 1999 and 2003.
They now boast another bond, another shared memory in a lifetime filled with them.
"He had such an impact on my life," Williams said. "He had a lot to do with the success that I had. In my life, Coach Porter has been a Hall of Famer for a long time."
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The time that Gruden came to Grambling
Gruden in Grambling: Super Bowl-winning Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach tours GSU campus
June 2, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — It gave Jon Gruden pause.
The Super Bowl-winning coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers stood for a long moment, looking around the practice fields adjacent to Robinson Stadium, taking it all in.
"Did (the late GSU) Coach (Eddie) Robinson coach right here?" Gruden said, quietly. "This is sacred ground."
In northern Louisiana for today's third annual Doug Williams-Shack Harris benefit celebrity golf tournament, Gruden had asked the former Grambling State quarterbacking greats to give him a tour of their former school.
That included a raucous trip to the campus bookstore — where, once word of his visit began to spread by cellular phone and text messaging, Gruden quickly attracted dozens of picture-and autograph-seeking locals.
He even removed one of his now-familiar visors, and replaced it with a new Grambling hat — which Gruden wore during the rest of the visit.
"Unbelievable players, unbelievable tradition," Gruden said. "I've been wanting to come here my whole life, really."
Williams, who, along with Harris, represents an important cornerstone in that legacy, works with Gruden as an executive in charge of personnel for the Buccaneers — the NFL franchise that selected him as a first-rounder out of Grambling in 1978.
Gruden was a ballboy for the club back then.
"For me, it's almost unexplainable," a beaming Williams said. "This is something Gruden really wanted to do. It says a lot that he would take time out. He could have come in and just played in the golf tournament, but he wanted to make sure he got a chance to come to Grambling. He thinks that much of this place."
Gruden looked every bit the GSU fan after filling a bag full of Grambling-themed items at the bookstore, quickly totaling more than $150 in sales. He bought a T-shirt with Robinson's likeness, a golf shirt with the Grambling logo, and several hats — which he then had signed by Eddie Robinson Jr., son of the late coaching legend.
"The number of Hall of Famers who came out of here," Gruden said to Robinson Jr. "I admired your dad so much. I've got so much respect for everything that happened here."
Gruden also asked about the planned museum in Robinson's honor, which will be housed in the former women's gymnasium on the Grambling campus.
"It's a milestone," Robinson Jr. said, moments before the assembled group began snapping pictures of him with Gruden. "Imagine that: He's on Grambling soil. What a great thing."
Gruden, personable and gracious throughout the nearly hour-long visit, would eventually take scores of photographs with the growing crowd.
GSU students Chea Hudgins and Kara Burke took one set of shots, found that some didn't come out just right, then returned for another round of photos. Gruden happily obliged, then signed several autographs, as well.
Later, a tour through the campus included stops at Robinson Stadium and the former site of Memorial Stadium — where Williams and Harris, a Monroe native, starred as quarterbacks for Robinson in 1960s and '70s.
"It's exciting," Gruden said. "You're looking at the stadium where all the magic happened."
They also paused for a moment Robinson's modest brick home on Adams Street in Grambling.
Gruden said he wanted to make this pilgrimage last year, when he served as de facto emcee during the Shreveport-based golf tournament reception, but couldn't fit the trip into his schedule.
He came a day early this time, piling into a van with Harris, Williams and several others — including former Tampa Bay tight end Jimmy Giles — and traveling to Lincoln Parish from Shreveport on Sunday afternoon. They played a round of golf at nearby Squire Creek before heading to Grambling.
"He made sure he had a chance to do it this year," Williams said. "I think that speaks volumes about the kind of guy he is — and the respect that he has for Grambling and its players. He absolutely loves all of this."
June 2, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — It gave Jon Gruden pause.
The Super Bowl-winning coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers stood for a long moment, looking around the practice fields adjacent to Robinson Stadium, taking it all in.
"Did (the late GSU) Coach (Eddie) Robinson coach right here?" Gruden said, quietly. "This is sacred ground."
In northern Louisiana for today's third annual Doug Williams-Shack Harris benefit celebrity golf tournament, Gruden had asked the former Grambling State quarterbacking greats to give him a tour of their former school.
That included a raucous trip to the campus bookstore — where, once word of his visit began to spread by cellular phone and text messaging, Gruden quickly attracted dozens of picture-and autograph-seeking locals.
He even removed one of his now-familiar visors, and replaced it with a new Grambling hat — which Gruden wore during the rest of the visit.
"Unbelievable players, unbelievable tradition," Gruden said. "I've been wanting to come here my whole life, really."
Williams, who, along with Harris, represents an important cornerstone in that legacy, works with Gruden as an executive in charge of personnel for the Buccaneers — the NFL franchise that selected him as a first-rounder out of Grambling in 1978.
Gruden was a ballboy for the club back then.
"For me, it's almost unexplainable," a beaming Williams said. "This is something Gruden really wanted to do. It says a lot that he would take time out. He could have come in and just played in the golf tournament, but he wanted to make sure he got a chance to come to Grambling. He thinks that much of this place."
Gruden looked every bit the GSU fan after filling a bag full of Grambling-themed items at the bookstore, quickly totaling more than $150 in sales. He bought a T-shirt with Robinson's likeness, a golf shirt with the Grambling logo, and several hats — which he then had signed by Eddie Robinson Jr., son of the late coaching legend.
"The number of Hall of Famers who came out of here," Gruden said to Robinson Jr. "I admired your dad so much. I've got so much respect for everything that happened here."
Gruden also asked about the planned museum in Robinson's honor, which will be housed in the former women's gymnasium on the Grambling campus.
"It's a milestone," Robinson Jr. said, moments before the assembled group began snapping pictures of him with Gruden. "Imagine that: He's on Grambling soil. What a great thing."
Gruden, personable and gracious throughout the nearly hour-long visit, would eventually take scores of photographs with the growing crowd.
GSU students Chea Hudgins and Kara Burke took one set of shots, found that some didn't come out just right, then returned for another round of photos. Gruden happily obliged, then signed several autographs, as well.
Later, a tour through the campus included stops at Robinson Stadium and the former site of Memorial Stadium — where Williams and Harris, a Monroe native, starred as quarterbacks for Robinson in 1960s and '70s.
"It's exciting," Gruden said. "You're looking at the stadium where all the magic happened."
They also paused for a moment Robinson's modest brick home on Adams Street in Grambling.
Gruden said he wanted to make this pilgrimage last year, when he served as de facto emcee during the Shreveport-based golf tournament reception, but couldn't fit the trip into his schedule.
He came a day early this time, piling into a van with Harris, Williams and several others — including former Tampa Bay tight end Jimmy Giles — and traveling to Lincoln Parish from Shreveport on Sunday afternoon. They played a round of golf at nearby Squire Creek before heading to Grambling.
"He made sure he had a chance to do it this year," Williams said. "I think that speaks volumes about the kind of guy he is — and the respect that he has for Grambling and its players. He absolutely loves all of this."
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Recruiting: South side of Monroe has been a Grambling talent pipeline
Grambling's great provider
South side of Monroe has been talent pipeline
February 6, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - James Harris grew up right around the corner from Sammy White.
Who lived down the way from Lane Howell. Who lived near a street that would eventually produce a flinty talent named Brandon Landers.
Who shares a zip code with Desmond Lenard.
The south side of Monroe sent them all to Grambling State, in an unbroken storyline that continued through last week's National Signing Day.
"I grew up in that neighborhood," said Sammy White, a Richwood product who played and now coaches at GSU as offensive coordinator. "It gives me great joy to see where these guys progress and how they move along."
In 1965, a Carroll High product was quarterback at Grambling. Forty years later, Landers is likely to follow Harris into the role.
White was a star wingback for former GSU coach Eddie Robinson - after winning both football and basketball titles at Richwood in the early 1970s. Lenard, Carroll's wingback last season, committed to Grambling after earning All-Northeast honors as a kick returner.
Derrick Wilhite, a 2006 signee out of Wossman, contributes to a legacy that includes ex-Wildcats assistant Lee Fobbs, a former player under Robinson, and current defensive back Bakari Guice.
"There's no question that the south side of Monroe has added to that Grambling mystique," said GSU coach Melvin Spears. "From the Howells to James Harris to Goldie Sellers and on down to Brandon Landers - our freshman sensation in '04."
Landers shot to conference freshman of the year honors in relief of injured quarterback Bruce Eugene, then redshirted last year when Eugene returned for a final season of eligibility.
"I think this is a good place for finding highly skilled athletes - and that's true at many inner-city schools," said Carroll coach Jesse Smith Sr., who is also a Grambling product.
"There is a lot of talent in this area. I think that through the years, we've proven that."
Carroll's connection to GSU goes deeper than the head coach.
Back in 2001, current Bulldogs assistant Levi Washington Jr. led all receivers in yards as Grambling won the second of three straight SWAC titles. The team uses an offense patterned on GSU's, as well.
So, it's perhaps no surprise that Carroll split end Jesse Smith Jr. joined Lenard in signing with Grambling last week - along with teammates Derrick Johnson and Xavier Lee, both of whom play linebacker.
In the end, though, all three of the southside schools - notably Richwood and, more recently, Wossman - have been an important thread through the tapestry of Grambling's football legacy.
"It's great coming from that tradition," said Landers. "I'd like to have that same impact - not only as a player, but as an individual."
Harris, perhaps the south side's most legendary product, led Grambling to 31-9-1 record between 1965-68, winning a conference title every single year. He was voted the team's most valuable player his final two seasons.
But Landers reminds, Harris' most important contribution came after he left Grambling.
Harris would become the first black athlete to be drafted as a quarterback. His NFL career - which included stops in Buffalo, Los Angeles and San Diego - was capped by an MVP performance in the 1974 Pro Bowl.
Harris later moved into even more rarified air, working in the front offices of Baltimore and currently Jacksonville as one of the NFL's highest ranking black executives.
Smith said Grambling provided a platform in that journey, and for the scores of southside youths who followed him.
"Anytime you've got a kid who goes on and does well, that's an example that you can stir these kids with," said Smith. "It makes them understand that you can dream and it can happen."
Carroll's Lane Howell, a two-way lineman for Robinson, was the first of three brothers to star at Grambling, beginning in 1960. Michael, a cornerback nicknamed "Trackdown," followed two seasons later. Delles, another defensive back, would arrive seven seasons later - but by then the family had moved to California.
Grambling won its first Southwestern Athletic Conference title with Lane up front, establishing a 23-5-2 mark between 1960-62. Michael's 1964 squad went 9-3, winning the Sugar Cup over Bishop before falling in the Orange Blossom Classic.
One of Michael's teammates that season was cornerback Goldie "Spider" Sellers, a Winnsboro native who eventually moved to the south side and played for Richwood.
In 2004, White joined Harris in the SWAC Hall of Fame, recognition for a career that included three conference championships and co-offensive player of the year honors in 1975 at Grambling.
"It was passed down to me," said White, later an NFL rookie of the year at Minnesota. "James Harris and Delles took me to a Grambling basketball game when I was in junior high. I was always around it. There were other places I could have played, but this was the only place I was ever going."
Quarterback Matthew Reed, born in Winnfield, would prove so dominant at Richwood that he once threw nine touchdowns in a single game. Later, he was named Grambling's MVP as a junior, then made All-America as a senior in the early 1970s.
