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."
Showing posts with label Gary 'Big Hands' Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gary 'Big Hands' Johnson. Show all posts
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Remembering: Coach Rob's best
EDDIE ROB: Coach’s best
Six decades of Grambling talent are hard to narrow down
April 9, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
BATON ROUGE — They’ll gather, some of Eddie Robinson’s most noted pupils, to say goodbye today.
Former Grambling State players have been invited to a private ceremony, to be held at 9:30 a.m. in the State Capitol Memorial Hall, before Robinson’s public viewing.
“This is an opportunity for us to show our appreciation, a last hurrah for Coach,” said ex-GSU player and coach Doug Williams, who helped organize the event. “A viewing at the capitol is major credence to everything Coach accomplished. He deserves it.”
The bells of St. Joseph Cathedral will toll as the fallen coach’s body is carried up the capitol steps this morning at 9. Public viewing will then follow from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and then from 6-7 p.m., after a memorial ceremony in the House Chamber.
Still, most of today’s attention will fall on the athletes who come to pay their respects.
That got us to thinking about the best of the best. So, we compiled our own top five players from each of the six decades of Grambling football under Robinson.
Here are our suggestions, listed by decade and alphabetically:
1940s
1. Fred Hobdy: A guard on Grambling’s renowned “un” team in 1942 — which went unbeaten, untied and unscored upon — Hobdy returned from the war and coached young men for most of the next five decades. He worked first as an ends coach on the football team (he was an assistant on 1955’s undefeated squad), and then as Louisiana’s most successful college hoops coach ever. He was a member of the GSU Hall of Fame’s second class, along with Robinson, in 1981.
2. Willie “Automatic” Joseph: His name says it all: Joseph, over the 1947-49 seasons, established a 48-point school record for career points by a kicker that still stands. Grambling wouldn’t lose more than three games in a season over that span.
3. Legolian “Boots” Moore: Helped Grambling to its seminal 21-6 win over Southern University in 1947, a first-time-ever moment that Robinson always said put the program on the map. Later toured with the Harlem Globetrotters.
4. Dan H. Washington: A member of Robinson’s first squad, as well as its subsequent “un” team in 1942, Washington then touched thousands of lives as team trainer for 45 years before his death in 1996 at age 74.
5. Paul “Tank” Younger: Despite playing from 1945-48, still holds GSU record for career points with 369. His 86-yard blast against Morgan State in 1946 also remains the school’s longest non-scoring run.
In all, Younger scored 60 touchdowns — at the time a collegiate record, and still tops at Grambling — during his storied career under Robinson. Named black college player of the year in 1949, he was the first Grambling player inducted into the SWAC Hall of Fame, in 1973. Induction into the GSU hall followed in 1982.
Significantly, Younger went on to become one of the highest-ranking early black pro executives ever. He entered the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000, but died just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
1950s
1. Willie Davis: A two-time black college All-America defensive tackle in 1954-55, Davis anchored Grambling’s first national black college championship team — the 10-0 squad from 1955.
“Willie had hitting power,” Robinson once recalled. “He was our captain, an outstanding leader.”
Davis, after a Hall of Fame pro career, became one of black America’s most important business leaders. He was GSU’s second SWAC Hall of Famer in 1977, and was inducted into GSU hall in ’82.
2. Willie Brown: So deep was Grambling’s roster in the late 1950s, the only NFL player to intercept a least one pass in 16 consecutive seasons never played cornerback. Still he lettered all four years at split end and outside linebacker, and GSU won a title in 1960. A 1983 GSU Hall of Fame inductee, Brown has shepherded countless NFL careers as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders.
3. Ernie “Big Cat” Ladd: At 6-9 and 315 pounds, Ladd arrived in the late 1950s as arguably the biggest GSU star ever. A first-team all-league defensive lineman in his final season at Grambling in 1960, he helped Grambling to its first-ever SWAC championship. Inducted into the GSU hall in 1989, Ladd was an activist for players’ rights as a pro player and, later, an prison evangelist before passing last month after a long bout with cancer.
4. Melvin Lee: As quarterback of the offensive line at center on Grambling’s undefeated 1955 championship squad, Lee had an astonishing impact on generations of men at his alma mater. He would work for the next 40 seasons as a Robinson assistant, tinkering and perfecting Robinson’s fabled Wing-T offense.
5. Edward “Bo” Murray: A critical piece of Grambling’s 1955 undefeated team, the then-redshirt sophomore won the Orange Blossom Classic on scoring runs of 75 and 8 yards. He also kicked the extra point on his winning TD, beating Florida A&M 28-21. A 1995 GSU Hall of Fame inductee.
1960s
1. Junious “Buck” Buchanan: From his sophomore season onward, this tackle earned a trio of All-America and all-conference honors while helping Grambling to a 23-5-2 record.
Robinson would often gush about Buchanan’s dominance, even in practice: “If we went to the right, he would tackle us. If we went to the left, he would tackle us. If we went right at him, he would tackle us. Boy, he was really tough.”
Buchanan, a 1987 GSU Hall of Fame inductee, passed away in 1992 after a long bout with lung cancer. He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1996.
2. James “Shack” Harris: Harris passed for 4,128 yards and 43 touchdowns as Grambling went 24-5-1 between 1965-68, winning three straight SWAC titles.
“Coach Robinson had the utmost confidence in me that I could play, and that meant a lot, knowing how he felt,” Harris said. “Eddie Robinson is perhaps the greatest person that I’ve ever been around.”
In his senior season alone, Harris passed for 1,972 yards and 21 touchdowns on only 225 attempts. He was first-team All-SWAC in 1967-68, and also earned SWAC and GSU hall of fame honors.
Just as importantly, he broke barriers as an early starting NFL quarterback, and now serves as one of the league’s top-ranking pro personnel executives.
3. Charlie Joiner: Led all Grambling receivers from 1966-68, gaining 2,066 yards, on the way to a trio of conference titles. An amazing 78 of quarterback Harris’ 289 career completions at Grambling were hauled in by the steady Joiner, who led the team in touchdowns in 1966-67.
“Charlie goes all out,” Robinson once noted. “Beating the man, that’s where he excelled.”
He was named first-team All-SWAC three times, then joined the GSU Hall of Fame in 1986 and the SWAC hall in 1996. He has worked for years as a pro football assistant coach.
4. Frank Lewis: A do-it-all player who led Grambling in receiving in 1969-70 and in rushing in 1969, as well. He scored 28 touchdowns in his junior and senior seasons, averaging 18.65 yards per catch.
“I played with Frank and I don’t know if I have ever seen a better athlete than Frank,” Harris said. “I don’t know of anything that Frank couldn’t do.”
Lewis was named first-team all-conference as a junior and senior, and was second team as a sophomore when Grambling won the SWAC in 1968. He is a community leader in his hometown of Houma, working with the disadvantaged.
5. Jerry “Ghost” Robinson: A two-time first-team All-SWAC halfback from 1960-61, a stint that included Grambling’s first-ever league title in 1960. Led all Grambling rushers over those two seasons, running for 1,300 yards.
1970s
1. James “Hound” Hunter: A first-team All-SWAC honoree in 1974-75, he helped Grambling to the ’74 SWAC title. Hunter was the team leader in picks for two years, pulling down 16 passes in 1973-74. His eight in 1974 ranks fourth all-time at GSU; still shares school mark for most career returns for a touchdown.
2. Gary “Big Hands” Johnson: Holds the school record for most tackles in a career, with 367 between 1971-74 as GSU won four straight SWAC titles.
In his senior season of 1974 alone, Johnson had 134 tackles, 89 unassisted, and was named the team’s Most Valuable Player. That led to coveted invites to both the East-West Shrine Game and the Senior Bowl — and Johnson was named Most Valuable Player in both.
Johnson earned first-team All-SWAC in 1972-74, followed by 1996 induction into the GSU Hall of Fame, and then 1997 honors in both the College Football and SWAC halls of fame.
3. Robert Parham: Grambling’s leading rusher from 1978-80, he amassed 2,700 yards over that span as GSU won three consecutive SWAC titles. He was a first-team all-conference running back in each of those seasons.
4. Sammy White: Inducted into the SWAC Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of a collegiate career that included two school-leading years for receptions in 1973 and 1975 — and a co-offensive player of the year award as a senior. White was also first-team All-SWAC in ’73. He has shaped youngsters as an assistant football coach at his alma mater now for nine seasons.
5. Doug Williams: Williams, who established school passing marks that stood for nearly 25 years, started quickly — winning a SWAC title as a redshirt freshman in 1974.
“I was blessed to have some veterans around me and Coach Robinson ran a conservative offense that didn’t put too much pressure on me,” Williams said.
He would win another SWAC championship as a senior in 1977, earning second-team All-SWAC honors in 1975 and then offensive player of the year honors in his final collegiate campaign. He was inducted into the GSU hall in 1985 and the SWAC and College halls in 2001.
A groundbreaker as a Heisman Trophy finalist and a Super Bowl MVP, Williams is now a part of a second revolution as an NFL executive.
1980s
1. Trumaine Johnson: The 1980 and ’82 SWAC offensive player of the year (when he had 1,000 yards and averaged 14 yards a catch), Johnson was also first-team All-SWAC in 1981. Grambling won the conference championship in ’80. His 16 scores that season is still tied for fifth best in school history.
2. Fred Jones: GSU’s best receiver during the 1987-89 seasons, collecting a total of 2,000 yards as well as a SWAC title in his senior campaign. He also led Grambling in scoring in ’88 with 10 touchdowns, and earned first-team All-SWAC honors in ’88-89.
3. Albert “Snow” Lewis: Was first-team All-SWAC at cornerback in 1981-82, after leading the team in interceptions in 1981 with seven. A stellar performance earned him a starting position by popular vote in 2002 on the 50th anniversary all-time Senior Bowl team. Has worked as an assistant coach with the San Diego Chargers, in NFL Europe and at his alma mater.
4. Everson “Cubby” Walls: Still holds the school record for most interceptions in a season, 11 set in 1980. Was All-SWAC that season. Made national headlines recently for an act that said much about his character, donating a kidney to a former NFL teammate.
5. Mike Williams: Williams, brother and successor at quarterback to Doug, won SWAC titles in 1978-80 and was named first-team all-conference as both a junior and senior. He threw for 3,700 yards and 46 touchdowns at Grambling, and remains active in support of Grambling.
1990s
1. Curtis Caesar: Led all Grambling receivers in 1993-94, averaging 868 yards per season. A second-team 1994 All-SWAC honoree, his numbers for his final two years are still in Grambling’s all-time Top 20. Grambling shared its last co-championship in the SWAC under Robinson in 1994.
2. Walter Dean: The first SWAC player to win the Walter Payton Award, Dean was also the conference’s offensive player of the year in 1990. No senior has ever run for more than his 1,401 yards. Dean was also first-team all-conference in 1989, when GSU won the SWAC.
3. Eric Gant: A two-time All-SWAC first-teamer beginning in 1991, Gant is one of only 17 Grambling players ever invited to the Senior Bowl. Still holds school records for yards in season (1,417 in 1992) and yards in a career (3,795), as well those for rushing yards by sophomore and junior.
4. Gilad Landau: His 188 career total in PATs was a state record. An All-SWAC first-team kicker in 1992-93, Landau earned All-America honors in 1993 from The Sports Network — becoming a significant figure in the history of Jewish sports in America.
5. Kendrick Nord: Passed for 6,600 yards in 1993-95, beating Alcorn in an epic Robinson Stadium battle and also winning a SWAC title as a senior. Those career yards, not to mention his marks for completions and touchdowns, have only been bested twice ever at Grambling.
Six decades of Grambling talent are hard to narrow down
April 9, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
BATON ROUGE — They’ll gather, some of Eddie Robinson’s most noted pupils, to say goodbye today.
Former Grambling State players have been invited to a private ceremony, to be held at 9:30 a.m. in the State Capitol Memorial Hall, before Robinson’s public viewing.
“This is an opportunity for us to show our appreciation, a last hurrah for Coach,” said ex-GSU player and coach Doug Williams, who helped organize the event. “A viewing at the capitol is major credence to everything Coach accomplished. He deserves it.”
The bells of St. Joseph Cathedral will toll as the fallen coach’s body is carried up the capitol steps this morning at 9. Public viewing will then follow from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and then from 6-7 p.m., after a memorial ceremony in the House Chamber.
Still, most of today’s attention will fall on the athletes who come to pay their respects.
That got us to thinking about the best of the best. So, we compiled our own top five players from each of the six decades of Grambling football under Robinson.
Here are our suggestions, listed by decade and alphabetically:
1940s
1. Fred Hobdy: A guard on Grambling’s renowned “un” team in 1942 — which went unbeaten, untied and unscored upon — Hobdy returned from the war and coached young men for most of the next five decades. He worked first as an ends coach on the football team (he was an assistant on 1955’s undefeated squad), and then as Louisiana’s most successful college hoops coach ever. He was a member of the GSU Hall of Fame’s second class, along with Robinson, in 1981.
2. Willie “Automatic” Joseph: His name says it all: Joseph, over the 1947-49 seasons, established a 48-point school record for career points by a kicker that still stands. Grambling wouldn’t lose more than three games in a season over that span.
3. Legolian “Boots” Moore: Helped Grambling to its seminal 21-6 win over Southern University in 1947, a first-time-ever moment that Robinson always said put the program on the map. Later toured with the Harlem Globetrotters.
4. Dan H. Washington: A member of Robinson’s first squad, as well as its subsequent “un” team in 1942, Washington then touched thousands of lives as team trainer for 45 years before his death in 1996 at age 74.
5. Paul “Tank” Younger: Despite playing from 1945-48, still holds GSU record for career points with 369. His 86-yard blast against Morgan State in 1946 also remains the school’s longest non-scoring run.
In all, Younger scored 60 touchdowns — at the time a collegiate record, and still tops at Grambling — during his storied career under Robinson. Named black college player of the year in 1949, he was the first Grambling player inducted into the SWAC Hall of Fame, in 1973. Induction into the GSU hall followed in 1982.
Significantly, Younger went on to become one of the highest-ranking early black pro executives ever. He entered the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000, but died just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
1950s
1. Willie Davis: A two-time black college All-America defensive tackle in 1954-55, Davis anchored Grambling’s first national black college championship team — the 10-0 squad from 1955.
“Willie had hitting power,” Robinson once recalled. “He was our captain, an outstanding leader.”
Davis, after a Hall of Fame pro career, became one of black America’s most important business leaders. He was GSU’s second SWAC Hall of Famer in 1977, and was inducted into GSU hall in ’82.
2. Willie Brown: So deep was Grambling’s roster in the late 1950s, the only NFL player to intercept a least one pass in 16 consecutive seasons never played cornerback. Still he lettered all four years at split end and outside linebacker, and GSU won a title in 1960. A 1983 GSU Hall of Fame inductee, Brown has shepherded countless NFL careers as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders.
3. Ernie “Big Cat” Ladd: At 6-9 and 315 pounds, Ladd arrived in the late 1950s as arguably the biggest GSU star ever. A first-team all-league defensive lineman in his final season at Grambling in 1960, he helped Grambling to its first-ever SWAC championship. Inducted into the GSU hall in 1989, Ladd was an activist for players’ rights as a pro player and, later, an prison evangelist before passing last month after a long bout with cancer.
4. Melvin Lee: As quarterback of the offensive line at center on Grambling’s undefeated 1955 championship squad, Lee had an astonishing impact on generations of men at his alma mater. He would work for the next 40 seasons as a Robinson assistant, tinkering and perfecting Robinson’s fabled Wing-T offense.
5. Edward “Bo” Murray: A critical piece of Grambling’s 1955 undefeated team, the then-redshirt sophomore won the Orange Blossom Classic on scoring runs of 75 and 8 yards. He also kicked the extra point on his winning TD, beating Florida A&M 28-21. A 1995 GSU Hall of Fame inductee.
1960s
1. Junious “Buck” Buchanan: From his sophomore season onward, this tackle earned a trio of All-America and all-conference honors while helping Grambling to a 23-5-2 record.
Robinson would often gush about Buchanan’s dominance, even in practice: “If we went to the right, he would tackle us. If we went to the left, he would tackle us. If we went right at him, he would tackle us. Boy, he was really tough.”
Buchanan, a 1987 GSU Hall of Fame inductee, passed away in 1992 after a long bout with lung cancer. He was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1996.
2. James “Shack” Harris: Harris passed for 4,128 yards and 43 touchdowns as Grambling went 24-5-1 between 1965-68, winning three straight SWAC titles.
“Coach Robinson had the utmost confidence in me that I could play, and that meant a lot, knowing how he felt,” Harris said. “Eddie Robinson is perhaps the greatest person that I’ve ever been around.”
In his senior season alone, Harris passed for 1,972 yards and 21 touchdowns on only 225 attempts. He was first-team All-SWAC in 1967-68, and also earned SWAC and GSU hall of fame honors.
Just as importantly, he broke barriers as an early starting NFL quarterback, and now serves as one of the league’s top-ranking pro personnel executives.
3. Charlie Joiner: Led all Grambling receivers from 1966-68, gaining 2,066 yards, on the way to a trio of conference titles. An amazing 78 of quarterback Harris’ 289 career completions at Grambling were hauled in by the steady Joiner, who led the team in touchdowns in 1966-67.
“Charlie goes all out,” Robinson once noted. “Beating the man, that’s where he excelled.”
He was named first-team All-SWAC three times, then joined the GSU Hall of Fame in 1986 and the SWAC hall in 1996. He has worked for years as a pro football assistant coach.
4. Frank Lewis: A do-it-all player who led Grambling in receiving in 1969-70 and in rushing in 1969, as well. He scored 28 touchdowns in his junior and senior seasons, averaging 18.65 yards per catch.
“I played with Frank and I don’t know if I have ever seen a better athlete than Frank,” Harris said. “I don’t know of anything that Frank couldn’t do.”
Lewis was named first-team all-conference as a junior and senior, and was second team as a sophomore when Grambling won the SWAC in 1968. He is a community leader in his hometown of Houma, working with the disadvantaged.
5. Jerry “Ghost” Robinson: A two-time first-team All-SWAC halfback from 1960-61, a stint that included Grambling’s first-ever league title in 1960. Led all Grambling rushers over those two seasons, running for 1,300 yards.
1970s
1. James “Hound” Hunter: A first-team All-SWAC honoree in 1974-75, he helped Grambling to the ’74 SWAC title. Hunter was the team leader in picks for two years, pulling down 16 passes in 1973-74. His eight in 1974 ranks fourth all-time at GSU; still shares school mark for most career returns for a touchdown.
2. Gary “Big Hands” Johnson: Holds the school record for most tackles in a career, with 367 between 1971-74 as GSU won four straight SWAC titles.
In his senior season of 1974 alone, Johnson had 134 tackles, 89 unassisted, and was named the team’s Most Valuable Player. That led to coveted invites to both the East-West Shrine Game and the Senior Bowl — and Johnson was named Most Valuable Player in both.
Johnson earned first-team All-SWAC in 1972-74, followed by 1996 induction into the GSU Hall of Fame, and then 1997 honors in both the College Football and SWAC halls of fame.
3. Robert Parham: Grambling’s leading rusher from 1978-80, he amassed 2,700 yards over that span as GSU won three consecutive SWAC titles. He was a first-team all-conference running back in each of those seasons.
4. Sammy White: Inducted into the SWAC Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of a collegiate career that included two school-leading years for receptions in 1973 and 1975 — and a co-offensive player of the year award as a senior. White was also first-team All-SWAC in ’73. He has shaped youngsters as an assistant football coach at his alma mater now for nine seasons.
5. Doug Williams: Williams, who established school passing marks that stood for nearly 25 years, started quickly — winning a SWAC title as a redshirt freshman in 1974.
“I was blessed to have some veterans around me and Coach Robinson ran a conservative offense that didn’t put too much pressure on me,” Williams said.
He would win another SWAC championship as a senior in 1977, earning second-team All-SWAC honors in 1975 and then offensive player of the year honors in his final collegiate campaign. He was inducted into the GSU hall in 1985 and the SWAC and College halls in 2001.
A groundbreaker as a Heisman Trophy finalist and a Super Bowl MVP, Williams is now a part of a second revolution as an NFL executive.
1980s
1. Trumaine Johnson: The 1980 and ’82 SWAC offensive player of the year (when he had 1,000 yards and averaged 14 yards a catch), Johnson was also first-team All-SWAC in 1981. Grambling won the conference championship in ’80. His 16 scores that season is still tied for fifth best in school history.
2. Fred Jones: GSU’s best receiver during the 1987-89 seasons, collecting a total of 2,000 yards as well as a SWAC title in his senior campaign. He also led Grambling in scoring in ’88 with 10 touchdowns, and earned first-team All-SWAC honors in ’88-89.
3. Albert “Snow” Lewis: Was first-team All-SWAC at cornerback in 1981-82, after leading the team in interceptions in 1981 with seven. A stellar performance earned him a starting position by popular vote in 2002 on the 50th anniversary all-time Senior Bowl team. Has worked as an assistant coach with the San Diego Chargers, in NFL Europe and at his alma mater.
4. Everson “Cubby” Walls: Still holds the school record for most interceptions in a season, 11 set in 1980. Was All-SWAC that season. Made national headlines recently for an act that said much about his character, donating a kidney to a former NFL teammate.
5. Mike Williams: Williams, brother and successor at quarterback to Doug, won SWAC titles in 1978-80 and was named first-team all-conference as both a junior and senior. He threw for 3,700 yards and 46 touchdowns at Grambling, and remains active in support of Grambling.
1990s
1. Curtis Caesar: Led all Grambling receivers in 1993-94, averaging 868 yards per season. A second-team 1994 All-SWAC honoree, his numbers for his final two years are still in Grambling’s all-time Top 20. Grambling shared its last co-championship in the SWAC under Robinson in 1994.
2. Walter Dean: The first SWAC player to win the Walter Payton Award, Dean was also the conference’s offensive player of the year in 1990. No senior has ever run for more than his 1,401 yards. Dean was also first-team all-conference in 1989, when GSU won the SWAC.
3. Eric Gant: A two-time All-SWAC first-teamer beginning in 1991, Gant is one of only 17 Grambling players ever invited to the Senior Bowl. Still holds school records for yards in season (1,417 in 1992) and yards in a career (3,795), as well those for rushing yards by sophomore and junior.
4. Gilad Landau: His 188 career total in PATs was a state record. An All-SWAC first-team kicker in 1992-93, Landau earned All-America honors in 1993 from The Sports Network — becoming a significant figure in the history of Jewish sports in America.
5. Kendrick Nord: Passed for 6,600 yards in 1993-95, beating Alcorn in an epic Robinson Stadium battle and also winning a SWAC title as a senior. Those career yards, not to mention his marks for completions and touchdowns, have only been bested twice ever at Grambling.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Grambling greats: Tramon Douglas
Douglas brings East West glory on home
July 12, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Grambling State wide receiver Tramon Douglas' selection to the 2004 East West Shrine Football Classic roster means two distinct things to his coach.
· Douglas' credentials, even before his senior season gets under way, are in order.
· We're back, baby.
"He's been selected before the end of the year," says GSU's Doug Williams, who's quick to note that the game won't be played in San Francisco until January 2004. "That speaks volumes for what he's accomplished. They watched his work - and they liked him."
But Williams, as expected, brings the conversation back around to the big picture for his alma mater.
"He's got a chance to move us back where we used to be," says Williams, who was the MVP of the East West Shrine Game in 1977.
Amazingly, Douglas is the first GSU player selected for the game since fullback Eric Gant a decade ago.
You have to go back to Williams' glory days to find other Tigers who achieved the honor: Wide receiver Carlos Pennywell and defensive back Mike Harris were also invited in 1977; defensive back James Hunter and wide receiver Sammie White (GSU's current receivers coach) in 1976; and defensive tackle Gary "Big Hands" Johnson in 1974.
Douglas is aware of this rarefied company in the Grambling State family.
"I've seen a big difference in him since he's been selected," Williams says. "We've never had problem with Tramon's work habits - but he has stepped it up a notch."
Douglas earns this newest honor after an amazing junior season, where he broke the Southwestern Athletic Conference single-season receiving yards record with 1,704 yards on 92 catches - including 18 touchdowns.
The previous record holder, at 1,682 yards, was a certain Jerry Rice - the future Hall of Famer at San Francisco and Oakland who played collegiately at Mississippi Valley State.
Douglas was a consensus first team All-America selection - named to the Associated Press, the Sports Network and the Sheridan Broadcasting Network teams. He was also a first team All-SWAC selection.
"The East West game is one of the bigger games, along the lines of the Senior Bowl," Williams said. "A lot of the kids who get a chance to play there go on to play on Sundays. The rest of it will be left up to Tramon."
In fact, 86 of last year's roster were named to the NFL Draft or were signed as free agents. At least one East West Shrine Game player was signed by each of the 32 NFL teams.
"What I tried to let him understand is, if you can get this kind of shot, it's a different ballgame," Williams said. "He has to concentrate a little more. He might have to cut back on his fun a little bit."
That shouldn't be hard for the Douglas, a dedicated student who - even while leading Division 1-AA in average receiving yards per game - carried a 3.0 grade-point average. Douglas is also Grambling State's single-season receiving record holder in receptions, yards and touchdowns.