White grew up idolizing Amos Augustine and Charlie "Tank" Smith at Richwood, then played after them at Grambling. Between 1968-71, former Carroll guard Solomon Freelon Jr. protected Harris, Reed and Frank Holmes.
White says many of those greats called a neighborhood known as Bryant's Addition home. He still scouts for talent there, giving another generation the Grambling road map out of one of the area's most impoverished communities.
"The thing about it is, we thought we were pretty good - and these guys could be that too," said White. "It's all about hard work."
Landers, for his part, says he can't account for the staggering impact such a small geographic area has had on Grambling. But, when he's home, he sees the next group working to get there.
"If you ride around, you see little kids out playing in empty lots and at the rec centers - and that's year-round," said Landers. "They're playing everything too, just like we did. Football, basketball, baseball. With small schools, you've got guys going both ways, playing all sports. That makes you better. Who knows? One of those kids could follow me someday."
South side of Monroe has been talent pipeline
February 6, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - James Harris grew up right around the corner from Sammy White.
Who lived down the way from Lane Howell. Who lived near a street that would eventually produce a flinty talent named Brandon Landers.
Who shares a zip code with Desmond Lenard.
The south side of Monroe sent them all to Grambling State, in an unbroken storyline that continued through last week's National Signing Day.
"I grew up in that neighborhood," said Sammy White, a Richwood product who played and now coaches at GSU as offensive coordinator. "It gives me great joy to see where these guys progress and how they move along."
In 1965, a Carroll High product was quarterback at Grambling. Forty years later, Landers is likely to follow Harris into the role.
White was a star wingback for former GSU coach Eddie Robinson - after winning both football and basketball titles at Richwood in the early 1970s. Lenard, Carroll's wingback last season, committed to Grambling after earning All-Northeast honors as a kick returner.
Derrick Wilhite, a 2006 signee out of Wossman, contributes to a legacy that includes ex-Wildcats assistant Lee Fobbs, a former player under Robinson, and current defensive back Bakari Guice.
"There's no question that the south side of Monroe has added to that Grambling mystique," said GSU coach Melvin Spears. "From the Howells to James Harris to Goldie Sellers and on down to Brandon Landers - our freshman sensation in '04."
Landers shot to conference freshman of the year honors in relief of injured quarterback Bruce Eugene, then redshirted last year when Eugene returned for a final season of eligibility.
"I think this is a good place for finding highly skilled athletes - and that's true at many inner-city schools," said Carroll coach Jesse Smith Sr., who is also a Grambling product.
"There is a lot of talent in this area. I think that through the years, we've proven that."
Carroll's connection to GSU goes deeper than the head coach.
Back in 2001, current Bulldogs assistant Levi Washington Jr. led all receivers in yards as Grambling won the second of three straight SWAC titles. The team uses an offense patterned on GSU's, as well.
So, it's perhaps no surprise that Carroll split end Jesse Smith Jr. joined Lenard in signing with Grambling last week - along with teammates Derrick Johnson and Xavier Lee, both of whom play linebacker.
In the end, though, all three of the southside schools - notably Richwood and, more recently, Wossman - have been an important thread through the tapestry of Grambling's football legacy.
"It's great coming from that tradition," said Landers. "I'd like to have that same impact - not only as a player, but as an individual."
Harris, perhaps the south side's most legendary product, led Grambling to 31-9-1 record between 1965-68, winning a conference title every single year. He was voted the team's most valuable player his final two seasons.
But Landers reminds, Harris' most important contribution came after he left Grambling.
Harris would become the first black athlete to be drafted as a quarterback. His NFL career - which included stops in Buffalo, Los Angeles and San Diego - was capped by an MVP performance in the 1974 Pro Bowl.
Harris later moved into even more rarified air, working in the front offices of Baltimore and currently Jacksonville as one of the NFL's highest ranking black executives.
Smith said Grambling provided a platform in that journey, and for the scores of southside youths who followed him.
"Anytime you've got a kid who goes on and does well, that's an example that you can stir these kids with," said Smith. "It makes them understand that you can dream and it can happen."
Carroll's Lane Howell, a two-way lineman for Robinson, was the first of three brothers to star at Grambling, beginning in 1960. Michael, a cornerback nicknamed "Trackdown," followed two seasons later. Delles, another defensive back, would arrive seven seasons later - but by then the family had moved to California.
Grambling won its first Southwestern Athletic Conference title with Lane up front, establishing a 23-5-2 mark between 1960-62. Michael's 1964 squad went 9-3, winning the Sugar Cup over Bishop before falling in the Orange Blossom Classic.
One of Michael's teammates that season was cornerback Goldie "Spider" Sellers, a Winnsboro native who eventually moved to the south side and played for Richwood.
In 2004, White joined Harris in the SWAC Hall of Fame, recognition for a career that included three conference championships and co-offensive player of the year honors in 1975 at Grambling.
"It was passed down to me," said White, later an NFL rookie of the year at Minnesota. "James Harris and Delles took me to a Grambling basketball game when I was in junior high. I was always around it. There were other places I could have played, but this was the only place I was ever going."
Quarterback Matthew Reed, born in Winnfield, would prove so dominant at Richwood that he once threw nine touchdowns in a single game. Later, he was named Grambling's MVP as a junior, then made All-America as a senior in the early 1970s.
White grew up idolizing Amos Augustine and Charlie "Tank" Smith at Richwood, then played after them at Grambling. Between 1968-71, former Carroll guard Solomon Freelon Jr. protected Harris, Reed and Frank Holmes.
White says many of those greats called a neighborhood known as Bryant's Addition home. He still scouts for talent there, giving another generation the Grambling road map out of one of the area's most impoverished communities.
"The thing about it is, we thought we were pretty good - and these guys could be that too," said White. "It's all about hard work."
Landers, for his part, says he can't account for the staggering impact such a small geographic area has had on Grambling. But, when he's home, he sees the next group working to get there.
"If you ride around, you see little kids out playing in empty lots and at the rec centers - and that's year-round," said Landers. "They're playing everything too, just like we did. Football, basketball, baseball. With small schools, you've got guys going both ways, playing all sports. That makes you better. Who knows? One of those kids could follow me someday."
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The time that the Robinson Museum was (finally) funded
State considers $1.3M for Robinson Museum
Long-delayed project, first proposed 8 years ago, in line to receive funding for first time
May 17, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Earlier this month, the long-delayed Eddie Robinson Museum project found a home.
Today, supporters hope it will receive funding.
The state's Bond Commission will consider a $1.3 million line of credit, money to be used for renovating exhibit space on campus and hiring an exhibit designer.
"The other day was a big one, when we got the building," said local fundraiser and Robinson family friend Wilbert Ellis, "but this will be even greater because we will have the funds to do all the things we've dreamed of."
At Grambling from 1941-97, Robinson retired as the winningest football coach in college history with 408 wins — leading the Tigers to 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles over the years. He passed away on April 3 at age 88, sparking renewed interest across the nation in this project.
The museum was first proposed eight years ago — two years after Robinson's retirement at Grambling and several before the onset of the Alzheimer's-related symptoms.
One of the points of contention for years was where the museum would be located, though that was resolved when Grambling and its oversight board agreed to transfer the school's former women's gymnasium for exhibit space.
More consistent has been the issue of funding.
A temporary exhibit of Robinson-related items opened in the lobby of the GSU Stadium Support Facility in June 2005. But Hurricane Katrina's devastation drew away whatever resources might have come from the state to build on that momentum.
The Robinson Museum, organizers say, has never been closer to becoming a reality.
"What the $1.3 million will do for the museum," said governor-appointed commission chairman John Belton, "is allow us to hire an architect, commission the museum exihibit designer as well as a local contractors to renovate and design the building that will hopefully become one of the top museums in the state of Louisiana."
The project's closest brush with funding had previously come as former Gov. Mike Foster prepared to leave office, when he approved a wide variety of favored projects. His final state budget for fiscal year 2004 included $5.5 million dollars earmarked for the Grambling facility.
But the Robinson museum was part of nearly $700 million in projects slashed by his successor, Kathleen Blanco, in an effort at budget balancing.
Renovation costs for the gym — Robinson coached basketball there early in his career — have been estimated at $3 million to $4 million. An additional $2 million, Ellis said, would likely be required to complete the space — money that will need to come from outsider donors.
The museum will be a part of the Department of State Museums Program, administered by the secretary of state.
Jay Dardenne, the third person to serve in that role since the museum board was formed, took over in February — and quickly discovered that it could become the centerpiece for larger economic and tourism goals.
"He's a true Louisiana legend, the benchmark for coaching," said Dardenne, who spoke at Robinson's local memorial. "There is such a broad base of respect for Eddie Robinson as some one who influenced young lives."
The project was originally mentioned during the Louisiana Legislature's 1999 session, when then-Sen. Randy Ewing introduced Senate Bill No. 919. That bill, co-sponsored by the late Rep. Pinky Wilkerson of Grambling and several others, created the commission that has worked off and on since to develop a Robinson museum.
"From '99 up until this point, we've come a long way," said Ellis, a longtime former Grambling baseball coach and athletics administrator. "We are making some progress. We are just going to keep taking it one step at a time until we get there. But we'll get there."
g g g
Robinson Museum, finally, gets more than a million in state funds
May 18, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
The long-delayed Eddie Robinson Museum is, all of a sudden, on a roll.
Eight years after first being proposed, the project received quick approval on Thursday from the Bond Commission for state funding of $1.3 million.
"It took less than five minutes," said local museum fundraiser and Robinson family friend Wilbert Ellis. "They made a motion, and it was done."
Organizers sought the money for renovating exhibit space on campus and hiring an exhibit designer, said board-appointed museum board chairman John Belton.
"In 12 to 18 months, we will be able to see one of the greatest museums in the state of Louisiana," Belton said. "I'm looking forward to that day."
The commission voted unanimously to shift $300,000 from an administration project for repairs on state facilities to the museum project, transforming that allocation into available cash.
Another $1 million was allocated as a non-cash line of credit, which means museum officials can make agreements to begin the project — which the state budget will then fund.
State Treasurer John N. Kennedy, who chairs the Bond Commission, said: "We wanted to fast-track this. That's why we did it with lines of credit. They can move right along and get it done."
The Thursday funding came less than a month after Grambling State's oversight board approved transfer of the former women's gymnasium for exhibit space on the Grambling State campus where Robinson coached for 57 years.
At GSU from 1941-97, Robinson retired as the winningest football coach in college history with 408 wins — leading the Tigers to 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles over the years. He died on April 3 at age 88, sparking renewed interest across the nation in this project.
"We've had Coach with us that whole time," Ellis said. "I think he's working right along with us on this. I feel Coach's hand in all of it."
This museum was first proposed eight years ago — two years after Robinson's retirement at Grambling and several before the onset of the Alzheimer's-related symptoms that ultimately led to his death.
But these are the first state funds ever specifically earmarked for it.
"We are on our way," said an enthused Ellis, a former longtime GSU baseball coach and athletics administrator. "This is the booster shot we needed! I'm tickled to death."
The museum will be a part of the Department of State Museums Program, administered by the secretary of state.
Long-delayed project, first proposed 8 years ago, in line to receive funding for first time
May 17, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Earlier this month, the long-delayed Eddie Robinson Museum project found a home.