The adjustment comes in a season where every opposing defense is sure to make him the primary focus.
"Here's a kid that had 92 catches last year," Williams says. "But with the quality of guys we have coming back, if he got 65 or 70, he still has done his job. Going into a football game, people now know Tramon. But if the others stand up and do their jobs, he will be just as effective."
LSU's Nick Saban will be the head coach for the East team, while Oklahoma's Bob Stoops will direct the West squad.
All proceeds from the East West Shrine Game support children who receive medical care, at no cost, from the 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children throughout North America. To date, the game has raised more than $14 million for Shriners Hospitals.
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GSU's Eugene, Douglas preseason picks
July 17, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
The preseason football recognition is stacking up like cordwood at Grambling State University.
Quarterback Bruce Eugene and wide receiver Tramon Douglas - both seniors - have been named as first-team selections to the Sports Network's Division I-AA 2003 preseason All-America team. Douglas was named to the roster of January's East West Shrine Game recently, as well.
"If you look back over the past five years, and what we've done, the guys who are getting this recognition have earned it," says Grambling coach Doug Williams. "Bruce and Tramon deserve all the accolades."
Eugene was third overall in balloting for the first team. In all, 77 players from 12 different conferences were selected to the team, along with one player from an independent program.
Eugene, a 6-1, 245-pound junior, was a consensus offensive player of the year selection by the Pigskin Club of Washington, D.C., Sheridan Sports Network Black College and the SWAC - as well as being named a finalist for the Walter Payton Award, given to the top NCAA Division I-AA offensive player by the Sports Network.
Douglas, meanwhile, led the nation in receiving yards for I-AA, by averaging 142 yards per game. He is also the only person in SWAC history to record more than 1,700 receiving yards in a single season.
Together, they highlighted an explosive Grambling State offense that helped the Tigers to an unprecedented third straight National Black College and Southwestern Athletic Conference championships, with an 11-2 overall record.
Now, it's Williams' job to make sure they don't get weighted down with the awards.
"As coach, I have to protect against them becoming complacent," he says. "It's the same thing I was going through when I was getting them, and Coach Rob told me: `You've got to keep your feet on the ground.' We are fortunate that with people like Bruce and Tramon, they are going to keep their feet firmly planted."
Eugene, a New Orleans native, completed 269-of-543 passes for 4,455 yards including 43 touchdowns while rushing for 535 yards on 137 carries including nine touchdowns.
He also set a pair of SWAC single-season records in both total offensive plays (680) and passing attempts.
Meanwhile, Baton Rouge's Douglas is now also single-season receiving record holder in receptions, yards and touchdowns at GSU.
Williams thinks performances like those from players with another year of eligibility will ensure a few sniffs from the National Football League. The preseason recognition helps, too.
"I think it's a credit to our program," Williams said, "and it's certainly a credit to them."
The Big Sky Conference leads all I-AA leagues by placing 14 players on the Sports Network's I-AA preseason team, including five selected to the first team. Big Sky co-champ and 2002 national quarterfinalist Montana placed two on the initial squad, while Idaho State, Montana State and Northern Arizona each garnered one selection.
Other players of Louisiana interest who made the first-team squad include cornerback Chris Thompson of Nicholls State; and offensive guard Dwight Hudler, linebacker Roderick Royal and defensive tackle John Paul Jones, all of McNeese State.
Linebacker Ryan Garrison of McNeese and safety Lenny Williams of Southern were honorable mention picks.
The Sports Network also administers two awards named for Grambling figures - the Buck Buchanan and Eddie Robinson awards, presented annually to the division's top defensive player and coach, respectively.
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Ball control
GSU's Tramon Douglas does it all again, finally
September 24, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - A record-breaking receiving day for Grambling State's Tramon Douglas, in the end, didn't mean that much to him.
"I would rather have one catch and we win, than have all those catches in a loss," the senior receiver said. GSU fell 31-20 to McNeese State on Saturday, while Douglas set a new school mark with 17 grabs.
What it meant to the team, however, is something else entirely: As goes Douglas, so goes Grambling State.
And, like the offense, Douglas started slowly.
"He's giving us everything he has. He's made some tough catches for us," says Tigers coach Doug Williams. "But that little bruise on his knee hasn't always let him be Tramon Douglas."
He's talking about the Tramon Douglas who averaged nearly eight catches a game in his All-American junior season at Grambling State - on his way to breaking Jerry Rice's Southwestern Athletic Conference single-season receiving yards record with 1,704 yards.
After an opening loss in 2002 against McNeese, when Douglas had only one catch, the Tigers reeled off 10 straight wins - on the way to a third-straight SWAC championship.
But Douglas didn't practice much during the summer, hobbled by that nagging knee problem. The week before GSU's season opener, he wasn't even in pads at practice.
Douglas, of course, started - but again wasn't a factor in Grambling State's second-straight season-opening thrashing, pulling in just two catches for 30 yards as the Tigers were blanked 29-0.
"He's working hard every day. He's not sitting down on it," Williams says. "It's not that anything is torn. It's just one of those bruises that you can't shake."
The loss underscored the complementary nature of Douglas' success and that of his quarterback.
The longer it took Douglas to get healthy, the longer it clearly would take for Bruce Eugene to get on track this year.
The Tigers' impressive showing in this year's rematch against McNeese, the nation's top-ranked Division I-AA school, is just the latest example.
Douglas's 17 catches - only two fewer than all of the other GSU receivers combined - served to keep the game whisker-close until the very end. He broke the previous school record of 16 set by former wideout Nate Singleton against Virginia Union on Sept. 14, 1991.
"I knew the team needed me this game," Douglas says. "I wanted to step up and show them that Grambling can play with the best of them."
He was rewarded with the most rare of honors: Douglas has been named one of The Sports Network's Division I-AA players of the week - the first from the SWAC to receive that designation this season. He also was named one of I-AA.org's All-Stars and the SWAC's co-offensive player of the week.
Something interesting happened, however, as Douglas slowly found his footing.
Grambling State discovered some of its other receivers: Eugene threw to an astounding nine different people in a win over Alabama A&M - including scoring passes to juniors Moses Harris and Chris Day.
"The good part about it is, Moses Harris made some good plays for us," Williams says. "Tim Abney is making tough catches. We're getting a lot of people involved. I was glad to see Chris Day score a TD; that helped his confidence level."
While Douglas was smashing records against McNeese State, Harris and breakout freshman star Abney piled up 125 yards receiving combined.
"We knew coming into this, after Tramon had a breakout season last year, that he wasn't going to be able to get as many passes," Eugene says. "Our focus has been to get other people open, then come to Tramon. So far this year, that's what's been happening."
Still, without his go-to guy, Eugene sometimes looked tentative in the first two games - like he was thinking too much.
"You can't depend on just one guy," Williams says he told Eugene. "He was feeling it. You can't just look Tramon's way, especially when he's not there."
Then that first touchdown finally came - with nine seconds left in the half in Week 2 at Lorman, Miss. The 20-yarder was hauled in, of course, by Douglas.
Grambling State has played better every successive quarter since.
"The fact that Tramon is still not 100 percent has hampered us in certain situations," says Tigers offensive coordinator Melvin Spears. "Overall, though, we've got some guys who can come along. It's just that Bruce has to be a little more patient. Mechanically, he still was not always in a good throwing position. A lot of his pre-snap routine wasn't as good as it has been."
After having scored just that one touchdown in the previous game and a half, Eugene and the Tigers then exploded for 12 scores in the next eight quarters of play.
Eugene-to-Douglas accounts for five of them. Eugene has run in four more by himself.
And so it goes.
"It slowed him down, but one thing about Tramon: He's a fighter. He'll never quit. He'll never give up," Eugene says, sounding ever more confident. "Although the knee isn't 100 percent, he's still going to be out there giving it his all. We're grateful for that."
Getting better
Tramon Douglas has gotten steadily more involved in the Grambling State offense this year, as he's recovered from a lingering knee problem:
· At San Jose State: Two catches, 30 yards, no TDs.
· At Alcorn State: Seven catches, 83 yards, two TDs.
· Vs. Alabama A&M: Six catches, 75 yards, one TD.
· Vs. McNeese State: 17 catches, 216 yards, three TDs.
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Douglas will sit out Prairie View game
October 1, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - Grambling State wide receiver Tramon Douglas - coming off minor surgery to torn meniscus cartilage in his knee - won't be starting against Prairie View on Saturday in Dallas.
Not that he doesn't want to.
"I told him yesterday that he should be ready by (the Oct. 11 home game against) Mississippi Valley - and he said, `No, Prairie View,'" sixth-year GSU coach Doug Williams said at a Tuesday morning news conference.
"That's Tramon. He's a tough kid. The type of surgery that he had - on torn cartilage - is usually a two-week type thing with the way doctors go in now. It's not a major process. Basically, he can play - if we coaches let him."
The meniscus is a shock-absorbing cartilage in the middle of the knee.
Douglas leads the SWAC in receiving yards and receptions - with 32 catches for 404 yards and six scores in the first four games of the year. That includes a now-understandably quiet opening week, when he pulled down just two passes for 30 yards.
Douglas - who also leads the SWAC in scoring - says he woke up on Sept. 21, after his record-breaking 17-catch performance against McNeese State, and the pain was simply too great.
He's been playing with what he thought was a bruised knee for weeks. When Douglas went to the doctor that Monday, he found out he'd had the cartilage tear since two-a-days last summer.
"When you want to play - and you want to win - you don't think about it until after the game," Douglas says. "The injury was slowing me down, but I just wanted to help my team."
Douglas mingled with his teammates during Tuesday afternoon practices, taking a short break from rehabbing with laps at Robinson Stadium.
"He running and doing everything else," Williams says. "I still don't think we're going to play him."
That means Tigers quarterback Bruce Eugene will have to continue to spread it around. He has completed passes to eight, then seven receivers in the past two weeks.
"What makes Tramon such a good, clutch receiver is: When it's time to make a play, Tramon knows how to make a play," Williams said. "If we can get the other guys to play and think like Tramon, we'll be a lot further along."
Douglas, for his part, thinks the Tigers will be fine as he finishes healing up.
"Our offense is designed for anybody to make plays. I don't think they are going to miss a beat," Douglas says. "You've got Bruce back there at quarterback - and that's enough right there."
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GSU still in good hands
Young receivers continue making big impact
October 12, 2003
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - Senior Tramon Douglas rejoined his team briefly Saturday for pregame warmups, under a dark and rolling sky at Robinson Stadium.
Not that Grambling State really needed him against still-winless Mississippi Valley State. GSU breezed to a 45-6 victory.
I've seen the future - though, with just 6,397 in attendance, I was one of the few - and it is Tiger receivers Moses Harris, Tim Abney and Chris Day.
Given an opportunity when Douglas missed a game after minor knee surgery, Abney and Day each caught two touchdowns against Prairie View. Harris answered the call Saturday with an 111-yard day and a touchdown.
"We have had a couple of soldiers down," GSU receivers coach Sammy White said. "But that is no excuse. Everybody in this group should want to be as good as Tramon Douglas."
Over the past two weeks, they have been.
Spreading it around is not only helping Grambling State win football games while their All-American heals up - and win big - it's helping ensure the team's future during quarterback Bruce Eugene's final season in 2004.
"We work together every day in practice, so it depends on my getting the ball there," Eugene said. "You're going to miss Tramon - he's an All-American receiver. He's going to make plays and get open. But this has been a chance for our young receivers to see what we can do without him."
Day, the Troy State transfer, scored on a touchdown pass of 35 yards in the second quarter against Valley. Catches by Day of 25 yards and Abney of 24 yards keyed a Tigers' drive that would make the final score 45-6.
That was the second time running back Ab Kuaan scored - one of five players to reach the end zone for Grambling State.
Not that it started that way.
In fact, it seemed as if Grambling State - loose and effective for the good teams, lazy and disorganized for the bad ones - had only just met in the inflatable Tiger during pre-game ceremonies. That trend was personified in Eugene, benched for not attending class this week.
But, once again, the Tigers shook themselves awake late in the game - primarily through the play of the defense, which held the Devils to negative yardage in the second half.
Even so, the plays that seemed the most important were those by Harris, Day and Abney, a sign of good things to come as the competition gets tougher - and as Douglas approaches the end of his college eligibility."
When somebody goes down, one of the other guys step up," said Harris, a smoking junior from Dallas. "You can't just key in on one person. With our depth, we can't be stopped."
Abney, a former Neville High standout who just turned 19, has became known as a go-to receiver for the tough yards. He was third in team yardage going into the Valley game, trailing only Douglas and Harris.
"There's more than Tramon on this football team," GSU coach Doug Williams said. "Tim has gotten better each week. You're talking about a freshman who has played big for us."
Williams chuckles: "I don't think he even knows what he's doing yet."
His coach is kidding, but a couple of key drops early in the season prove that Abney hasn't quite rounded the learning curve yet.
"He needs a little more patience," said White, a Richwood High alum who started for Minnesota in two NFL championship games, logging a touchdown pass in Super Bowl XI. "He gets in a hurry, once the ball gets to him. Trying to get upfield, he doesn't always secure the ball. That's cost him at least two touchdowns this year. That comes with time."
Harris said he was proud of his play on Saturday, but he's not finished.
"That's to be continued," said Harris, smiling broadly.
Day is clearly gaining confidence with every game, as well.
"When you've got four, five or six guys catching the ball," GSU offensive coordinator Melvin Spears said, "that says a lot about our receiving corps and the job that Coach White is doing. We'll be going to a lot of guys down the stetch."
Douglas, you see, is expected back next week.
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GSU's Douglas returns to take on next SWAC foe
October 18, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - The lethal combination of quarterback Bruce Eugene-to-receiver Tramon Douglas sparked a third consecutive Southwestern Athletic Conference championship for Grambling State last season.
So, teams at the bottom of the conference standings might have thought they'd found an opening when Eugene's favorite receiver went down for three weeks in September after minor knee surgery.
Not only did GSU's junior signal-caller find new targets, but the Tigers discovered a rushing attack to help close off opponents. They haven't lost a SWAC game, even without their All-American receiver.
Re-enter Douglas - now all healed and, well, pumped.
"When I get back," he said, "it's going to make my job a lot easier. We've got a lot of people now who can step up. Bruce doesn't have to look for me every time now. He's got a lot of weapons to choose from. They won't be able to double team me now."
Pity Prairie View A&M and Mississippi Valley State - neither has a conference win - which nevertheless lost to a hobbled GSU by a combined 110-13 in the last two weeks.
Up next is the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, sitting just above PVAMU in the West standings with a 1-3 SWAC record.
Now, the Golden Lions not only have to worry about the return of the SWAC's best pitch-and-catch tandem, but also a cast-of-thousands receiving crew as a second option - then a dangerous new running game led by sophomore Ab Kuaan, who has 225 yards on the year.
"Working on rushing against some teams that aren't as good is going to help us in the long run, against the Jackson States, the Alabama States - and particularly in the Bayou Classic, where you've got to run the ball," said Melvin Spears, GSU's offensive coordinator and assistant head coach.
Standing in sharp contrast is Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which has managed just one score and a couple of field goals in two weeks.
"They lost a tough game this past week, 7-6 to Texas Southern," said Grambling State coach Doug Williams. "There wasn't a whole lot of offense."
That also doesn't bode well against a Grambling State team with a resurgent defense.
"Except for some spurts here or there - against McNeese, they missed some tackles - overall, I think they have played pretty well," Williams said. "If the offense can be as consistent as the defense, it makes for a pretty good game."
The return of both Eugene and Douglas for a full game suggests the offense will be.
Eugene sat out the first quarter against MVSU after missing too much class, allowing the Devils to keep the game within one point. He then threw four touchdown passes on the way to an easy 45-6 victory.
Douglas was named a Division I-AA player of the week by the Sports Network after a school-record number of receptions two weeks before against McNeese State, but hasn't played again after surgery to repair torn cartilage.
Still, even with Douglas and Eugene in and out of the lineup, Grambling State remains the No. 1 in SWAC passing offense, first downs, third-down conversions and total offense.
"We won't be able to control the game like we did last Saturday," UAPB coach Lee Hardman told The Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial. "But that is the whole goal. We want to control the ball - and keep Eugene off the field."
Good idea: Though he's also missed parts of two other quarters in blowout wins so far, Eugene is still the SWAC's top passer and total offense leader.
"Bruce has worked very hard this week," Spears said. "He's been coming in on his own time, doing some extra conditioning. He knows now that we are very serious about him going to school."
That offense squares off against another of the best defenses in the SWAC, the No. 3 ranked Golden Lions. GSU is the No. 4 defense in the conference.
"I think they have some talent," Spears said. "They mix their scheme up on defense. I'm sure they are expecting us to come in as a wide-open team, trying to adjust to some of the things we did last year. But we've got some wrinkles for them. One of the things that has made us tougher, week-in and week-out, is that there is always a different mix."
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JUST THE FACTS
GRAMBLING - Texas Southern tried to play keep away with Grambling State.
After a scoreless first quarter, however, all TSU could do was try to keep up.
GSU posted 28 unanswered points to finish the half, then another 20 to win 48-15. Both of Texas Southern's scores came when the game was already decided.
Junior Grambling State quarterback Bruce Eugene finished with an eye-popping five TD strikes - and no interceptions.
"It felt really good to get back on track," said Eugene, who had his worst day in more than a year last week against Jackson State.
Senior receiver Tramon Douglas' 29-yard reception to the TSU 15 set up the first of six touchdowns by Grambling State, which moved to 6-0 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference's West Division.
Two consecutive TSU mistakes led to 14 more GSU points in the next 10 minutes of play - first a botched snap on a punt, then a blocked punt.
"When they started making mistakes, we went up 21-0 - and that took them out of their ballgame, which was keep away," said GSU coach Doug Williams.
Eugene would also throw Grambling State touchdown passes to Henry Tolbert, Chris Day - and two to Moses Harris. Ab Kauuan added a score on the ground.
Brian Morgan missed a long field-goal attempt as the half ended, but finished Grambling State's first scoring drive of the second half with a 37-yarder to give GSU a 31-point lead. A 41-yard GSU field goal opened the fourth quarter.
Texas Southern added some mild late drama, as the gutsy scrambling of quarterback Gerred Lunnon led to TSU's first points of the day. Kicker Vincent Patrick turned a botched snap on the extra point into a two-point conversion when his pass was bobbled then caught, then fumbled and then recovered by Adam Penna - sending the crowd into a frenzy.
"I'm just sorry we didn't get to it any earlier than we did," said TSU coach Bill Thomas, whose team falls to 3-2 in the SWAC. "Who knows what might have happened?"
TSU briefly subbed Carlos Pierson for Lunnen in the fourth, and he threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Damarcus Jenkins - just Texas Southern's second scoring pass on the year.
Lunnon and Pierson had 139 yards passing combined.
Eighty-seven of Texas Southern's 127 yards on the ground came from scrambles by Lunnen.
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Back in really good hands
· A return to form by WR Tramon Douglas allowed GSU's homecoming fans to leave game happy.
November 2, 2003
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - This was an afternoon of receiving redemption for senior Tramon Douglas, the day he finally looked like No. 5 again. Thanks to him, Texas Southern will almost surely lose its ranking as the SWAC's No. 1 pass defense.
"Tramon Douglas made two catches that I thought were outstanding," Grambling State coach Doug Williams enthused - still smiling broadly, after broadsiding Texas Southern 48-15.
There was Douglas, still recovering from minor knee surgery, pulling in a dramatic 29-yard catch that set up GSU's first score of the day, five minutes into the second quarter.
There was Douglas, making a heart-splashing, one-handed catch for a first down - then a di-i-i-i-i-iving catch on a 36-yard TD pass to put GSU up 38-0 late in the third quarter.
"I don't even know how he made that one," Williams said. "People were draped all over him."
He led all Grambling State receivers in every quarter of play - finishing with 135 yards, more than his last two games combined.
"He's not all the way back," said GSU quarterback Bruce Eugene, who threw five touchdowns to four receivers on this day. "But he's almost there."
Douglas' problems started in training camp, when the coaching staff thought he had a bruised knee. As the season wore on, the pain worsened - and after Grambling State's Sept. 20 home game, a doctor's visit revealed torn cartilage.
Since the team had a bye week, then two games against SWAC cellar-dwellers, Douglas decided to have the minor surgery four games into his senior year.
He thought he might miss two weeks. The truth is, he wasn't up to speed for more than a month.
"I have pain - Monday through Friday, in practice," Douglas admits. "In the game, though, I really don't feel it.
Yet, while he'd hauled in eight touchdown passes before facing TSU, Douglas had had only one since returning from the knee problem.
Injuries can change players, making them far too reflective. That seemed to be what was happening with Douglas.
"He was not being aggressive," said Melvin Spears, GSU's offensive coordinator and assistant head coach. "He was too tentative. It was like he was replaying it in his mind."
Douglas, you'll remember, set a new school mark for receptions in that Sept. 20 game - and on a bum knee - against McNeese State. Tentative is not his style.
Yet, in his first two return appearances, Douglas had just 111 combined yards in receiving - well under half of what he had gained in that record-breaking game alone.
"Tramon has not been giving us what we really need," Williams said. "I don't know whether he is still favoring his leg or not. He needed to play better."
Coaches brought him in - for film work, for long talks.
"There were battles he used to win 100 percent of the time - and now he wasn't," Spears said. "We told him: `You've got to make a determination on whether you are actually ready to participate.' "
The light came on, and he played lights out Saturday - averaging 17 yards per catch. Meaning, when you threw it to Douglas, he moved the chains. Just like the old days.
"I went to the sideline, after his TD catch," Williams said, "and I told him: Now, you look like Tramon Douglas."
These last few games couldn't be more critical for Douglas, as his senior year dwindles away. Several NFL scouts have passed through Grambling State's practices, many more are attending the games - and each expects to catch a glimpse of the SWAC's record holder for receiving yards in a single season. (He eclipsed a mark set in 1984 at Mississippi Valley State by future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.)
"I'm thinking - and hoping - that most of Tramon's situation has been in his head," Williams said. "When you have a knee injury, it's not something that you get over. You've got to believe that you're not going to hurt your knee again. I'm hoping he's there."
All through this week, it appeared that he was certainly on this way. Saturday's eight-catch afternoon proved it: Douglas made pinpoint cuts and seemed to have regained his burst off the line - one that looks like he's starting in third gear.
Compare that with his performances at Pine Bluff and JSU, where you saw a player using technique to get open. Nothing wrong with that. But it meant something was missing with GSU's No. 1 target.
"It's something," Douglas said, "that will get better with time. Playing the season, you'll have some injuries. I know I'm not going to be 100 percent. But I've got to play through it."
Grambling State's coaches have let Douglas do that - and it's paid dividends, finally. The talk he had with Williams clearly played a role, too.
Douglas said it was a pride thing.
"He said: `Coach, you called me out,' " Williams recalled. "We had a good heart-to-heart talk. The real Tramon Douglas showed up."
Nick Deriso is sports editor at The News-Star, 411 N. Fourth St., Monroe, La., 71201. Contact him at (318) 362-0234 or at nderiso@thenewsstar.com.
GAME RECAP
GOOD PLAY
A highlight-reel, finger-tip interception by senior Grambling State defensive back Octavius Bond in the end zone saved a score to open the game by Texas Southern. The drive was keyed on a 1-yard fourth-down dive by TSU quarterback Gerred Lunnon and a huge penalty in the red zone, when junior GSU linebacker John Petty was charged with a late hit - giving TSU first and goal.
BAD PLAY
TSU's Lunnon, on the first play of the third-quarter drive, took off on a quarterback draw - fooling the Grambling State defense into giving up 22 yards. Lunnon's scrambling play briefly envigorated Texas Southern, which was down by 38 points. Texas Southern ran the same play three more times on that drive - getting 14 yards on one try and, ultimately, a touchdown. A two-point conversion by TSU made it 38-8.
BIG HIT
Two minutes into the game, junior defensive tackle Jimmy Zachary exploded through the line to smack Timothy Boutte on Texas Southern's first drive of the day. Zachary's tackle sent Boutte back two yards, leaving TSU with second-and-two. Zachary later recovered a fumble on the TSU 13 to open the third quarter.
SOMETHING SPECIAL
TSU was still holding slim upset hopes before the half, as it was only down by a touchdown. Then disaster struck on successive drives: Punting from the TSU 40, the snap went wide on punter Adrian Vera. Senior GSU defensive back Travis Massey recovered the fumble at the Texas Southern 20. Then a blocked punt on the next series gave GSU the ball on the TSU 9. Both miscues led to touchdowns.
EXTRA POINT
GSU started slow - again. The difference? Texas Southern started slower. GSU's early inconsistency meant GSU's punters couldn't help the defense much in the first quarter. Texas Southern's second and third drives began at midfield. But TSU had its own problems on offense: Both possessions ended with punts. So, the first quarter was scoreless. But then GSU followed its usual script, piling up 38 points in the second and third periods - all before TSU got its first touchdown of the day.
Tiger bites: Legendary former GSU sports information director Collie J. Nicholson was an honorary captain for the game. ... In the last meeting between Grambling State and TSU, Corey Alexander returned three kickoffs for 186 yards - including a 98-yard touchdown. ... There was an overflow crowd for homecoming at "The Hole," as Robinson Stadium has been dubbed by some of the players. Announced crowd was 21,065.