Today, supporters hope it will receive funding.
The state's Bond Commission will consider a $1.3 million line of credit, money to be used for renovating exhibit space on campus and hiring an exhibit designer.
"The other day was a big one, when we got the building," said local fundraiser and Robinson family friend Wilbert Ellis, "but this will be even greater because we will have the funds to do all the things we've dreamed of."
At Grambling from 1941-97, Robinson retired as the winningest football coach in college history with 408 wins — leading the Tigers to 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles over the years. He passed away on April 3 at age 88, sparking renewed interest across the nation in this project.
The museum was first proposed eight years ago — two years after Robinson's retirement at Grambling and several before the onset of the Alzheimer's-related symptoms.
One of the points of contention for years was where the museum would be located, though that was resolved when Grambling and its oversight board agreed to transfer the school's former women's gymnasium for exhibit space.
More consistent has been the issue of funding.
A temporary exhibit of Robinson-related items opened in the lobby of the GSU Stadium Support Facility in June 2005. But Hurricane Katrina's devastation drew away whatever resources might have come from the state to build on that momentum.
The Robinson Museum, organizers say, has never been closer to becoming a reality.
"What the $1.3 million will do for the museum," said governor-appointed commission chairman John Belton, "is allow us to hire an architect, commission the museum exihibit designer as well as a local contractors to renovate and design the building that will hopefully become one of the top museums in the state of Louisiana."
The project's closest brush with funding had previously come as former Gov. Mike Foster prepared to leave office, when he approved a wide variety of favored projects. His final state budget for fiscal year 2004 included $5.5 million dollars earmarked for the Grambling facility.
But the Robinson museum was part of nearly $700 million in projects slashed by his successor, Kathleen Blanco, in an effort at budget balancing.
Renovation costs for the gym — Robinson coached basketball there early in his career — have been estimated at $3 million to $4 million. An additional $2 million, Ellis said, would likely be required to complete the space — money that will need to come from outsider donors.
The museum will be a part of the Department of State Museums Program, administered by the secretary of state.
Jay Dardenne, the third person to serve in that role since the museum board was formed, took over in February — and quickly discovered that it could become the centerpiece for larger economic and tourism goals.
"He's a true Louisiana legend, the benchmark for coaching," said Dardenne, who spoke at Robinson's local memorial. "There is such a broad base of respect for Eddie Robinson as some one who influenced young lives."
The project was originally mentioned during the Louisiana Legislature's 1999 session, when then-Sen. Randy Ewing introduced Senate Bill No. 919. That bill, co-sponsored by the late Rep. Pinky Wilkerson of Grambling and several others, created the commission that has worked off and on since to develop a Robinson museum.
"From '99 up until this point, we've come a long way," said Ellis, a longtime former Grambling baseball coach and athletics administrator. "We are making some progress. We are just going to keep taking it one step at a time until we get there. But we'll get there."
g g g
Robinson Museum, finally, gets more than a million in state funds
May 18, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
The long-delayed Eddie Robinson Museum is, all of a sudden, on a roll.
Eight years after first being proposed, the project received quick approval on Thursday from the Bond Commission for state funding of $1.3 million.
"It took less than five minutes," said local museum fundraiser and Robinson family friend Wilbert Ellis. "They made a motion, and it was done."
Organizers sought the money for renovating exhibit space on campus and hiring an exhibit designer, said board-appointed museum board chairman John Belton.
"In 12 to 18 months, we will be able to see one of the greatest museums in the state of Louisiana," Belton said. "I'm looking forward to that day."
The commission voted unanimously to shift $300,000 from an administration project for repairs on state facilities to the museum project, transforming that allocation into available cash.
Another $1 million was allocated as a non-cash line of credit, which means museum officials can make agreements to begin the project — which the state budget will then fund.
State Treasurer John N. Kennedy, who chairs the Bond Commission, said: "We wanted to fast-track this. That's why we did it with lines of credit. They can move right along and get it done."
The Thursday funding came less than a month after Grambling State's oversight board approved transfer of the former women's gymnasium for exhibit space on the Grambling State campus where Robinson coached for 57 years.
At GSU from 1941-97, Robinson retired as the winningest football coach in college history with 408 wins — leading the Tigers to 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles over the years. He died on April 3 at age 88, sparking renewed interest across the nation in this project.
"We've had Coach with us that whole time," Ellis said. "I think he's working right along with us on this. I feel Coach's hand in all of it."
This museum was first proposed eight years ago — two years after Robinson's retirement at Grambling and several before the onset of the Alzheimer's-related symptoms that ultimately led to his death.
But these are the first state funds ever specifically earmarked for it.
"We are on our way," said an enthused Ellis, a former longtime GSU baseball coach and athletics administrator. "This is the booster shot we needed! I'm tickled to death."
The museum will be a part of the Department of State Museums Program, administered by the secretary of state.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Remembering: Doug Williams' historic Super Bowl win
DIG DOUG
Play by play, Williams built a Super Bowl legacy 20 years ago
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
There was actually some indication of what was about to unfold.
Sure, no team had ever come back from being down 7 or more points in any Super Bowl.
But Doug Williams and the Washington Redskins — losing 10-0 to Denver Broncos after one quarter of play 20 years ago at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium — kept telling themselves the same thing.
"We had been down like that already against Chicago," Williams said.
The Redskins had fallen back two touchdowns before overtaking the Bears 21-17 in 1987’s divisional round.
"And it was frigid there," said Williams a Grambling product. "In San Diego, we had 80-degree weather."
A moment that grew into a cultural symbol — Williams, after a startling comeback, would become the first black quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl, and the first to earn MVP honors — was just a game back then.
And Washington was losing.
The NFC’s eventual representative in Super Bowl XXII had changed quarterbacks and running backs over the length of the ‘87 season.
Then Williams nearly blew out a knee.
He was still confident. But he might have been the only one.
AT FIRST, DISASTER
Redskins rookie Timmy Smith started the contest, rather than the injured former Heisman trophy winner George Rogers, and was going nowhere.
Williams’ initial third-down pass was dropped, too, giving Denver the ball for the first time.
One play later, Broncos’ receiver Ricky Nattiel — then just 22, the youngest player in history to score in a Super Bowl — was hauling in a 56-yard touchdown pass from Elway.
That was the fastest score in Super Bowl history.
Washington was stymied again on its next possession, which included another third-down drop. Williams was 1-of-4 for nine yards as Denver added a field goal to go up 10-0 with nine minutes still remaining in the first period.
"I think the average betting man would have gone with Elway," Williams said. "They didn’t give Doug Williams a prayer. Well, the good Lord does answer some."
But not before Redskins returner Ricky Sanders fumbled the resulting kickoff, nearly giving Denver the ball back in Washington’s red zone. Williams would go on to complete this stirring 40-yard strike to Art Monk.
That drive, and the next one, eventually also stalled — and Williams found himself twisting on the ground, grabbing a hyperextended left knee.
The injury was so excruciating that Williams instinctively released the ball, though he was ruled down. San Diego’s squishy turf had already forced the Broncos to switch to a deeper cleat.
Former starter Jay Schroeder returned to finish the drive, but was summarily sacked and then suffered yet another Redskins drop — their fourth already.
The air, it seemed, had gone out of Washington — but not Williams, even though he was just four-of-10 for 78 yards as the second period began.
"No question, I was in tremendous pain, but I was there to play the game," Williams said. "That’s how I looked at it. I couldn’t worry about that. You are on the biggest stage of your life. To me, it was like growing up — you throw a little dirt on it and keep going."
DENVER’S ‘NIGHTMARE’
Williams returned from the sidelines and, 53 seconds into the quarter, threw an 80-yard touchdown to Ricky Sanders, his first-ever postseason score. The Redskins had managed just 63 yards on offense during the entire first period.
Washington held as Elway threw what was then his sixth consecutive incompletion. Four plays later, Williams hit Gary Clark for a 27-yard score to take the lead.
Williams was well protected behind an offensive line so talented that he had been sacked just once in the playoffs.
"If the offense line did what I’d like for them to do, and receivers did what they can do, I knew we could get back into it," said Williams, who played for the legendary Eddie Robinson. "I just had to get the ball back."
Denver, fading badly now, turned the ball over on a missed 43-yard field-goal attempt.
Williams and the Redskins still had seven minutes remaining before the half.
Two plays later, Smith ran 58 yards for a touchdown — his first score ever — and a 21-10 lead. He had just 126 regular-season yards, but 204 in this game alone.
Denver had worked all week on stopping the Redskins’ vaunted counter running play. It didn’t matter.
"‘Coach Rob’ used to say it’s all about blocking and tackling," Williams said. "If you block it right, they can’t stop you — and our line did that. We knew from a physical standpoint, we were the better football l team. That was proved as game went on."
That last touchdown had tied the Super Bowl record, set by San Francisco in XIX and Chicago in XX, of 21 points in a single quarter.
Washington needed just three more plays to score its fourth consecutive touchdown, as Williams hit Sanders on a 50-yard slant — tying a record for most TD receptions by a player in the Super Bowl.
"When everybody is working on all cylinders like that, it’s the epitome of execution," Williams said.
Washington, ahead now 28-10, stopped Elway on an interception in his subsequent possession.
Smith dashed 45 yards to set up Washington at the Broncos’ 35. Denver’s defenders were distracted, then deflated.
"You get he defense out of place, get them confused," Williams said. "All of a sudden they’re looking at each other, trying to make judgment calls. When they’re making all of these late changes, there is a chance that somebody is going to be out of place."
Williams’ fourth touchdown pass, tying another Super Bowl record, to Clint Didier extended Washington’s now insurmountable lead to 35-10.
TV announcer Frank Gifford, in a line that Williams can repeat from memory, said it best: "If this was a fight, they might stop it."
In 222 previous post-season games to that point, no NFL team had ever scored more points in a single quarter. Oakland came closest in 1968, putting up 28; the Giants scored 27 all the way back in 1934.
Williams ran into former Denver coach Dan Reeves this week. "He just shook his head and said: ‘That second quarter was a nightmare.’"
TOUCHING SO MANY LIVES
Washington only scored once more, preferring instead to run the ball in long, quarter-eating drives.
"We wanted to flatten this thing out and keep Elway off the field," Williams said. "You take time off clock, and make it a little more impossible."
Desperate to catch up, Elway began to take more chances, and Washington defenders feasted on multiple turnovers.
The enormity of the moment was becoming clear. A contest marked by personal firsts for Williams, the initial player in Super Bowl history to throw four touchdowns in a single quarter, and to throw four in a half, would have wider implications for African-Americans.
"It’s a great feeling when you realize that people still recognize you and are grateful for what you did," Williams said. "They’ll come up and say: ‘God bless you; you don’t know what you mean to us.’ That’s a great feeling to have that kind of impact."
The announcing team for Super Bowl XXII — Gifford, Dan Dierdorf and Al Michaels – were a microcosm of that sudden revelation.
"Those guys were dumbfounded," Williams said, chuckling. "The last thing they expected was for it to be like that."
Elway was portrayed as the golden-boy sure thing, while Williams would be largely disregarded as an all but forgotten outsider. Too often, the conversation had entered on Williams’ race, rather than what his team did well.