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GSU seniors close out stellar careers
November 30, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
NEW ORLEANS - The Grambling State seniors of 1999 were the last to see their season end in New Orleans.
Each group since has played two weeks after the Bayou Classic in the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship game.
Saturday's slim 44-41 loss to Southern changed that.
"When I look at these players who are in their last Bayou Classic or their last game at Grambling, and what they have contributed, you want to put your arms around them," GSU coach Doug Williams said. "There has been blood, and sweat, and tears."
Two of the hardest-hit seniors were wide reciever Tramon Douglas and linebacker Antoine Smith.
Douglas had his lowest total yards since playing UAPB on Oct. 18, Douglas' first game back after minor knee surgery caused him to miss a month of the season.
Smith was involved in a scary first-half collision that broke his shin.
"It's disappointing because I didn't even finish the second quarter - and it was the last game of my career at Grambling," Smith said. "I was in so much pain it was tough for me to focus on everything that was going on on the field."
Douglas leaves GSU as the school leader in receptions (for a year and in a game), receiving yards and touchdowns - and the SWAC leader for receiving yards in a single season, a record previously held by future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.
"I love him with all my heart," said GSU quarterback Bruce Eugene, who counted Douglas as his favorite target. "I'm hurting because we went out like this - for this to be his last game."
Douglas had a team-leading nine catches for 83 yards on Saturday.
"It's didn't hit me all week, and now it finally has - I'm losing my top receiver," said GSU receivers coach Sammie White. "We thought we were going to play another one."
Seniors this year include: DE Calvin Arnold; DB Octavius Bond; SS John Brantley; DB Earin Bridges; WR Corey Brownfield; DL Traveres Comegys; WR Calvin Colquitt; TE Gershone Jessie; DB Seneca Lee; and OL Warner Stewart, among others.
"It becomes emotional in that dressing room," Williams said. "I always go back to something my dad used to tell me. We'd sit around, when he was living, and he'd say: `Man, the best of friends must part sometimes.' "
Bond finished with 146 yards on kickoff returns. Colquitt had four catches for 47 yards.
"It hasn't hit them yet," Williams said. "But they will miss Grambling. When Randy Hymes first left, and he was in Baltimore that first year, he'd call me. He'd say: `Coach, I wish I was still at Grambling.' It's just something about it. You missed being there. You miss being a part of it. It takes some getting used to."
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Stopwatch can't measure heart
March 22, 2004
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
He averaged more yards per catch than celebrated Minnesota receivers like Cris Carter, Anthony Carter and Ahmad Rashad.
But Richwood High product Sammy White might never have become a three-time All Pro in today's NFL. He simply wasn't fast enough in a league that now values a player's score on the 40-yard dash more than any intangible.
"It's totally different now," said White, who has been named offensive coordinator at Grambling State, his alma mater. "I think speed is overrated. When it comes down to it, it is all about execution - fast, slow, big, small, you've got to execute."
White, even a step behind Rashad on what would be a Super Bowl team, succeeded because he was all heart.
"He was tougher than boot leather," former Vikings coach Bud Grant once said. "He practiced every week, played every game. He got beat up a little bit, but he was tough."
Certain Hall of Famer Jerry Rice - another former all-Southwestern Athletic Conference receiver - wouldn't have been chosen by these speed-obsessed modern teams. Prospects at positions like defensive tackle are even evaluated by their 40 times today.
That made the running portion of Friday's pro day for Grambling State players all the more important. There, Earin Bridges, Octavius Bond, Calvin Colquitt, Tavares Comegys, Chris Day, Tramon Douglas, Gershone Jessie and Seneca Lee were measured and tested for possible draftability.
They were weighed. They jumped. Some lifted weights.
But it all came down to those four 10-yard lengths to be run at Joe Aillet Stadium in Ruston.
Douglas, trying to recover from a knee injury in the off-season before his senior year, scored a disappointing 4.84 on his first try - but seemed to have wobbled a bit instead of running in a straight line, something that would have added to his time.
A second run a few minutes later was only slightly better, as Douglas finished at 4.83.
"I've been trying to get to where I was," said a disappointed Douglas, who added that he'd been timing at 4.5 on a track in Houston where he is rehabbing the injury. "A 4.8 kills me, though. It's hurts my pride."
Yet, despite that high number, Douglas is the same player who set a new school record for receptions in a single contest on Sept. 20 - just days before he was forced to have surgery to repair torn meniscus cartilage on his knee.
"In the McNeese game, I was dying out there," Douglas said. "It was like I was a wounded animal - and that's the worst animal you want to mess with. I didn't know if it was going to be my last game and I wanted to give everybody something to think about."
He leaves Grambling State holding every significant school record for receivers - and that's saying something in this pass-first offense.
"If you question his toughness, just look at last year," White said. "He played through pain. He showed he could come through time after time."
In the end, Douglas had the production - he averaged 92 yards a game, despite missing three in 2003 - to warrant a look in the NFL Draft. But he didn't display the speed for the pro scouts.
That 4.8 means Douglas will have to try to get on somewhere after the draft.
The team that takes a chance on Tramon Douglas will be happy it did.
"He's like a Sammy White," Spears said. "He'll make the team, at first, because he's an outstanding special-teams player. Then, they'll discover that he's elusive in the open field - and that he produces."
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HE'S GONE
Grambling passing attack will be minus Douglas
March 27, 2004
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - An injury to departed senior Tramon Douglas early last season taught Grambling State something about its young crew of receivers: There were other talents on the team.
"We showed that we have a great group of receivers," said interim GSU coach Melvin Spears. "It was a blessing, in a way, because they stepped up to the plate when Tramon Douglas wasn't in there."
Spears was promoted from offensive coordinator in February when sixth-year coach Doug Williams left for an NFL job. Spears then promoted receivers coach Sammy White to take over the offense.
They led the Grambling State offense through its first spring drills in an evening session on Friday. The players were so excited about getting started that they began workouts half an hour early. Spring practice continues at 10 a.m. today.
"We've got a really young group of receivers," Spears said. "But they are very talented."
The most experienced wideout - and perhaps speediest - that GSU will work with this spring is senior Moses Harris.
"Under the tutelage of Coach White, he's just going to get better," Spears said.
Harris was the team's second-leading receiver in 2003, with 50 catches for 713 yards and six scores.
Also returning this year: Neville High product Tim Abney, who led the team in average yards per catch among receivers with 10 or more receptions. His six TD grabs as a freshman tied him for second on the team in 2003.
But because of a lingering groin injury, Abney sat out Friday's practice and may miss a large portion of the spring.
One of the most intriguing new receivers is Frank Green, a transfer from East Tennessee State.
"He's another speed merchant," Spears said.
Green had 16 receptions for 242 yards and a touchdown, while also returning a kick for another score last season.
Junior running back Henry Tolbert will also play wide receiver this year, lining up in early spring sessions in the slot.
Look for Paul Hardiman, a redshirt last season, to become more involved in the passing game. A 6-0, 170-pound receiver out of Valley Christian High in Phoenix, Hardiman could have a breakout season based on impressive work in practice.
"He's going to catch the ball," Spears said. "He's a big-time pass catcher. He runs good routes. We're just trying to make sure right now that he knows a little bit more about playing football in the Southwestern Athletic Conference."
Tiger bites: San Jose State has invited Morgan State to play in the second Literary Classic. GSU was the original opponent, but couldn't get terms worked out to continue in 2004. ... Senior receiver Chris Day has been trying to get back a year of eligiblity lost when he sat out the 2002 season, but hasn't gotten an answer from the NCAA yet. Meanwhile, he had a private workout with the Green Bay Packers this week. ... A feature from The (Brandenton, Fla.) Herald on Devil Rays pitcher Dewon Brazelton highlighted his love for throwback jerseys. Included in his collection are three Doug Williams' pieces, one from Tampa Bay and two from Grambling State.
Departed Tramon Douglas
Had 77 catches for 917 yards and 10 TDs last season.
Returning Moses Harris
Had 50 catches for 713 yards and six TDs last season.
Injured Tim Abney
Had 38 catches for 637 yards and six TDs last season.
July 12, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Grambling State wide receiver Tramon Douglas' selection to the 2004 East West Shrine Football Classic roster means two distinct things to his coach.
· Douglas' credentials, even before his senior season gets under way, are in order.
· We're back, baby.
"He's been selected before the end of the year," says GSU's Doug Williams, who's quick to note that the game won't be played in San Francisco until January 2004. "That speaks volumes for what he's accomplished. They watched his work - and they liked him."
But Williams, as expected, brings the conversation back around to the big picture for his alma mater.
"He's got a chance to move us back where we used to be," says Williams, who was the MVP of the East West Shrine Game in 1977.
Amazingly, Douglas is the first GSU player selected for the game since fullback Eric Gant a decade ago.
You have to go back to Williams' glory days to find other Tigers who achieved the honor: Wide receiver Carlos Pennywell and defensive back Mike Harris were also invited in 1977; defensive back James Hunter and wide receiver Sammie White (GSU's current receivers coach) in 1976; and defensive tackle Gary "Big Hands" Johnson in 1974.
Douglas is aware of this rarefied company in the Grambling State family.
"I've seen a big difference in him since he's been selected," Williams says. "We've never had problem with Tramon's work habits - but he has stepped it up a notch."
Douglas earns this newest honor after an amazing junior season, where he broke the Southwestern Athletic Conference single-season receiving yards record with 1,704 yards on 92 catches - including 18 touchdowns.
The previous record holder, at 1,682 yards, was a certain Jerry Rice - the future Hall of Famer at San Francisco and Oakland who played collegiately at Mississippi Valley State.
Douglas was a consensus first team All-America selection - named to the Associated Press, the Sports Network and the Sheridan Broadcasting Network teams. He was also a first team All-SWAC selection.
"The East West game is one of the bigger games, along the lines of the Senior Bowl," Williams said. "A lot of the kids who get a chance to play there go on to play on Sundays. The rest of it will be left up to Tramon."
In fact, 86 of last year's roster were named to the NFL Draft or were signed as free agents. At least one East West Shrine Game player was signed by each of the 32 NFL teams.
"What I tried to let him understand is, if you can get this kind of shot, it's a different ballgame," Williams said. "He has to concentrate a little more. He might have to cut back on his fun a little bit."
That shouldn't be hard for the Douglas, a dedicated student who - even while leading Division 1-AA in average receiving yards per game - carried a 3.0 grade-point average. Douglas is also Grambling State's single-season receiving record holder in receptions, yards and touchdowns.
The adjustment comes in a season where every opposing defense is sure to make him the primary focus.
"Here's a kid that had 92 catches last year," Williams says. "But with the quality of guys we have coming back, if he got 65 or 70, he still has done his job. Going into a football game, people now know Tramon. But if the others stand up and do their jobs, he will be just as effective."
LSU's Nick Saban will be the head coach for the East team, while Oklahoma's Bob Stoops will direct the West squad.
All proceeds from the East West Shrine Game support children who receive medical care, at no cost, from the 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children throughout North America. To date, the game has raised more than $14 million for Shriners Hospitals.
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GSU's Eugene, Douglas preseason picks
July 17, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
The preseason football recognition is stacking up like cordwood at Grambling State University.
Quarterback Bruce Eugene and wide receiver Tramon Douglas - both seniors - have been named as first-team selections to the Sports Network's Division I-AA 2003 preseason All-America team. Douglas was named to the roster of January's East West Shrine Game recently, as well.
"If you look back over the past five years, and what we've done, the guys who are getting this recognition have earned it," says Grambling coach Doug Williams. "Bruce and Tramon deserve all the accolades."
Eugene was third overall in balloting for the first team. In all, 77 players from 12 different conferences were selected to the team, along with one player from an independent program.
Eugene, a 6-1, 245-pound junior, was a consensus offensive player of the year selection by the Pigskin Club of Washington, D.C., Sheridan Sports Network Black College and the SWAC - as well as being named a finalist for the Walter Payton Award, given to the top NCAA Division I-AA offensive player by the Sports Network.
Douglas, meanwhile, led the nation in receiving yards for I-AA, by averaging 142 yards per game. He is also the only person in SWAC history to record more than 1,700 receiving yards in a single season.
Together, they highlighted an explosive Grambling State offense that helped the Tigers to an unprecedented third straight National Black College and Southwestern Athletic Conference championships, with an 11-2 overall record.
Now, it's Williams' job to make sure they don't get weighted down with the awards.
"As coach, I have to protect against them becoming complacent," he says. "It's the same thing I was going through when I was getting them, and Coach Rob told me: `You've got to keep your feet on the ground.' We are fortunate that with people like Bruce and Tramon, they are going to keep their feet firmly planted."
Eugene, a New Orleans native, completed 269-of-543 passes for 4,455 yards including 43 touchdowns while rushing for 535 yards on 137 carries including nine touchdowns.
He also set a pair of SWAC single-season records in both total offensive plays (680) and passing attempts.
Meanwhile, Baton Rouge's Douglas is now also single-season receiving record holder in receptions, yards and touchdowns at GSU.
Williams thinks performances like those from players with another year of eligibility will ensure a few sniffs from the National Football League. The preseason recognition helps, too.
"I think it's a credit to our program," Williams said, "and it's certainly a credit to them."
The Big Sky Conference leads all I-AA leagues by placing 14 players on the Sports Network's I-AA preseason team, including five selected to the first team. Big Sky co-champ and 2002 national quarterfinalist Montana placed two on the initial squad, while Idaho State, Montana State and Northern Arizona each garnered one selection.
Other players of Louisiana interest who made the first-team squad include cornerback Chris Thompson of Nicholls State; and offensive guard Dwight Hudler, linebacker Roderick Royal and defensive tackle John Paul Jones, all of McNeese State.
Linebacker Ryan Garrison of McNeese and safety Lenny Williams of Southern were honorable mention picks.
The Sports Network also administers two awards named for Grambling figures - the Buck Buchanan and Eddie Robinson awards, presented annually to the division's top defensive player and coach, respectively.
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Ball control
GSU's Tramon Douglas does it all again, finally
September 24, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - A record-breaking receiving day for Grambling State's Tramon Douglas, in the end, didn't mean that much to him.
"I would rather have one catch and we win, than have all those catches in a loss," the senior receiver said. GSU fell 31-20 to McNeese State on Saturday, while Douglas set a new school mark with 17 grabs.
What it meant to the team, however, is something else entirely: As goes Douglas, so goes Grambling State.
And, like the offense, Douglas started slowly.
"He's giving us everything he has. He's made some tough catches for us," says Tigers coach Doug Williams. "But that little bruise on his knee hasn't always let him be Tramon Douglas."
He's talking about the Tramon Douglas who averaged nearly eight catches a game in his All-American junior season at Grambling State - on his way to breaking Jerry Rice's Southwestern Athletic Conference single-season receiving yards record with 1,704 yards.
After an opening loss in 2002 against McNeese, when Douglas had only one catch, the Tigers reeled off 10 straight wins - on the way to a third-straight SWAC championship.
But Douglas didn't practice much during the summer, hobbled by that nagging knee problem. The week before GSU's season opener, he wasn't even in pads at practice.
Douglas, of course, started - but again wasn't a factor in Grambling State's second-straight season-opening thrashing, pulling in just two catches for 30 yards as the Tigers were blanked 29-0.
"He's working hard every day. He's not sitting down on it," Williams says. "It's not that anything is torn. It's just one of those bruises that you can't shake."
The loss underscored the complementary nature of Douglas' success and that of his quarterback.
The longer it took Douglas to get healthy, the longer it clearly would take for Bruce Eugene to get on track this year.
The Tigers' impressive showing in this year's rematch against McNeese, the nation's top-ranked Division I-AA school, is just the latest example.
Douglas's 17 catches - only two fewer than all of the other GSU receivers combined - served to keep the game whisker-close until the very end. He broke the previous school record of 16 set by former wideout Nate Singleton against Virginia Union on Sept. 14, 1991.
"I knew the team needed me this game," Douglas says. "I wanted to step up and show them that Grambling can play with the best of them."
He was rewarded with the most rare of honors: Douglas has been named one of The Sports Network's Division I-AA players of the week - the first from the SWAC to receive that designation this season. He also was named one of I-AA.org's All-Stars and the SWAC's co-offensive player of the week.
Something interesting happened, however, as Douglas slowly found his footing.
Grambling State discovered some of its other receivers: Eugene threw to an astounding nine different people in a win over Alabama A&M - including scoring passes to juniors Moses Harris and Chris Day.
"The good part about it is, Moses Harris made some good plays for us," Williams says. "Tim Abney is making tough catches. We're getting a lot of people involved. I was glad to see Chris Day score a TD; that helped his confidence level."
While Douglas was smashing records against McNeese State, Harris and breakout freshman star Abney piled up 125 yards receiving combined.
"We knew coming into this, after Tramon had a breakout season last year, that he wasn't going to be able to get as many passes," Eugene says. "Our focus has been to get other people open, then come to Tramon. So far this year, that's what's been happening."
Still, without his go-to guy, Eugene sometimes looked tentative in the first two games - like he was thinking too much.
"You can't depend on just one guy," Williams says he told Eugene. "He was feeling it. You can't just look Tramon's way, especially when he's not there."
Then that first touchdown finally came - with nine seconds left in the half in Week 2 at Lorman, Miss. The 20-yarder was hauled in, of course, by Douglas.
Grambling State has played better every successive quarter since.
"The fact that Tramon is still not 100 percent has hampered us in certain situations," says Tigers offensive coordinator Melvin Spears. "Overall, though, we've got some guys who can come along. It's just that Bruce has to be a little more patient. Mechanically, he still was not always in a good throwing position. A lot of his pre-snap routine wasn't as good as it has been."
After having scored just that one touchdown in the previous game and a half, Eugene and the Tigers then exploded for 12 scores in the next eight quarters of play.
Eugene-to-Douglas accounts for five of them. Eugene has run in four more by himself.
And so it goes.
"It slowed him down, but one thing about Tramon: He's a fighter. He'll never quit. He'll never give up," Eugene says, sounding ever more confident. "Although the knee isn't 100 percent, he's still going to be out there giving it his all. We're grateful for that."
Getting better
Tramon Douglas has gotten steadily more involved in the Grambling State offense this year, as he's recovered from a lingering knee problem:
· At San Jose State: Two catches, 30 yards, no TDs.
· At Alcorn State: Seven catches, 83 yards, two TDs.
· Vs. Alabama A&M: Six catches, 75 yards, one TD.
· Vs. McNeese State: 17 catches, 216 yards, three TDs.
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Douglas will sit out Prairie View game
October 1, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - Grambling State wide receiver Tramon Douglas - coming off minor surgery to torn meniscus cartilage in his knee - won't be starting against Prairie View on Saturday in Dallas.
Not that he doesn't want to.
"I told him yesterday that he should be ready by (the Oct. 11 home game against) Mississippi Valley - and he said, `No, Prairie View,'" sixth-year GSU coach Doug Williams said at a Tuesday morning news conference.
"That's Tramon. He's a tough kid. The type of surgery that he had - on torn cartilage - is usually a two-week type thing with the way doctors go in now. It's not a major process. Basically, he can play - if we coaches let him."
The meniscus is a shock-absorbing cartilage in the middle of the knee.
Douglas leads the SWAC in receiving yards and receptions - with 32 catches for 404 yards and six scores in the first four games of the year. That includes a now-understandably quiet opening week, when he pulled down just two passes for 30 yards.
Douglas - who also leads the SWAC in scoring - says he woke up on Sept. 21, after his record-breaking 17-catch performance against McNeese State, and the pain was simply too great.
He's been playing with what he thought was a bruised knee for weeks. When Douglas went to the doctor that Monday, he found out he'd had the cartilage tear since two-a-days last summer.
"When you want to play - and you want to win - you don't think about it until after the game," Douglas says. "The injury was slowing me down, but I just wanted to help my team."
Douglas mingled with his teammates during Tuesday afternoon practices, taking a short break from rehabbing with laps at Robinson Stadium.
"He running and doing everything else," Williams says. "I still don't think we're going to play him."
That means Tigers quarterback Bruce Eugene will have to continue to spread it around. He has completed passes to eight, then seven receivers in the past two weeks.
"What makes Tramon such a good, clutch receiver is: When it's time to make a play, Tramon knows how to make a play," Williams said. "If we can get the other guys to play and think like Tramon, we'll be a lot further along."
Douglas, for his part, thinks the Tigers will be fine as he finishes healing up.
"Our offense is designed for anybody to make plays. I don't think they are going to miss a beat," Douglas says. "You've got Bruce back there at quarterback - and that's enough right there."
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GSU still in good hands
Young receivers continue making big impact
October 12, 2003
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - Senior Tramon Douglas rejoined his team briefly Saturday for pregame warmups, under a dark and rolling sky at Robinson Stadium.
Not that Grambling State really needed him against still-winless Mississippi Valley State. GSU breezed to a 45-6 victory.
I've seen the future - though, with just 6,397 in attendance, I was one of the few - and it is Tiger receivers Moses Harris, Tim Abney and Chris Day.
Given an opportunity when Douglas missed a game after minor knee surgery, Abney and Day each caught two touchdowns against Prairie View. Harris answered the call Saturday with an 111-yard day and a touchdown.
"We have had a couple of soldiers down," GSU receivers coach Sammy White said. "But that is no excuse. Everybody in this group should want to be as good as Tramon Douglas."
Over the past two weeks, they have been.
Spreading it around is not only helping Grambling State win football games while their All-American heals up - and win big - it's helping ensure the team's future during quarterback Bruce Eugene's final season in 2004.
"We work together every day in practice, so it depends on my getting the ball there," Eugene said. "You're going to miss Tramon - he's an All-American receiver. He's going to make plays and get open. But this has been a chance for our young receivers to see what we can do without him."
Day, the Troy State transfer, scored on a touchdown pass of 35 yards in the second quarter against Valley. Catches by Day of 25 yards and Abney of 24 yards keyed a Tigers' drive that would make the final score 45-6.
That was the second time running back Ab Kuaan scored - one of five players to reach the end zone for Grambling State.
Not that it started that way.
In fact, it seemed as if Grambling State - loose and effective for the good teams, lazy and disorganized for the bad ones - had only just met in the inflatable Tiger during pre-game ceremonies. That trend was personified in Eugene, benched for not attending class this week.
But, once again, the Tigers shook themselves awake late in the game - primarily through the play of the defense, which held the Devils to negative yardage in the second half.
Even so, the plays that seemed the most important were those by Harris, Day and Abney, a sign of good things to come as the competition gets tougher - and as Douglas approaches the end of his college eligibility."
When somebody goes down, one of the other guys step up," said Harris, a smoking junior from Dallas. "You can't just key in on one person. With our depth, we can't be stopped."
Abney, a former Neville High standout who just turned 19, has became known as a go-to receiver for the tough yards. He was third in team yardage going into the Valley game, trailing only Douglas and Harris.
"There's more than Tramon on this football team," GSU coach Doug Williams said. "Tim has gotten better each week. You're talking about a freshman who has played big for us."
Williams chuckles: "I don't think he even knows what he's doing yet."
His coach is kidding, but a couple of key drops early in the season prove that Abney hasn't quite rounded the learning curve yet.
"He needs a little more patience," said White, a Richwood High alum who started for Minnesota in two NFL championship games, logging a touchdown pass in Super Bowl XI. "He gets in a hurry, once the ball gets to him. Trying to get upfield, he doesn't always secure the ball. That's cost him at least two touchdowns this year. That comes with time."
Harris said he was proud of his play on Saturday, but he's not finished.
"That's to be continued," said Harris, smiling broadly.
Day is clearly gaining confidence with every game, as well.
"When you've got four, five or six guys catching the ball," GSU offensive coordinator Melvin Spears said, "that says a lot about our receiving corps and the job that Coach White is doing. We'll be going to a lot of guys down the stetch."
Douglas, you see, is expected back next week.
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GSU's Douglas returns to take on next SWAC foe
October 18, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - The lethal combination of quarterback Bruce Eugene-to-receiver Tramon Douglas sparked a third consecutive Southwestern Athletic Conference championship for Grambling State last season.
So, teams at the bottom of the conference standings might have thought they'd found an opening when Eugene's favorite receiver went down for three weeks in September after minor knee surgery.
Not only did GSU's junior signal-caller find new targets, but the Tigers discovered a rushing attack to help close off opponents. They haven't lost a SWAC game, even without their All-American receiver.
Re-enter Douglas - now all healed and, well, pumped.
"When I get back," he said, "it's going to make my job a lot easier. We've got a lot of people now who can step up. Bruce doesn't have to look for me every time now. He's got a lot of weapons to choose from. They won't be able to double team me now."
Pity Prairie View A&M and Mississippi Valley State - neither has a conference win - which nevertheless lost to a hobbled GSU by a combined 110-13 in the last two weeks.
Up next is the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, sitting just above PVAMU in the West standings with a 1-3 SWAC record.
Now, the Golden Lions not only have to worry about the return of the SWAC's best pitch-and-catch tandem, but also a cast-of-thousands receiving crew as a second option - then a dangerous new running game led by sophomore Ab Kuaan, who has 225 yards on the year.