"The problem with that Super Bowl was it wasn’t so much the game itself, as it was who the quarterbacks where," Williams said. "You had Doug Williams against John Elway, and we all know who’s going to win that game."
Williams’ performance, resilient and eye-popping in its complete efficiency, opened eyes and opened doors.
Two other black quarterbacks have followed Williams to the Super Bowl, though neither Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb or Tennessee’ Steve McNair would win.
"The opportunity now," Williams said, "is more than it was then."
Super Bowl XXII remains an afternoon where race relations achieved a rare vista — even if, at first, it started as just another football game.
"That day still has significance," Williams said, "because it touched so many people’s lives — not just as a fan but from an emotional standpoint. From a time when there was no black quarterbacks to winning it, so many older people talk about what that game meant."
In the smaller vernacular of sports, he’s the consummate underdog-made-good, too.
"When somebody is down and out," Williams said, "they’ll put that game in."
As he walked off that San Diego field, in a lingering image, Williams raised his helmet in triumph.
"I had been to place people only dream about," Williams said, still taking it in. "You don’t get to that point too often."
Play by play, Williams built a Super Bowl legacy 20 years ago
Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
There was actually some indication of what was about to unfold.
Sure, no team had ever come back from being down 7 or more points in any Super Bowl.
But Doug Williams and the Washington Redskins — losing 10-0 to Denver Broncos after one quarter of play 20 years ago at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium — kept telling themselves the same thing.
"We had been down like that already against Chicago," Williams said.
The Redskins had fallen back two touchdowns before overtaking the Bears 21-17 in 1987’s divisional round.
"And it was frigid there," said Williams a Grambling product. "In San Diego, we had 80-degree weather."
A moment that grew into a cultural symbol — Williams, after a startling comeback, would become the first black quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl, and the first to earn MVP honors — was just a game back then.
And Washington was losing.
The NFC’s eventual representative in Super Bowl XXII had changed quarterbacks and running backs over the length of the ‘87 season.
Then Williams nearly blew out a knee.
He was still confident. But he might have been the only one.
AT FIRST, DISASTER
Redskins rookie Timmy Smith started the contest, rather than the injured former Heisman trophy winner George Rogers, and was going nowhere.
Williams’ initial third-down pass was dropped, too, giving Denver the ball for the first time.
One play later, Broncos’ receiver Ricky Nattiel — then just 22, the youngest player in history to score in a Super Bowl — was hauling in a 56-yard touchdown pass from Elway.
That was the fastest score in Super Bowl history.
Washington was stymied again on its next possession, which included another third-down drop. Williams was 1-of-4 for nine yards as Denver added a field goal to go up 10-0 with nine minutes still remaining in the first period.
"I think the average betting man would have gone with Elway," Williams said. "They didn’t give Doug Williams a prayer. Well, the good Lord does answer some."
But not before Redskins returner Ricky Sanders fumbled the resulting kickoff, nearly giving Denver the ball back in Washington’s red zone. Williams would go on to complete this stirring 40-yard strike to Art Monk.
That drive, and the next one, eventually also stalled — and Williams found himself twisting on the ground, grabbing a hyperextended left knee.
The injury was so excruciating that Williams instinctively released the ball, though he was ruled down. San Diego’s squishy turf had already forced the Broncos to switch to a deeper cleat.
Former starter Jay Schroeder returned to finish the drive, but was summarily sacked and then suffered yet another Redskins drop — their fourth already.
The air, it seemed, had gone out of Washington — but not Williams, even though he was just four-of-10 for 78 yards as the second period began.
"No question, I was in tremendous pain, but I was there to play the game," Williams said. "That’s how I looked at it. I couldn’t worry about that. You are on the biggest stage of your life. To me, it was like growing up — you throw a little dirt on it and keep going."
DENVER’S ‘NIGHTMARE’
Williams returned from the sidelines and, 53 seconds into the quarter, threw an 80-yard touchdown to Ricky Sanders, his first-ever postseason score. The Redskins had managed just 63 yards on offense during the entire first period.
Washington held as Elway threw what was then his sixth consecutive incompletion. Four plays later, Williams hit Gary Clark for a 27-yard score to take the lead.
Williams was well protected behind an offensive line so talented that he had been sacked just once in the playoffs.
"If the offense line did what I’d like for them to do, and receivers did what they can do, I knew we could get back into it," said Williams, who played for the legendary Eddie Robinson. "I just had to get the ball back."
Denver, fading badly now, turned the ball over on a missed 43-yard field-goal attempt.
Williams and the Redskins still had seven minutes remaining before the half.
Two plays later, Smith ran 58 yards for a touchdown — his first score ever — and a 21-10 lead. He had just 126 regular-season yards, but 204 in this game alone.
Denver had worked all week on stopping the Redskins’ vaunted counter running play. It didn’t matter.
"‘Coach Rob’ used to say it’s all about blocking and tackling," Williams said. "If you block it right, they can’t stop you — and our line did that. We knew from a physical standpoint, we were the better football l team. That was proved as game went on."
That last touchdown had tied the Super Bowl record, set by San Francisco in XIX and Chicago in XX, of 21 points in a single quarter.
Washington needed just three more plays to score its fourth consecutive touchdown, as Williams hit Sanders on a 50-yard slant — tying a record for most TD receptions by a player in the Super Bowl.
"When everybody is working on all cylinders like that, it’s the epitome of execution," Williams said.
Washington, ahead now 28-10, stopped Elway on an interception in his subsequent possession.
Smith dashed 45 yards to set up Washington at the Broncos’ 35. Denver’s defenders were distracted, then deflated.
"You get he defense out of place, get them confused," Williams said. "All of a sudden they’re looking at each other, trying to make judgment calls. When they’re making all of these late changes, there is a chance that somebody is going to be out of place."
Williams’ fourth touchdown pass, tying another Super Bowl record, to Clint Didier extended Washington’s now insurmountable lead to 35-10.
TV announcer Frank Gifford, in a line that Williams can repeat from memory, said it best: "If this was a fight, they might stop it."
In 222 previous post-season games to that point, no NFL team had ever scored more points in a single quarter. Oakland came closest in 1968, putting up 28; the Giants scored 27 all the way back in 1934.
Williams ran into former Denver coach Dan Reeves this week. "He just shook his head and said: ‘That second quarter was a nightmare.’"
TOUCHING SO MANY LIVES
Washington only scored once more, preferring instead to run the ball in long, quarter-eating drives.
"We wanted to flatten this thing out and keep Elway off the field," Williams said. "You take time off clock, and make it a little more impossible."
Desperate to catch up, Elway began to take more chances, and Washington defenders feasted on multiple turnovers.
The enormity of the moment was becoming clear. A contest marked by personal firsts for Williams, the initial player in Super Bowl history to throw four touchdowns in a single quarter, and to throw four in a half, would have wider implications for African-Americans.
"It’s a great feeling when you realize that people still recognize you and are grateful for what you did," Williams said. "They’ll come up and say: ‘God bless you; you don’t know what you mean to us.’ That’s a great feeling to have that kind of impact."
The announcing team for Super Bowl XXII — Gifford, Dan Dierdorf and Al Michaels – were a microcosm of that sudden revelation.
"Those guys were dumbfounded," Williams said, chuckling. "The last thing they expected was for it to be like that."
Elway was portrayed as the golden-boy sure thing, while Williams would be largely disregarded as an all but forgotten outsider. Too often, the conversation had entered on Williams’ race, rather than what his team did well.
"The problem with that Super Bowl was it wasn’t so much the game itself, as it was who the quarterbacks where," Williams said. "You had Doug Williams against John Elway, and we all know who’s going to win that game."
Williams’ performance, resilient and eye-popping in its complete efficiency, opened eyes and opened doors.
Two other black quarterbacks have followed Williams to the Super Bowl, though neither Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb or Tennessee’ Steve McNair would win.
"The opportunity now," Williams said, "is more than it was then."
Super Bowl XXII remains an afternoon where race relations achieved a rare vista — even if, at first, it started as just another football game.
"That day still has significance," Williams said, "because it touched so many people’s lives — not just as a fan but from an emotional standpoint. From a time when there was no black quarterbacks to winning it, so many older people talk about what that game meant."
In the smaller vernacular of sports, he’s the consummate underdog-made-good, too.
"When somebody is down and out," Williams said, "they’ll put that game in."
As he walked off that San Diego field, in a lingering image, Williams raised his helmet in triumph.
"I had been to place people only dream about," Williams said, still taking it in. "You don’t get to that point too often."
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Remembering: Everson Walls' selfless act
CALL TO ACTION
Selfless act by ex-Grambling and Cowboys star launches national crusade
January 6, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Hope and love, outside of the storybooks, so often share time with searing pain and uncertainty.
And so it was with Everson Walls and former NFL teammate and life-long friend Ron Springs.
"The last 13-to-14 months," Walls said and paused, searching for the words, "have been trying, triumphant — heavy on my heart. I've just been running the gamut."
Walls, the former Grambling and pro standout, decided to give a kidney to Springs, was inducted into the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame, mourned as his college coach passed, helped spark a national conversation on organ donation, and then watched in horror as Springs slipped into a lingering coma.
"Thank God I have faith," Walls said. "Thank God I have support from my family, because if it wasn't for that, I might have let all of that weigh on me."
Walls has, indeed, remained light on his feet — cross-crossing the country to share this remarkable story, encourage support for a national donor bill introduced to Congress in his honor last September and bolster the spirits of transplant recipients, donor families and those still waiting for the next Everson Walls to come along.
"As I look back, it has surprised me what I have come through," Walls said. "Something that I've really focused on since I decided to donate my kidney: Do not take anything for granted."
That includes the fairy tale conclusion that so many had hoped for.
Walls is just as often found these days at the side of Springs, who remains in a Dallas hospital, alive but not living.
The rewritten epilogue is messier, more real. Media outlets struggled to frame the narrative.
Bryant Gumbel, hosting HBO's "Real Sports," admitted that producers were initially inclined to shelve an already-completed segment on Walls' donation when Springs took the unexpected turn.
But the two men's unordinary bond transcended even this stunning twist.
"We planned," Gumbel said, "for our account of their relationship to stand as a tale of real selflessness and true teamwork. Unfortunately, their story took a sad and unexpected turn — one that, frankly, gave us pause about even airing the piece. Ultimately, we decided we should, because it's still an inspirational tale about the strength of friendship and genuine love."
That simple, timeless emotion opened up a continuing conversation on organ donation of sweeping proportions.
FRIENDS, THEN FAMILY
They were teammates on early 1980s Dallas Cowboys squads at first, then best friends, then family.
Godfathers to one another's children, their very lives were already inextricably bound.
They shared a neighborhood. Their wives were close, too.
In these small ways, they shared each other's story — even after Springs retired and Walls left for a successful stint with the New York Giants, where he won Super Bowl XXV in 1991.
That same season, Springs developed Type II diabetes. Over the next 10 years, this once vibrant athlete — the former running back had led Dallas with 12 touchdowns in 1981 — saw his kidneys fail, forcing Springs into dialysis.
He lost a foot to amputation. Finally both hands curled into nearly useless, withered commas, as muscular fibrosis set in.
Walls, shocked at his friend's deterioration, began working out with Springs — hoping, he says, to help him through what ever period of time it took for a kidney donation to arrive.