"Working on rushing against some teams that aren't as good is going to help us in the long run, against the Jackson States, the Alabama States - and particularly in the Bayou Classic, where you've got to run the ball," said Melvin Spears, GSU's offensive coordinator and assistant head coach.
Standing in sharp contrast is Arkansas-Pine Bluff, which has managed just one score and a couple of field goals in two weeks.
"They lost a tough game this past week, 7-6 to Texas Southern," said Grambling State coach Doug Williams. "There wasn't a whole lot of offense."
That also doesn't bode well against a Grambling State team with a resurgent defense.
"Except for some spurts here or there - against McNeese, they missed some tackles - overall, I think they have played pretty well," Williams said. "If the offense can be as consistent as the defense, it makes for a pretty good game."
The return of both Eugene and Douglas for a full game suggests the offense will be.
Eugene sat out the first quarter against MVSU after missing too much class, allowing the Devils to keep the game within one point. He then threw four touchdown passes on the way to an easy 45-6 victory.
Douglas was named a Division I-AA player of the week by the Sports Network after a school-record number of receptions two weeks before against McNeese State, but hasn't played again after surgery to repair torn cartilage.
Still, even with Douglas and Eugene in and out of the lineup, Grambling State remains the No. 1 in SWAC passing offense, first downs, third-down conversions and total offense.
"We won't be able to control the game like we did last Saturday," UAPB coach Lee Hardman told The Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial. "But that is the whole goal. We want to control the ball - and keep Eugene off the field."
Good idea: Though he's also missed parts of two other quarters in blowout wins so far, Eugene is still the SWAC's top passer and total offense leader.
"Bruce has worked very hard this week," Spears said. "He's been coming in on his own time, doing some extra conditioning. He knows now that we are very serious about him going to school."
That offense squares off against another of the best defenses in the SWAC, the No. 3 ranked Golden Lions. GSU is the No. 4 defense in the conference.
"I think they have some talent," Spears said. "They mix their scheme up on defense. I'm sure they are expecting us to come in as a wide-open team, trying to adjust to some of the things we did last year. But we've got some wrinkles for them. One of the things that has made us tougher, week-in and week-out, is that there is always a different mix."
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JUST THE FACTS
GRAMBLING - Texas Southern tried to play keep away with Grambling State.
After a scoreless first quarter, however, all TSU could do was try to keep up.
GSU posted 28 unanswered points to finish the half, then another 20 to win 48-15. Both of Texas Southern's scores came when the game was already decided.
Junior Grambling State quarterback Bruce Eugene finished with an eye-popping five TD strikes - and no interceptions.
"It felt really good to get back on track," said Eugene, who had his worst day in more than a year last week against Jackson State.
Senior receiver Tramon Douglas' 29-yard reception to the TSU 15 set up the first of six touchdowns by Grambling State, which moved to 6-0 in the Southwestern Athletic Conference's West Division.
Two consecutive TSU mistakes led to 14 more GSU points in the next 10 minutes of play - first a botched snap on a punt, then a blocked punt.
"When they started making mistakes, we went up 21-0 - and that took them out of their ballgame, which was keep away," said GSU coach Doug Williams.
Eugene would also throw Grambling State touchdown passes to Henry Tolbert, Chris Day - and two to Moses Harris. Ab Kauuan added a score on the ground.
Brian Morgan missed a long field-goal attempt as the half ended, but finished Grambling State's first scoring drive of the second half with a 37-yarder to give GSU a 31-point lead. A 41-yard GSU field goal opened the fourth quarter.
Texas Southern added some mild late drama, as the gutsy scrambling of quarterback Gerred Lunnon led to TSU's first points of the day. Kicker Vincent Patrick turned a botched snap on the extra point into a two-point conversion when his pass was bobbled then caught, then fumbled and then recovered by Adam Penna - sending the crowd into a frenzy.
"I'm just sorry we didn't get to it any earlier than we did," said TSU coach Bill Thomas, whose team falls to 3-2 in the SWAC. "Who knows what might have happened?"
TSU briefly subbed Carlos Pierson for Lunnen in the fourth, and he threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Damarcus Jenkins - just Texas Southern's second scoring pass on the year.
Lunnon and Pierson had 139 yards passing combined.
Eighty-seven of Texas Southern's 127 yards on the ground came from scrambles by Lunnen.
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Back in really good hands
· A return to form by WR Tramon Douglas allowed GSU's homecoming fans to leave game happy.
November 2, 2003
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - This was an afternoon of receiving redemption for senior Tramon Douglas, the day he finally looked like No. 5 again. Thanks to him, Texas Southern will almost surely lose its ranking as the SWAC's No. 1 pass defense.
"Tramon Douglas made two catches that I thought were outstanding," Grambling State coach Doug Williams enthused - still smiling broadly, after broadsiding Texas Southern 48-15.
There was Douglas, still recovering from minor knee surgery, pulling in a dramatic 29-yard catch that set up GSU's first score of the day, five minutes into the second quarter.
There was Douglas, making a heart-splashing, one-handed catch for a first down - then a di-i-i-i-i-iving catch on a 36-yard TD pass to put GSU up 38-0 late in the third quarter.
"I don't even know how he made that one," Williams said. "People were draped all over him."
He led all Grambling State receivers in every quarter of play - finishing with 135 yards, more than his last two games combined.
"He's not all the way back," said GSU quarterback Bruce Eugene, who threw five touchdowns to four receivers on this day. "But he's almost there."
Douglas' problems started in training camp, when the coaching staff thought he had a bruised knee. As the season wore on, the pain worsened - and after Grambling State's Sept. 20 home game, a doctor's visit revealed torn cartilage.
Since the team had a bye week, then two games against SWAC cellar-dwellers, Douglas decided to have the minor surgery four games into his senior year.
He thought he might miss two weeks. The truth is, he wasn't up to speed for more than a month.
"I have pain - Monday through Friday, in practice," Douglas admits. "In the game, though, I really don't feel it.
Yet, while he'd hauled in eight touchdown passes before facing TSU, Douglas had had only one since returning from the knee problem.
Injuries can change players, making them far too reflective. That seemed to be what was happening with Douglas.
"He was not being aggressive," said Melvin Spears, GSU's offensive coordinator and assistant head coach. "He was too tentative. It was like he was replaying it in his mind."
Douglas, you'll remember, set a new school mark for receptions in that Sept. 20 game - and on a bum knee - against McNeese State. Tentative is not his style.
Yet, in his first two return appearances, Douglas had just 111 combined yards in receiving - well under half of what he had gained in that record-breaking game alone.
"Tramon has not been giving us what we really need," Williams said. "I don't know whether he is still favoring his leg or not. He needed to play better."
Coaches brought him in - for film work, for long talks.
"There were battles he used to win 100 percent of the time - and now he wasn't," Spears said. "We told him: `You've got to make a determination on whether you are actually ready to participate.' "
The light came on, and he played lights out Saturday - averaging 17 yards per catch. Meaning, when you threw it to Douglas, he moved the chains. Just like the old days.
"I went to the sideline, after his TD catch," Williams said, "and I told him: Now, you look like Tramon Douglas."
These last few games couldn't be more critical for Douglas, as his senior year dwindles away. Several NFL scouts have passed through Grambling State's practices, many more are attending the games - and each expects to catch a glimpse of the SWAC's record holder for receiving yards in a single season. (He eclipsed a mark set in 1984 at Mississippi Valley State by future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.)
"I'm thinking - and hoping - that most of Tramon's situation has been in his head," Williams said. "When you have a knee injury, it's not something that you get over. You've got to believe that you're not going to hurt your knee again. I'm hoping he's there."
All through this week, it appeared that he was certainly on this way. Saturday's eight-catch afternoon proved it: Douglas made pinpoint cuts and seemed to have regained his burst off the line - one that looks like he's starting in third gear.
Compare that with his performances at Pine Bluff and JSU, where you saw a player using technique to get open. Nothing wrong with that. But it meant something was missing with GSU's No. 1 target.
"It's something," Douglas said, "that will get better with time. Playing the season, you'll have some injuries. I know I'm not going to be 100 percent. But I've got to play through it."
Grambling State's coaches have let Douglas do that - and it's paid dividends, finally. The talk he had with Williams clearly played a role, too.
Douglas said it was a pride thing.
"He said: `Coach, you called me out,' " Williams recalled. "We had a good heart-to-heart talk. The real Tramon Douglas showed up."
Nick Deriso is sports editor at The News-Star, 411 N. Fourth St., Monroe, La., 71201. Contact him at (318) 362-0234 or at nderiso@thenewsstar.com.
GAME RECAP
GOOD PLAY
A highlight-reel, finger-tip interception by senior Grambling State defensive back Octavius Bond in the end zone saved a score to open the game by Texas Southern. The drive was keyed on a 1-yard fourth-down dive by TSU quarterback Gerred Lunnon and a huge penalty in the red zone, when junior GSU linebacker John Petty was charged with a late hit - giving TSU first and goal.
BAD PLAY
TSU's Lunnon, on the first play of the third-quarter drive, took off on a quarterback draw - fooling the Grambling State defense into giving up 22 yards. Lunnon's scrambling play briefly envigorated Texas Southern, which was down by 38 points. Texas Southern ran the same play three more times on that drive - getting 14 yards on one try and, ultimately, a touchdown. A two-point conversion by TSU made it 38-8.
BIG HIT
Two minutes into the game, junior defensive tackle Jimmy Zachary exploded through the line to smack Timothy Boutte on Texas Southern's first drive of the day. Zachary's tackle sent Boutte back two yards, leaving TSU with second-and-two. Zachary later recovered a fumble on the TSU 13 to open the third quarter.
SOMETHING SPECIAL
TSU was still holding slim upset hopes before the half, as it was only down by a touchdown. Then disaster struck on successive drives: Punting from the TSU 40, the snap went wide on punter Adrian Vera. Senior GSU defensive back Travis Massey recovered the fumble at the Texas Southern 20. Then a blocked punt on the next series gave GSU the ball on the TSU 9. Both miscues led to touchdowns.
EXTRA POINT
GSU started slow - again. The difference? Texas Southern started slower. GSU's early inconsistency meant GSU's punters couldn't help the defense much in the first quarter. Texas Southern's second and third drives began at midfield. But TSU had its own problems on offense: Both possessions ended with punts. So, the first quarter was scoreless. But then GSU followed its usual script, piling up 38 points in the second and third periods - all before TSU got its first touchdown of the day.
Tiger bites: Legendary former GSU sports information director Collie J. Nicholson was an honorary captain for the game. ... In the last meeting between Grambling State and TSU, Corey Alexander returned three kickoffs for 186 yards - including a 98-yard touchdown. ... There was an overflow crowd for homecoming at "The Hole," as Robinson Stadium has been dubbed by some of the players. Announced crowd was 21,065.
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GSU seniors close out stellar careers
November 30, 2003
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
NEW ORLEANS - The Grambling State seniors of 1999 were the last to see their season end in New Orleans.
Each group since has played two weeks after the Bayou Classic in the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship game.
Saturday's slim 44-41 loss to Southern changed that.
"When I look at these players who are in their last Bayou Classic or their last game at Grambling, and what they have contributed, you want to put your arms around them," GSU coach Doug Williams said. "There has been blood, and sweat, and tears."
Two of the hardest-hit seniors were wide reciever Tramon Douglas and linebacker Antoine Smith.
Douglas had his lowest total yards since playing UAPB on Oct. 18, Douglas' first game back after minor knee surgery caused him to miss a month of the season.
Smith was involved in a scary first-half collision that broke his shin.
"It's disappointing because I didn't even finish the second quarter - and it was the last game of my career at Grambling," Smith said. "I was in so much pain it was tough for me to focus on everything that was going on on the field."
Douglas leaves GSU as the school leader in receptions (for a year and in a game), receiving yards and touchdowns - and the SWAC leader for receiving yards in a single season, a record previously held by future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.
"I love him with all my heart," said GSU quarterback Bruce Eugene, who counted Douglas as his favorite target. "I'm hurting because we went out like this - for this to be his last game."
Douglas had a team-leading nine catches for 83 yards on Saturday.
"It's didn't hit me all week, and now it finally has - I'm losing my top receiver," said GSU receivers coach Sammie White. "We thought we were going to play another one."
Seniors this year include: DE Calvin Arnold; DB Octavius Bond; SS John Brantley; DB Earin Bridges; WR Corey Brownfield; DL Traveres Comegys; WR Calvin Colquitt; TE Gershone Jessie; DB Seneca Lee; and OL Warner Stewart, among others.
"It becomes emotional in that dressing room," Williams said. "I always go back to something my dad used to tell me. We'd sit around, when he was living, and he'd say: `Man, the best of friends must part sometimes.' "
Bond finished with 146 yards on kickoff returns. Colquitt had four catches for 47 yards.