The search, which included two separate failed donation attempts by incompatible relatives, dragged on for three excruciating years. Springs also rejected an offer from his son, an 11th-year cornerback with the Washington Redskins, out of fear that the surgery would end his pro career.
A year ago in February, Walls decided to step in.
"I used to feel like an old penny," Springs said afterward. "Now I feel like a new John F. Kennedy 50-cent piece."
Walls never struggled with the decision, though he did at first shy away from the media attention that followed — refusing, as Springs often noted, to inhabit the hero's cape.
Walls said he hoped it would just be between the two of them, as so much always had been. Instead, his selfless act became a headline, then a call to action.
"We wanted to keep it in house," Walls said. "We really never thought about what kind of impact it would have, until we started sharing it."
He was stopped short, however, by the passing of former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson — a towering mentor in Walls' life who succumbed to an Alzheimer's-related illness in April.
Robinson's leadership toward a better America, with a focus on overcoming adversity and becoming a citizen contributor, still resonates.
"It was funny, because when I was telling people my thoughts on this donation, I always came back to Coach Robinson's insights into life — to his testament on being a strong black man," Walls said. "That had a lot to do with all of this. I had been talking about Coach Robinson that whole time, and I still am. It's given me another opportunity to uplift his philosophy."
Walls and a rejuvenated Springs threw themselves into Gift For Life — a national foundation they founded to promote awareness of kidney disease and encourage organ donation — and that became their second legacy, away from the field and that helmet with the star.
They would be teammates, brothers and friends, forever. Not just on the gridiron, but in the public consciousness.
Walls, in a whirlwind now, then found himself speaking before Congress in support of that House bill — called the Everson Walls and Ron Springs Gift for Life Act of 2007, after their nonprofit foundation.
The proposed law would establish a national organ and tissue donor registry center, authorize grants for state organ and tissue registries and create a database to help track long-term health effects for living donors.
"It went from being for one person to being something that the entire world wanted to get involved with," Walls said, still moved. "It has touched so many people lives."
There awaited, however, one more shocking turn in a tale that rivals the dark fables of old.
ENDURING INSPIRATION
Springs fell into the coma last October while undergoing elective surgery to remove a cyst in his arm. Doctors still don't know what sent him spiraling away, though Walls says he thinks it was a reaction to the anesthesia.
Springs remains physically well, Walls said, but locked in a quiet place where he can't be reached.
News stories have portrayed his hopes for recovery as virtually nonexistent, even as Springs' son Shawn described his father is "pretty much a vegetable."
Walls remains steadfast in his friendship, and his faith.
"It was not a reaction to the kidney," Walls said. "He's in good shape, and breathing on his own — and has been since a week after the incident. Ron is great candidate to come out of this coma. He still has body movement. The neurologist is very hopeful."
Walls continues the work he started with Springs, refusing to let a moment of enduring inspiration be rendered less significant by this sad footnote.
He's in Missouri this weekend to speak at the Smart Living Expo in St. Louis on behalf of the national donor bill. On Friday, he also visited a local Children's Hospital to visit with transplant patients.
"This is the biggest thing that has happened to me in my entire life, including that Super Bowl," Walls said.
The generation he spoke with at that St. Louis medical facility has no memory of the rest of Walls' considerable achievements in a football uniform. Not the best-in-the-nation mark for interceptions as a senior defensive back at Grambling, nor his Pro Bowl days at Dallas in 1981-83 and '85.
Only that he turned so much attention to their plight.
"As much as I take pride in my career as a player, now it's OK for others to think of football as secondary to how I am known now," Walls said. "To be known for that gives me much more gratification. Hands down, no comparison."
He knows, deep down, that the final chapter hasn't been written yet.
Not until their bill passes. Not until Ron Springs gets up from that hospital bed.
"He will," Walls said. "I know he will."
Selfless act by ex-Grambling and Cowboys star launches national crusade
January 6, 2008
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Hope and love, outside of the storybooks, so often share time with searing pain and uncertainty.
And so it was with Everson Walls and former NFL teammate and life-long friend Ron Springs.
"The last 13-to-14 months," Walls said and paused, searching for the words, "have been trying, triumphant — heavy on my heart. I've just been running the gamut."
Walls, the former Grambling and pro standout, decided to give a kidney to Springs, was inducted into the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame, mourned as his college coach passed, helped spark a national conversation on organ donation, and then watched in horror as Springs slipped into a lingering coma.
"Thank God I have faith," Walls said. "Thank God I have support from my family, because if it wasn't for that, I might have let all of that weigh on me."
Walls has, indeed, remained light on his feet — cross-crossing the country to share this remarkable story, encourage support for a national donor bill introduced to Congress in his honor last September and bolster the spirits of transplant recipients, donor families and those still waiting for the next Everson Walls to come along.
"As I look back, it has surprised me what I have come through," Walls said. "Something that I've really focused on since I decided to donate my kidney: Do not take anything for granted."
That includes the fairy tale conclusion that so many had hoped for.
Walls is just as often found these days at the side of Springs, who remains in a Dallas hospital, alive but not living.
The rewritten epilogue is messier, more real. Media outlets struggled to frame the narrative.
Bryant Gumbel, hosting HBO's "Real Sports," admitted that producers were initially inclined to shelve an already-completed segment on Walls' donation when Springs took the unexpected turn.
But the two men's unordinary bond transcended even this stunning twist.
"We planned," Gumbel said, "for our account of their relationship to stand as a tale of real selflessness and true teamwork. Unfortunately, their story took a sad and unexpected turn — one that, frankly, gave us pause about even airing the piece. Ultimately, we decided we should, because it's still an inspirational tale about the strength of friendship and genuine love."
That simple, timeless emotion opened up a continuing conversation on organ donation of sweeping proportions.
FRIENDS, THEN FAMILY
They were teammates on early 1980s Dallas Cowboys squads at first, then best friends, then family.
Godfathers to one another's children, their very lives were already inextricably bound.
They shared a neighborhood. Their wives were close, too.
In these small ways, they shared each other's story — even after Springs retired and Walls left for a successful stint with the New York Giants, where he won Super Bowl XXV in 1991.
That same season, Springs developed Type II diabetes. Over the next 10 years, this once vibrant athlete — the former running back had led Dallas with 12 touchdowns in 1981 — saw his kidneys fail, forcing Springs into dialysis.
He lost a foot to amputation. Finally both hands curled into nearly useless, withered commas, as muscular fibrosis set in.
Walls, shocked at his friend's deterioration, began working out with Springs — hoping, he says, to help him through what ever period of time it took for a kidney donation to arrive.
The search, which included two separate failed donation attempts by incompatible relatives, dragged on for three excruciating years. Springs also rejected an offer from his son, an 11th-year cornerback with the Washington Redskins, out of fear that the surgery would end his pro career.
A year ago in February, Walls decided to step in.
"I used to feel like an old penny," Springs said afterward. "Now I feel like a new John F. Kennedy 50-cent piece."
Walls never struggled with the decision, though he did at first shy away from the media attention that followed — refusing, as Springs often noted, to inhabit the hero's cape.
Walls said he hoped it would just be between the two of them, as so much always had been. Instead, his selfless act became a headline, then a call to action.
"We wanted to keep it in house," Walls said. "We really never thought about what kind of impact it would have, until we started sharing it."
He was stopped short, however, by the passing of former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson — a towering mentor in Walls' life who succumbed to an Alzheimer's-related illness in April.
Robinson's leadership toward a better America, with a focus on overcoming adversity and becoming a citizen contributor, still resonates.
"It was funny, because when I was telling people my thoughts on this donation, I always came back to Coach Robinson's insights into life — to his testament on being a strong black man," Walls said. "That had a lot to do with all of this. I had been talking about Coach Robinson that whole time, and I still am. It's given me another opportunity to uplift his philosophy."
Walls and a rejuvenated Springs threw themselves into Gift For Life — a national foundation they founded to promote awareness of kidney disease and encourage organ donation — and that became their second legacy, away from the field and that helmet with the star.
They would be teammates, brothers and friends, forever. Not just on the gridiron, but in the public consciousness.
Walls, in a whirlwind now, then found himself speaking before Congress in support of that House bill — called the Everson Walls and Ron Springs Gift for Life Act of 2007, after their nonprofit foundation.
The proposed law would establish a national organ and tissue donor registry center, authorize grants for state organ and tissue registries and create a database to help track long-term health effects for living donors.
"It went from being for one person to being something that the entire world wanted to get involved with," Walls said, still moved. "It has touched so many people lives."
There awaited, however, one more shocking turn in a tale that rivals the dark fables of old.
ENDURING INSPIRATION
Springs fell into the coma last October while undergoing elective surgery to remove a cyst in his arm. Doctors still don't know what sent him spiraling away, though Walls says he thinks it was a reaction to the anesthesia.
Springs remains physically well, Walls said, but locked in a quiet place where he can't be reached.
News stories have portrayed his hopes for recovery as virtually nonexistent, even as Springs' son Shawn described his father is "pretty much a vegetable."
Walls remains steadfast in his friendship, and his faith.
"It was not a reaction to the kidney," Walls said. "He's in good shape, and breathing on his own — and has been since a week after the incident. Ron is great candidate to come out of this coma. He still has body movement. The neurologist is very hopeful."
Walls continues the work he started with Springs, refusing to let a moment of enduring inspiration be rendered less significant by this sad footnote.
He's in Missouri this weekend to speak at the Smart Living Expo in St. Louis on behalf of the national donor bill. On Friday, he also visited a local Children's Hospital to visit with transplant patients.
"This is the biggest thing that has happened to me in my entire life, including that Super Bowl," Walls said.
The generation he spoke with at that St. Louis medical facility has no memory of the rest of Walls' considerable achievements in a football uniform. Not the best-in-the-nation mark for interceptions as a senior defensive back at Grambling, nor his Pro Bowl days at Dallas in 1981-83 and '85.
Only that he turned so much attention to their plight.
"As much as I take pride in my career as a player, now it's OK for others to think of football as secondary to how I am known now," Walls said. "To be known for that gives me much more gratification. Hands down, no comparison."
He knows, deep down, that the final chapter hasn't been written yet.
Not until their bill passes. Not until Ron Springs gets up from that hospital bed.
"He will," Walls said. "I know he will."
Monday, October 01, 2007
Remembering: The debut of 'The Rob'
TIGER PAUSE: Grambling's Robinson Stadium opened 25 seasons ago with fanfare, blowout
September 15, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Football had been, more often than not, the last thing on Eddie Robinson's mind.
The longtime former Grambling coach's 1983 opener against Alcorn State, handily won but never forgotten, would be the first game played at a new facility bearing Robinson's name.
Not that Alcorn State hadn't been an entertaining, formidable foe. Still, even while his assistants tried to script a game knotted at 7-0 during halftime, Robinson was elsewhere — fulfilling the obligations of a dignitary more than that of a ball coach.
"It was a struggle for him," said longtime GSU assistant Melvin "Jim" Lee. "He had made so many sacrifices. He knew that the program would profit very much from a new stadium."
So, even while the game teetered in the balance, Robinson could be found speaking before a packed crowd outside the locker room.
"Things are happening today," he said, "that usually never happen while the person is living."
Grambling's suffocating defense, coupled with a canny misdirection on offense, would do the rest. The Tigers scored a trio of late-game touchdowns to secure the dominating 28-0 victory.
“Our team was excited about becoming part of history, the first team to play in the stadium named after the man that was our coach,” said Robert “Big Bird” Smith, then an All-America defender for Robinson.
Alcorn is remembered now as the first opponent to descend into Grambling’s unique, now-legendary sunken structure – but not the first to leave with a loss. Robinson would win a total of 37 games at “The Rob” before retiring 15 seasons later.
“Walking down the hill, it presented quite a challenge for any opposing team,” said Lee, an offensive assistant for 40 seasons at GSU. “One player saw the stadium and said it looked like going down inside Hades.”
A DOMINATING WIN
Grambling’s offensive line had been decimated by graduation, leaving returning senior quarterback Hollis Brent exposed. Calvin Nicholas, a talented safety, was moved to receiver in an effort to replace the departed Rufus Stevens.
Robinson spoke with what appeared to be a shy candor about GSU’s struggles. He said Lee had been forced to tinker with the team’s fabled Wing-T offense – adding some I-formation looks.
Points, Robinson guessed, would have to come from running back James Robinson, the Tigers’ second leading rusher from a season before. He’d be joined in the backfield by Texas A&M transfer Ronny James.
“We’re going to use the ‘I’ as much as we can make it work,” Robinson said, in the days leading up to the game. “It just adds a lot to our attack, if we can open some holes.”
During the transition, Grambling was going to rely on coordinator Fred Collins’ muscular “Trees of Terror” defense, which went on to produce seven of the program’s 12 all-conference players that year – including first-teamers Smith, Reginald Pugh, James Polk and Ed Scott.
Robinson gave a stirring pre-game speech, Smith recalled, and his unit rose to the challenge.
“Coach made the comment that he never made a tackle, he never scored a touchdown, and he never won a game,” Smith said. “He said the wins did not belong to him. They belonged to the players – to (well-known former Grambling standouts) Gary (‘Big Hands’ Johnson), Doug (Williams), Sammy (White) and Trumaine (Johnson).”
GSU would have to take down a resurgent Alcorn State team, led by fellow Southwestern Athletic Conference coaching legend Mario Casem.
Grambling’s battles with Alcorn were already the stuff of lore, with Robinson winning or sharing 13 league titles up to that point, while Casem took six.
ASU, however, had been without a championship since 1979 – and was just 16-14 over the previous three campaigns, falling to Grambling in both 1981-82. Casem was building toward a final championship as a coach in ’85, though, and boasted six returners on offense and eight on defense.
He pushed Grambling to a defensive, scoreless deadlock through the initial quarter.
Alcorn sacked Brent seven times in the first half, totalling more than 40 yards in losses. GSU linebacker Mike Dennis’ interception return for a touchdown had been the lone first-half points.
All that talk of switching to the ‘I,’ though, proved to a clever Robinson ruse. Grambling rarely called the formation – and it was, in fact, the GSU passers who secured this historic first win.
Alcorn was apparently caught off guard.
Grambling's Hollis and Anthony Anderson combined for 247 yards in the air against a defense that would go on to lead the SWAC in 1983, while Alcorn’s two passers could manage only 81.
Grambling’s Marvin Thomas, Wayne Hill and Nicholas hauled in those second-half TD catches. Most impressive was the 91-yard streak by the converted defender Nicholas, who hauled in an Anderson pass on a post pattern with 5:21 remaining, and ran through a defender on the way to the final points of the game.
Meanwhile, the Grambling defense never let Alcorn past the Grambling 33.
GSU only allowed 44 yards rushing over the initial two quarters. Glenn Hall also added another pick late, securing the game with 1:47 left.
The flamboyant Casem, during a raucous post-game press conference, took it all in stride: “Playing Grambling is like making love to a gorilla,” he said. “You can not quit until he gets enough.”
Smith chuckles at the memory. “Opening day, we did get enough,” he said.
THEN, A GREAT HONOR
The Robinson Stadium stands already teemed with 10,000 fans as grand-opening ceremonies began an hour and a half before Alcorn took the field.
Then-Louisiana Gov. Dave Treen spoke, as did Robinson – who was supposed to be the guest of honor. An abiding humility, however, wouldn’t allow Robinson to completely inhabit the spotlight.
With him was wife Doris, their children, and his mother. Robinson talked about them, and about his players.
“When you say Robinson Stadium,” he said that day, “it has to mean every person who has played football here. This honor that has been bestowed on us is a great one.”
Built then at a cost of $7.5 million dollars, the facility was said to seat 22,500 fans and includes a unique tiger-inspired design on the chairbacks below the westside pressbox. Striped in the team’s familiar black and gold colors, “GSU” is spelled out in red – a tip of the hat to former Grambling president R.W.E. “Prez” Jones, who favored this accent color.
Smith, who had been a freshman recruit when construction was first begun in 1980, was among those who witnessed this remarkable transformation.
“To have an opportunity to watch that spot turn from a wooded area with a pond into a deep hole on our campus and finally into a football stadium was amazing,” said Smith, later a line coach at Grambling.
The stadium was originally named for the Robinson family, since state law prohibits the honoring of a living person. That is expected to change in the wake of Robinson’s passing in April of this year at age 88, the result of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease.
Treen acknowledged, during the opening event, that Robinson Stadium would always stand as a tribute to Division I’s winningest coach.
“We all know who the distinguished member of that family is,” Treen said. “Sept. 3 will go down as an historic date because we are here today to dedicate this magnificent facility to this institution, and to a person who is an institution – Coach Eddie Robinson.”
Getting there had been a force of will for Robinson, who battled through budget cuts that radically changed design elements – to the very elements themselves. A late-summer rainshower caused one side of the hollowed-out ground to collapse in a mudslide, threatening the opener.
Robinson, involved in every facet of construction, deeply felt each setback. But he never wavered.
“He put a lot being into developing that stadium,” Lee said. “There was pressure to keep it going forward. It wasn’t an easy thing – though it was well deserved.”
A LEGACY REMEMBERED
Grambling played Casem to a virtual draw while he was at Alcorn, though Robinson eventually opened up a 13-8 lead after Casem returned to coaching at Southern.
Robinson would retire in 1997 having amassed 408 wins over a career that spanned six decades to the early 1940s. Through it all, their mutual respect endured – as did Casem’s propensity for the quick, appropriate quip.
Attending Robinson’s funeral earlier this year, Casem attempted to frame Robinson’s towering presence: “He was like Mount Fuji in Japan. He was always there, and he was always majestic.”
Robinson will be remembered again, as Grambling opens the 2007 home slate on Saturday against Alabama A&M. It will be the first game held at Robinson Stadium since its namesake’s passing.
Smith said this place, even as three head coaches have followed at GSU over the last decade, will always echo with cheers for Robinson.
Robinson himself seemed completely aware of that part of his legacy, the one made of concrete and steel, as he left the stadium on opening night more than a quarter century ago.
The suddenly quiet coach, awash in emotion, reached down and grabbed a single blade of grass from the Robinson Stadium turf.
“That we should have been thought worthy of this distinction gives us mixed emotions,” Robinson said, “of humility and profound gratitude.”
g g g
Lee's list: Best ever at 'The Rob'
http://www.thenewsstar.com/news/blogs/blog3/2007/09/lees-list-best-ever-at-rob.html
As Robinson Stadium enters its 25th season, I asked longtime Grambling assistant Melvin "Jim" Lee -- who coached at his alma mater for 40 seasons after helping the Tigers to a 1955 national championship as a player under Eddie Robinson -- to name his Top 5 most memorable games at the facility.
First, there was a good bit of reminescing: "We gained so much from our time with Coach," Lee said. "We got a chance to see the country and a portion of the world. It was something that being in a smaller school, you never thought would happen."
Then, we got down to Lee's list:
5. NORTH CAROLINA A&T, 1997
Grambling gamely battled, but ultimately fell to A&T by two, 37-35, in the legendary coach's final home contest.
After 57 seasons, and a still-standing Divison I record of 408 wins, Robinson's remarkable career was through. Lee had played for him, then coached with him, for nearly 50 of those years.
"It was memorable because it was the last game, and what it meant to Coach," Lee said, "not because of way we played. The kids tried their very best, but we just didn't have the talent."
4. JACKSON STATE, 1992
Grambling's march to a final national black college championship for Robinson included an emotional win over Jackson State, who had bested GSU in each of the previous two seasons.
Grambling won 34-31.
"We were able to have a really good game from Stevie Anderson out of Jonesboro," Lee said. "We beat them, after they'd had our number for years. That was a good team and a great game."
3. TEXAS SOUTHERN, 1991
Lee remembers well TSU's "really big hitters," including future New York Giants standout Michael Strahan, then a junior.
The game, as was often the case back in the day with Texas Southern, was very tight. A homecoming crowd at "The Rob" brought additional intensity to the proceedings.
"We got down to the very last, and Gilad Landau came in," Lee said. "Two seconds on the clock, and he kicked it right down the middle for the win."
Final score, Grambling 30-27.
2. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE, 1987.
Freshman kicker Willian Wrighten, on his fourth attempt, kicked a 21-yard field goal with no time remaining to give South Carolina State a two-point win during a nationally broadcast Thursday night ESPN game from Robinson Stadium.
The first kick was nearly from midfield, a desperation move. But a series of penalties on Grambling, including roughing the kicker and offsides, eventually made this nearly a chip shot.
Grambling fell 15-13.
"We weren't satisfied with the outcome, of course, but it's certainly one I remember," Lee said. "What a game."
1. ALCORN STATE, 1994
There has never, and may well never be, a more famous game at "The Rob" than this titanic struggle against future NFL MVP and Super Bowl quarterback Steve McNair.
Grambling scored and scored and scored, only to be matched stride for stride by McNair -- a senior who had never lost to Robinson and Lee. GSU won in the final tally, but barely: 62-56. And even then, the Tigers had to fight off a late ASU drive.
"It came down, again, to a last play with just seconds on the clock," Lee said. "Thank goodness we were leading by a few. That was a very satisfying."
September 15, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Football had been, more often than not, the last thing on Eddie Robinson's mind.The longtime former Grambling coach's 1983 opener against Alcorn State, handily won but never forgotten, would be the first game played at a new facility bearing Robinson's name.
Not that Alcorn State hadn't been an entertaining, formidable foe. Still, even while his assistants tried to script a game knotted at 7-0 during halftime, Robinson was elsewhere — fulfilling the obligations of a dignitary more than that of a ball coach.
"It was a struggle for him," said longtime GSU assistant Melvin "Jim" Lee. "He had made so many sacrifices. He knew that the program would profit very much from a new stadium."
So, even while the game teetered in the balance, Robinson could be found speaking before a packed crowd outside the locker room.
"Things are happening today," he said, "that usually never happen while the person is living."
Grambling's suffocating defense, coupled with a canny misdirection on offense, would do the rest. The Tigers scored a trio of late-game touchdowns to secure the dominating 28-0 victory.
“Our team was excited about becoming part of history, the first team to play in the stadium named after the man that was our coach,” said Robert “Big Bird” Smith, then an All-America defender for Robinson.
Alcorn is remembered now as the first opponent to descend into Grambling’s unique, now-legendary sunken structure – but not the first to leave with a loss. Robinson would win a total of 37 games at “The Rob” before retiring 15 seasons later.
“Walking down the hill, it presented quite a challenge for any opposing team,” said Lee, an offensive assistant for 40 seasons at GSU. “One player saw the stadium and said it looked like going down inside Hades.”
A DOMINATING WIN
Grambling’s offensive line had been decimated by graduation, leaving returning senior quarterback Hollis Brent exposed. Calvin Nicholas, a talented safety, was moved to receiver in an effort to replace the departed Rufus Stevens.
Robinson spoke with what appeared to be a shy candor about GSU’s struggles. He said Lee had been forced to tinker with the team’s fabled Wing-T offense – adding some I-formation looks.
Points, Robinson guessed, would have to come from running back James Robinson, the Tigers’ second leading rusher from a season before. He’d be joined in the backfield by Texas A&M transfer Ronny James.
“We’re going to use the ‘I’ as much as we can make it work,” Robinson said, in the days leading up to the game. “It just adds a lot to our attack, if we can open some holes.”
During the transition, Grambling was going to rely on coordinator Fred Collins’ muscular “Trees of Terror” defense, which went on to produce seven of the program’s 12 all-conference players that year – including first-teamers Smith, Reginald Pugh, James Polk and Ed Scott.
Robinson gave a stirring pre-game speech, Smith recalled, and his unit rose to the challenge.
“Coach made the comment that he never made a tackle, he never scored a touchdown, and he never won a game,” Smith said. “He said the wins did not belong to him. They belonged to the players – to (well-known former Grambling standouts) Gary (‘Big Hands’ Johnson), Doug (Williams), Sammy (White) and Trumaine (Johnson).”
GSU would have to take down a resurgent Alcorn State team, led by fellow Southwestern Athletic Conference coaching legend Mario Casem.
Grambling’s battles with Alcorn were already the stuff of lore, with Robinson winning or sharing 13 league titles up to that point, while Casem took six.
ASU, however, had been without a championship since 1979 – and was just 16-14 over the previous three campaigns, falling to Grambling in both 1981-82. Casem was building toward a final championship as a coach in ’85, though, and boasted six returners on offense and eight on defense.
He pushed Grambling to a defensive, scoreless deadlock through the initial quarter.
Alcorn sacked Brent seven times in the first half, totalling more than 40 yards in losses. GSU linebacker Mike Dennis’ interception return for a touchdown had been the lone first-half points.
All that talk of switching to the ‘I,’ though, proved to a clever Robinson ruse. Grambling rarely called the formation – and it was, in fact, the GSU passers who secured this historic first win.
Alcorn was apparently caught off guard.
Grambling's Hollis and Anthony Anderson combined for 247 yards in the air against a defense that would go on to lead the SWAC in 1983, while Alcorn’s two passers could manage only 81.
Grambling’s Marvin Thomas, Wayne Hill and Nicholas hauled in those second-half TD catches. Most impressive was the 91-yard streak by the converted defender Nicholas, who hauled in an Anderson pass on a post pattern with 5:21 remaining, and ran through a defender on the way to the final points of the game.
Meanwhile, the Grambling defense never let Alcorn past the Grambling 33.
GSU only allowed 44 yards rushing over the initial two quarters. Glenn Hall also added another pick late, securing the game with 1:47 left.
The flamboyant Casem, during a raucous post-game press conference, took it all in stride: “Playing Grambling is like making love to a gorilla,” he said. “You can not quit until he gets enough.”
Smith chuckles at the memory. “Opening day, we did get enough,” he said.
THEN, A GREAT HONOR
The Robinson Stadium stands already teemed with 10,000 fans as grand-opening ceremonies began an hour and a half before Alcorn took the field.
Then-Louisiana Gov. Dave Treen spoke, as did Robinson – who was supposed to be the guest of honor. An abiding humility, however, wouldn’t allow Robinson to completely inhabit the spotlight.
With him was wife Doris, their children, and his mother. Robinson talked about them, and about his players.
“When you say Robinson Stadium,” he said that day, “it has to mean every person who has played football here. This honor that has been bestowed on us is a great one.”
Built then at a cost of $7.5 million dollars, the facility was said to seat 22,500 fans and includes a unique tiger-inspired design on the chairbacks below the westside pressbox. Striped in the team’s familiar black and gold colors, “GSU” is spelled out in red – a tip of the hat to former Grambling president R.W.E. “Prez” Jones, who favored this accent color.
Smith, who had been a freshman recruit when construction was first begun in 1980, was among those who witnessed this remarkable transformation.
“To have an opportunity to watch that spot turn from a wooded area with a pond into a deep hole on our campus and finally into a football stadium was amazing,” said Smith, later a line coach at Grambling.
The stadium was originally named for the Robinson family, since state law prohibits the honoring of a living person. That is expected to change in the wake of Robinson’s passing in April of this year at age 88, the result of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease.
Treen acknowledged, during the opening event, that Robinson Stadium would always stand as a tribute to Division I’s winningest coach.
“We all know who the distinguished member of that family is,” Treen said. “Sept. 3 will go down as an historic date because we are here today to dedicate this magnificent facility to this institution, and to a person who is an institution – Coach Eddie Robinson.”
Getting there had been a force of will for Robinson, who battled through budget cuts that radically changed design elements – to the very elements themselves. A late-summer rainshower caused one side of the hollowed-out ground to collapse in a mudslide, threatening the opener.
Robinson, involved in every facet of construction, deeply felt each setback. But he never wavered.
“He put a lot being into developing that stadium,” Lee said. “There was pressure to keep it going forward. It wasn’t an easy thing – though it was well deserved.”
A LEGACY REMEMBERED
Grambling played Casem to a virtual draw while he was at Alcorn, though Robinson eventually opened up a 13-8 lead after Casem returned to coaching at Southern.
Robinson would retire in 1997 having amassed 408 wins over a career that spanned six decades to the early 1940s. Through it all, their mutual respect endured – as did Casem’s propensity for the quick, appropriate quip.
Attending Robinson’s funeral earlier this year, Casem attempted to frame Robinson’s towering presence: “He was like Mount Fuji in Japan. He was always there, and he was always majestic.”
Robinson will be remembered again, as Grambling opens the 2007 home slate on Saturday against Alabama A&M. It will be the first game held at Robinson Stadium since its namesake’s passing.
Smith said this place, even as three head coaches have followed at GSU over the last decade, will always echo with cheers for Robinson.
Robinson himself seemed completely aware of that part of his legacy, the one made of concrete and steel, as he left the stadium on opening night more than a quarter century ago.
The suddenly quiet coach, awash in emotion, reached down and grabbed a single blade of grass from the Robinson Stadium turf.
“That we should have been thought worthy of this distinction gives us mixed emotions,” Robinson said, “of humility and profound gratitude.”
g g g
Lee's list: Best ever at 'The Rob'
http://www.thenewsstar.com/news/blogs/blog3/2007/09/lees-list-best-ever-at-rob.html
As Robinson Stadium enters its 25th season, I asked longtime Grambling assistant Melvin "Jim" Lee -- who coached at his alma mater for 40 seasons after helping the Tigers to a 1955 national championship as a player under Eddie Robinson -- to name his Top 5 most memorable games at the facility.
First, there was a good bit of reminescing: "We gained so much from our time with Coach," Lee said. "We got a chance to see the country and a portion of the world. It was something that being in a smaller school, you never thought would happen."
Then, we got down to Lee's list:
5. NORTH CAROLINA A&T, 1997
Grambling gamely battled, but ultimately fell to A&T by two, 37-35, in the legendary coach's final home contest.
After 57 seasons, and a still-standing Divison I record of 408 wins, Robinson's remarkable career was through. Lee had played for him, then coached with him, for nearly 50 of those years.
"It was memorable because it was the last game, and what it meant to Coach," Lee said, "not because of way we played. The kids tried their very best, but we just didn't have the talent."
4. JACKSON STATE, 1992
Grambling's march to a final national black college championship for Robinson included an emotional win over Jackson State, who had bested GSU in each of the previous two seasons.
Grambling won 34-31.
"We were able to have a really good game from Stevie Anderson out of Jonesboro," Lee said. "We beat them, after they'd had our number for years. That was a good team and a great game."
3. TEXAS SOUTHERN, 1991
Lee remembers well TSU's "really big hitters," including future New York Giants standout Michael Strahan, then a junior.
The game, as was often the case back in the day with Texas Southern, was very tight. A homecoming crowd at "The Rob" brought additional intensity to the proceedings.
"We got down to the very last, and Gilad Landau came in," Lee said. "Two seconds on the clock, and he kicked it right down the middle for the win."
Final score, Grambling 30-27.
2. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE, 1987.
Freshman kicker Willian Wrighten, on his fourth attempt, kicked a 21-yard field goal with no time remaining to give South Carolina State a two-point win during a nationally broadcast Thursday night ESPN game from Robinson Stadium.
The first kick was nearly from midfield, a desperation move. But a series of penalties on Grambling, including roughing the kicker and offsides, eventually made this nearly a chip shot.
Grambling fell 15-13.
"We weren't satisfied with the outcome, of course, but it's certainly one I remember," Lee said. "What a game."
1. ALCORN STATE, 1994
There has never, and may well never be, a more famous game at "The Rob" than this titanic struggle against future NFL MVP and Super Bowl quarterback Steve McNair.
Grambling scored and scored and scored, only to be matched stride for stride by McNair -- a senior who had never lost to Robinson and Lee. GSU won in the final tally, but barely: 62-56. And even then, the Tigers had to fight off a late ASU drive.
"It came down, again, to a last play with just seconds on the clock," Lee said. "Thank goodness we were leading by a few. That was a very satisfying."
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Remembering: Coach Rob as pioneer
'Our' Robinson also a pioneer
Like Jackie, late Grambling coach was gentle giant in fighting racism
April 17, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — A man named Robinson left this country forever changed, opening minds and then doors for generations of black athletes.
The focus this week has been on Jackie Robinson, the pioneering baseball player who broke the Major League color barrier 60 seasons ago.
Those who knew Eddie Robinson, Grambling’s late longtime former coach, say he belongs in the conversation, as well.
"Two men named Robinson changed America," said Richard Lapchick, who directs the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport and writes the annual Racial and Gender Report Card.
Eddie Robinson, who retired in 1997 having coached 57 seasons at GSU, died April 3 at age 88 from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease.
"The breakthroughs provided by the work of Coach Robinson might have been less dramatic than the day Jackie Robinson donned the Dodger uniform," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "However, they were no less meaningful."
Those thoughts were echoed throughout Eddie Robinson’s lavish funeral, held last Wednesday on the Grambling campus. Many focused on Robinson’s contributions outside of sports, calling him a deeply underappreciated civil rights activist.
"He knew the climate and could bridge that gap," said Curtis Armand, a Monroe school administrator and coach who played for Robinson in the 1940s. "The man was ahead of his time."
Grambling’s Robinson suceeded in a fashion remarkably similar to baseball’s Robinson, quietly excelling and, in so doing, altering sensibilities.
"None of my players or coaches were seen at demonstrations in the 1960s. We made our own," Robinson told Lapchick for the biography "Never Before, Never Again." "The civil rights movement was helping to change the laws. Our goal was to help to change attitudes."
By the time he’d finished, Robinson’s tiny college program had sold out Yankee Stadium, become the first to play overseas, established an annual football game on national broadcast television and sent hundreds of players into groundbreaking roles in the pro game.
His coaching career reached back into pre-war 1941, through the upheaval of the 1950s and ‘60s, past integration in the ’70s and into widespread acceptance, even celebrity.
"The contributions Eddie Robinson made changed the color of football in America," Grambling’s late longtime publicist Collie J. Nicholson once said. "He made his impact in an inobtrusive way. That helped to break down barriers in other areas."
Along the way, his life ran parallel to — and, in many ways, helped propel — momentous changes in the way people look at black America.
That included the people who played for him.
"He made a difference for rich and poor, for black and white," said former Robinson player Joseph B. Johnson, who later served as president at Grambling for 14 years through 1991. "He had a mission that did not include hate. He used his education and status in athletics not for personal gain, but for progress."
Lapchick rightly noted that Robinson would one day lie in state at the Louisiana capitol, just across town from the state-run Louisiana State University that once refused to sell him a ticket to a football game.
"He used the gridiron to bring us together," said Gov. Kathleen Blanco said, "and became one of the most important civil rights leaders in Louisiana history."
Her comments came during that remarkable memorial service in Baton Rouge. Only five others had ever been so honored at the capitol’s Memorial Hall.
"He tore down barriers to open the door for all players," Blanco said. "He always said, in America, anything is possible."
That would, however, take some time.
‘STARTING FROM SCRATCH’
"I’ve seen a lot," Robinson once said. "I have ridden on the back of the bus. I’ve drunk at segregated fountains. But I’m not trying to make anybody pay. All I wanted was an opportunity to prove that I can do what other people can do. I got that at Grambling."
In his earliest days as a coach in the Jim Crow-era, Robinson would have to map out friendly places along the route between games. That included minority-owned business and even other historically black colleges.
"You had to figure out where you could buy sandwiches, where you might be able to use the facilities," said former Grambling assistant coach Douglas Porter.
Lighter-skinned players and coaches, those who could pass as white, were sent on emergency runs for supplies.
Even into the 1960s, as Grambling began its national barnstorming football tours, the team still traveled to conference games in a Bluebird school bus — and was forced to stay and eat on the opposing team’s campus, since many local establishments wouldn’t have them.
"With what he accomplished — and the way he accomplished it, starting from scratch — there are very few that have done it any better," said Monroe native James "Shack" Harris, a quarterback on those mid-’60s teams under Robinson who is now a high-ranking NFL official. "Even with what he had to go through, there was no one more dedicated — and no one who enjoyed it more along the way."
Robinson, who at the time might have just finished leading his team into signature sports venues in major metropolitan areas, was once again reduced to second-class citizenship.
"You played, then you got on the bus and tried to make it back to Grambling before breakfast," Porter said. "You might make one stop, so guys could use the bathroom."
Sometimes, that meant a trip into a wooded area, if no safe haven could be found.
Later generations were surprised to learn that the Robinson legend was first established not on a brightly lit Bayou Classic dais but with leftovers and friendly handouts.
"Rob never grumbled," Porter said. "He might take a light-hearted approach, rather than finding negativity in the situation. He knew that in the final analysis, if we won, that was the main thing. He stayed focused."
Robinson’s passion for his job, and for this country, never wavered. As a consequence, his players’ never did, either.
"The fervor that he had for America endured, even though the playing field wasn’t level," Jackson said.
‘HE CAN NEVER BE REPLACED’
Jackie Robinson, as important as he was to baseball, didn’t solve all of its problems. The same could be said of Eddie Robinson, despite his sweeping influence in the game he loved.
Lapchick notes that there are fewer black college coaches today than there were 10 years ago when he began work on "Never Before, Never Again" with Robinson.
Some wonder if there ever will be another like the steel-willed Eddie Robinson, who coached so long at one place and did so much for so many. His patient pursuit of excellence would eventually convince the masses, one winning season at a time.
"He came to Grambling, in the middle of nowhere, and produced quality people," said Larry Metevia, a 1966 all-conference center for Robinson who later played four seasons for the Houston Oilers. "That’s all because of him. He was a leader in the civil rights struggles, as well as a great coach. He can never be replaced."
Lapchick would like to encourage others to try.
He is calling on NCAA President Myles Brand to create a rule which would require that blacks be part of the interview process for prospective college football coaches — similar to the so-called Rooney Rule in the NFL.
He said it should be called the Robinson Rule, and others said it would be a fitting tribute.
Though its unclear if he would have considered such a thing, it’s startling to think that Robinson — even as he established a Division I record for career wins that still stands — never got another college job offer, and barely a sniff from the NFL.
"He is a man that would have been special in any endeavor," Harris said. "We were just fortunate he ended up as a football coach at Grambling."
The field is still not level, despite the gains made by Robinson and his many former players.
"But it’s levelling more," said U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who presented a special proclamation honoring Robinson at his funeral, "thanks to him."
Like Jackie, late Grambling coach was gentle giant in fighting racism
April 17, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — A man named Robinson left this country forever changed, opening minds and then doors for generations of black athletes.
The focus this week has been on Jackie Robinson, the pioneering baseball player who broke the Major League color barrier 60 seasons ago.
Those who knew Eddie Robinson, Grambling’s late longtime former coach, say he belongs in the conversation, as well.
"Two men named Robinson changed America," said Richard Lapchick, who directs the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport and writes the annual Racial and Gender Report Card.
Eddie Robinson, who retired in 1997 having coached 57 seasons at GSU, died April 3 at age 88 from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease.
"The breakthroughs provided by the work of Coach Robinson might have been less dramatic than the day Jackie Robinson donned the Dodger uniform," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "However, they were no less meaningful."
Those thoughts were echoed throughout Eddie Robinson’s lavish funeral, held last Wednesday on the Grambling campus. Many focused on Robinson’s contributions outside of sports, calling him a deeply underappreciated civil rights activist.
"He knew the climate and could bridge that gap," said Curtis Armand, a Monroe school administrator and coach who played for Robinson in the 1940s. "The man was ahead of his time."
Grambling’s Robinson suceeded in a fashion remarkably similar to baseball’s Robinson, quietly excelling and, in so doing, altering sensibilities.
"None of my players or coaches were seen at demonstrations in the 1960s. We made our own," Robinson told Lapchick for the biography "Never Before, Never Again." "The civil rights movement was helping to change the laws. Our goal was to help to change attitudes."
By the time he’d finished, Robinson’s tiny college program had sold out Yankee Stadium, become the first to play overseas, established an annual football game on national broadcast television and sent hundreds of players into groundbreaking roles in the pro game.
His coaching career reached back into pre-war 1941, through the upheaval of the 1950s and ‘60s, past integration in the ’70s and into widespread acceptance, even celebrity.
"The contributions Eddie Robinson made changed the color of football in America," Grambling’s late longtime publicist Collie J. Nicholson once said. "He made his impact in an inobtrusive way. That helped to break down barriers in other areas."
Along the way, his life ran parallel to — and, in many ways, helped propel — momentous changes in the way people look at black America.
That included the people who played for him.
"He made a difference for rich and poor, for black and white," said former Robinson player Joseph B. Johnson, who later served as president at Grambling for 14 years through 1991. "He had a mission that did not include hate. He used his education and status in athletics not for personal gain, but for progress."
Lapchick rightly noted that Robinson would one day lie in state at the Louisiana capitol, just across town from the state-run Louisiana State University that once refused to sell him a ticket to a football game.
"He used the gridiron to bring us together," said Gov. Kathleen Blanco said, "and became one of the most important civil rights leaders in Louisiana history."
Her comments came during that remarkable memorial service in Baton Rouge. Only five others had ever been so honored at the capitol’s Memorial Hall.
"He tore down barriers to open the door for all players," Blanco said. "He always said, in America, anything is possible."
That would, however, take some time.
‘STARTING FROM SCRATCH’
"I’ve seen a lot," Robinson once said. "I have ridden on the back of the bus. I’ve drunk at segregated fountains. But I’m not trying to make anybody pay. All I wanted was an opportunity to prove that I can do what other people can do. I got that at Grambling."
In his earliest days as a coach in the Jim Crow-era, Robinson would have to map out friendly places along the route between games. That included minority-owned business and even other historically black colleges.
"You had to figure out where you could buy sandwiches, where you might be able to use the facilities," said former Grambling assistant coach Douglas Porter.
Lighter-skinned players and coaches, those who could pass as white, were sent on emergency runs for supplies.
Even into the 1960s, as Grambling began its national barnstorming football tours, the team still traveled to conference games in a Bluebird school bus — and was forced to stay and eat on the opposing team’s campus, since many local establishments wouldn’t have them.
"With what he accomplished — and the way he accomplished it, starting from scratch — there are very few that have done it any better," said Monroe native James "Shack" Harris, a quarterback on those mid-’60s teams under Robinson who is now a high-ranking NFL official. "Even with what he had to go through, there was no one more dedicated — and no one who enjoyed it more along the way."
Robinson, who at the time might have just finished leading his team into signature sports venues in major metropolitan areas, was once again reduced to second-class citizenship.
"You played, then you got on the bus and tried to make it back to Grambling before breakfast," Porter said. "You might make one stop, so guys could use the bathroom."
Sometimes, that meant a trip into a wooded area, if no safe haven could be found.
Later generations were surprised to learn that the Robinson legend was first established not on a brightly lit Bayou Classic dais but with leftovers and friendly handouts.
"Rob never grumbled," Porter said. "He might take a light-hearted approach, rather than finding negativity in the situation. He knew that in the final analysis, if we won, that was the main thing. He stayed focused."
Robinson’s passion for his job, and for this country, never wavered. As a consequence, his players’ never did, either.
"The fervor that he had for America endured, even though the playing field wasn’t level," Jackson said.
‘HE CAN NEVER BE REPLACED’
Jackie Robinson, as important as he was to baseball, didn’t solve all of its problems. The same could be said of Eddie Robinson, despite his sweeping influence in the game he loved.
Lapchick notes that there are fewer black college coaches today than there were 10 years ago when he began work on "Never Before, Never Again" with Robinson.
Some wonder if there ever will be another like the steel-willed Eddie Robinson, who coached so long at one place and did so much for so many. His patient pursuit of excellence would eventually convince the masses, one winning season at a time.
"He came to Grambling, in the middle of nowhere, and produced quality people," said Larry Metevia, a 1966 all-conference center for Robinson who later played four seasons for the Houston Oilers. "That’s all because of him. He was a leader in the civil rights struggles, as well as a great coach. He can never be replaced."
Lapchick would like to encourage others to try.
He is calling on NCAA President Myles Brand to create a rule which would require that blacks be part of the interview process for prospective college football coaches — similar to the so-called Rooney Rule in the NFL.
He said it should be called the Robinson Rule, and others said it would be a fitting tribute.
Though its unclear if he would have considered such a thing, it’s startling to think that Robinson — even as he established a Division I record for career wins that still stands — never got another college job offer, and barely a sniff from the NFL.
"He is a man that would have been special in any endeavor," Harris said. "We were just fortunate he ended up as a football coach at Grambling."
The field is still not level, despite the gains made by Robinson and his many former players.
"But it’s levelling more," said U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, who presented a special proclamation honoring Robinson at his funeral, "thanks to him."
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