"It hasn't hit them yet," Williams said. "But they will miss Grambling. When Randy Hymes first left, and he was in Baltimore that first year, he'd call me. He'd say: `Coach, I wish I was still at Grambling.' It's just something about it. You missed being there. You miss being a part of it. It takes some getting used to."
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Stopwatch can't measure heart
March 22, 2004
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
He averaged more yards per catch than celebrated Minnesota receivers like Cris Carter, Anthony Carter and Ahmad Rashad.
But Richwood High product Sammy White might never have become a three-time All Pro in today's NFL. He simply wasn't fast enough in a league that now values a player's score on the 40-yard dash more than any intangible.
"It's totally different now," said White, who has been named offensive coordinator at Grambling State, his alma mater. "I think speed is overrated. When it comes down to it, it is all about execution - fast, slow, big, small, you've got to execute."
White, even a step behind Rashad on what would be a Super Bowl team, succeeded because he was all heart.
"He was tougher than boot leather," former Vikings coach Bud Grant once said. "He practiced every week, played every game. He got beat up a little bit, but he was tough."
Certain Hall of Famer Jerry Rice - another former all-Southwestern Athletic Conference receiver - wouldn't have been chosen by these speed-obsessed modern teams. Prospects at positions like defensive tackle are even evaluated by their 40 times today.
That made the running portion of Friday's pro day for Grambling State players all the more important. There, Earin Bridges, Octavius Bond, Calvin Colquitt, Tavares Comegys, Chris Day, Tramon Douglas, Gershone Jessie and Seneca Lee were measured and tested for possible draftability.
They were weighed. They jumped. Some lifted weights.
But it all came down to those four 10-yard lengths to be run at Joe Aillet Stadium in Ruston.
Douglas, trying to recover from a knee injury in the off-season before his senior year, scored a disappointing 4.84 on his first try - but seemed to have wobbled a bit instead of running in a straight line, something that would have added to his time.
A second run a few minutes later was only slightly better, as Douglas finished at 4.83.
"I've been trying to get to where I was," said a disappointed Douglas, who added that he'd been timing at 4.5 on a track in Houston where he is rehabbing the injury. "A 4.8 kills me, though. It's hurts my pride."
Yet, despite that high number, Douglas is the same player who set a new school record for receptions in a single contest on Sept. 20 - just days before he was forced to have surgery to repair torn meniscus cartilage on his knee.
"In the McNeese game, I was dying out there," Douglas said. "It was like I was a wounded animal - and that's the worst animal you want to mess with. I didn't know if it was going to be my last game and I wanted to give everybody something to think about."
He leaves Grambling State holding every significant school record for receivers - and that's saying something in this pass-first offense.
"If you question his toughness, just look at last year," White said. "He played through pain. He showed he could come through time after time."
In the end, Douglas had the production - he averaged 92 yards a game, despite missing three in 2003 - to warrant a look in the NFL Draft. But he didn't display the speed for the pro scouts.
That 4.8 means Douglas will have to try to get on somewhere after the draft.
The team that takes a chance on Tramon Douglas will be happy it did.
"He's like a Sammy White," Spears said. "He'll make the team, at first, because he's an outstanding special-teams player. Then, they'll discover that he's elusive in the open field - and that he produces."
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HE'S GONE
Grambling passing attack will be minus Douglas
March 27, 2004
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - An injury to departed senior Tramon Douglas early last season taught Grambling State something about its young crew of receivers: There were other talents on the team.
"We showed that we have a great group of receivers," said interim GSU coach Melvin Spears. "It was a blessing, in a way, because they stepped up to the plate when Tramon Douglas wasn't in there."
Spears was promoted from offensive coordinator in February when sixth-year coach Doug Williams left for an NFL job. Spears then promoted receivers coach Sammy White to take over the offense.
They led the Grambling State offense through its first spring drills in an evening session on Friday. The players were so excited about getting started that they began workouts half an hour early. Spring practice continues at 10 a.m. today.
"We've got a really young group of receivers," Spears said. "But they are very talented."
The most experienced wideout - and perhaps speediest - that GSU will work with this spring is senior Moses Harris.
"Under the tutelage of Coach White, he's just going to get better," Spears said.
Harris was the team's second-leading receiver in 2003, with 50 catches for 713 yards and six scores.
Also returning this year: Neville High product Tim Abney, who led the team in average yards per catch among receivers with 10 or more receptions. His six TD grabs as a freshman tied him for second on the team in 2003.
But because of a lingering groin injury, Abney sat out Friday's practice and may miss a large portion of the spring.
One of the most intriguing new receivers is Frank Green, a transfer from East Tennessee State.
"He's another speed merchant," Spears said.
Green had 16 receptions for 242 yards and a touchdown, while also returning a kick for another score last season.
Junior running back Henry Tolbert will also play wide receiver this year, lining up in early spring sessions in the slot.
Look for Paul Hardiman, a redshirt last season, to become more involved in the passing game. A 6-0, 170-pound receiver out of Valley Christian High in Phoenix, Hardiman could have a breakout season based on impressive work in practice.
"He's going to catch the ball," Spears said. "He's a big-time pass catcher. He runs good routes. We're just trying to make sure right now that he knows a little bit more about playing football in the Southwestern Athletic Conference."
Tiger bites: San Jose State has invited Morgan State to play in the second Literary Classic. GSU was the original opponent, but couldn't get terms worked out to continue in 2004. ... Senior receiver Chris Day has been trying to get back a year of eligiblity lost when he sat out the 2002 season, but hasn't gotten an answer from the NCAA yet. Meanwhile, he had a private workout with the Green Bay Packers this week. ... A feature from The (Brandenton, Fla.) Herald on Devil Rays pitcher Dewon Brazelton highlighted his love for throwback jerseys. Included in his collection are three Doug Williams' pieces, one from Tampa Bay and two from Grambling State.
Departed Tramon Douglas
Had 77 catches for 917 yards and 10 TDs last season.
Returning Moses Harris
Had 50 catches for 713 yards and six TDs last season.
Injured Tim Abney
Had 38 catches for 637 yards and six TDs last season.
Friday, April 06, 2007
FAREWELL TO EDDIE ROB
America loses football legend
Grambling's Eddie Robinson, winningest coach in Division I, dies at 88
April 4, 2007
We were the first in the nation to disclose Eddie Rob's passing, which happened after 11 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. This began an emotional week in northeastern Louisiana, and around the world.
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Eddie Robinson, coach at Grambling for nearly 60 years, has died at age 88.
He was rushed to a Lincoln Parish hospital Tuesday afternoon with heart problems and died just after 11 p.m., family members confirmed. Robinson had suffered from Alzheimer’s-like symptoms for several years.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete this morning for a coach who still holds the Division I record for wins in college football, 10 seasons after retiring.
Robinson logged 408 victories at Grambling between 1941-97. He also produced 45 winning seasons; won nine National Black College championships and 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles; coached four college football Hall of Famers (Buck Buchanan, Younger, Gary “Big Hands” Johnson and Doug Williams); and sent more than 200 players to the NFL, including four Pro Football Hall of Famers (Buchanan, Willie Davis, Willie Brown and Charlie Joiner).
“He ranks right up there with Bear Bryant and Amos Alonzo Stagg,” Joiner said. “It reminds me of one time when another person asked this one guy if Coach Rob was in a class by himself. He stood there and thought for a long time. I really can’t say, but it doesn’t take long to call the roll.”
Robinson’s greatest influence, many former players said, was outside of football.
“I think the thing that stands out about Coach the most is the development of transforming boys into men and preparing them for life,” said Monroe native James “Shack” Harris, vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars and a former Grambling and NFL quarterback. “He understood the players and where they came from and what it took to be successful.”
Robinson once estimated he coached more than 4,500 varsity athletes in football, basketball and baseball with an 85 percent graduation rate.
“I tended to want to bring things out in a football player as a student,” Robinson said. “We were blessed to have some good football players, but when you graduate people, they seem to be good people. They get a degree, and they can go out and handle things.”
EDDIE ROB ON ... EDDIE ROB
On the band
“There’s more than football at Grambling. We have a great show band. You can be killing us on the field, but people aren’t going to leave until after the half.”
On the secrets of having one job and one wife
"It takes two to tango. It takes two to make a good marriage. You have to respect each other."
“People talk about the record I’ve compiled at Grambling, but the real record is the fact that for over 50 years I’ve had one job and one wife. I don’t believe anybody can out-American me.”
What he learned from his players
"I learned more about what they meant to me and what they meant to the game. I never won a game - they did. You learn from every player because they’re not the same.”
“Means can be justifiable in the end. The football players are the most important people in the world to me. Without them, there would be no me.”
“I firmly believe that football players and coaches are entertainers.”
On being called a legend
"I can’t even spell it. Whatever it means, I hope I didn’t let anyone down. What I’ve done since 1941 has been more for them than for me.”
“Everything I’ve done, I think I dreamed of it first.”
“I can still remember when I was three years old and I had it in my mind then to do this for a living.”
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Bayou Classic stands as Rob's final legacy
Legendary Grambling coach left signature rivalry game for future generations
April 4, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING -- Back then, even the participants couldn’t have imagined how successful the Bayou Classic would someday become -- or how it would help propel the late Eddie Robinson onto the national stage.
“We just came along at the right time. I tell you, the Lord was in the plan,” Collie J. Nicholson, Grambling State’s original sports information director from 1948-78, once said.
As word of his passing spreads, the Bayou Classic stands as the most visible portion of Robinson's legacy -- a nationally televised testament to his dreams for this small country school.
“It was timing: Coach Robinson was developing all these players for pro football - and we had a marketing plan,” said Nicholson, who also passed last year. “Eddie and I didn’t know what it was -- they didn’t call it marketing, back then -- but we had a concept.”
The anchor for the weekend remains the football game between Grambling State and Southern University. These two schools -- rivals both in the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s West Division and in the state of Louisiana -- have fought to a virtual draw in New Orleans.
“To appreciate the rivalry,” Robinson said a few years ago, “you have to realize Grambling and Southern fans are close -- friends, as well as relatives. In fact, in the early years, when Southern people came to Grambling for the game, they would stay at my house -- because there were no hotels for blacks. They were for Southern, but it didn’t make a difference.”
Late in Robinson’s long tenure at GSU, Southern began to assemble what would be the Bayou Classic’s longest win streak, taking eight in a row in the 1990s. Yet, the all-time record stands at 17-16, with SU now just one game ahead.
A matchup so evenly matched can only gather fan interest.
But the Bayou Classic is more than Xs and Os. In the three decades since its founding, the game has been surrounded by a lively slate of social events - including a legendary Battle of the Bands and Greek Show, a job fair, elaborate formals, a gospel brunch, countless smaller get-togethers and various sponsored business events.
Doug Williams still marvels at the game’s sweeping glory.
“Playing in the Superdome?” asked Williams, a redshirt starting freshman quarterback in the inaugural game in 1974. “Playing for a championship? Playing in front of 75,000? It wasn’t like that at that particular time.”
Nicholson agreed: “We didn’t think we’d do that many. We thought it might attract about 50,000,” he said.
At its pre-Katrina peak, the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau reported that 200,000 people visit the Big Easy for Bayou Classic weekend -- representing an economic impact of $85 million.
In honor of those sweeping contributions, a banner with Robinson’s name hangs in the Superdome.
The truth is, the rivalry was squarely in place, long before the game had a name: In 1971, an estimated 35,000 stood at Grambling to watch these two schools battle. A sold-out game in northwestern Louisiana was followed by another in New Orleans - where 76,753 fans crammed into Tulane Stadium.
“I looked around and said: ‘What am I doing here?’ ” Williams said. “We had 75,000 at a historically black college football game. I was a redshirt freshman, and scared to death. I was blessed to have some veterans around me and Coach Robinson ran a conservative offense that didn’t put too much pressure on me.”
Robinson coached Grambling State to the series’ only shutout in 1974, beating Southern 21-0. The Tigers, at 11-1, finished as co-champions of the SWAC with Alcorn State. GSU then defeated South Carolina State 28-7 in the Pelican Bowl.
The following year, in 1975, the game found its current home with the completion of the Superdome. Later, with the addition of a national viewing audience through NBC in 1990 and the sponsorship of State Farm in 1996, the Bayou Classic became an even larger cultural event.
“It used to just be the local fans,” said GSU assistant coach Sammy White, the game’s MVP in 1975. “Now, it’s a national thing.”
With the televised coverage, every corner of America could finally put a face with the name of Eddie G. Robinson -- who died at 88 just before midnight on Tuesday after battling Alzheimer's-like symptoms for years.
“It became a showcase for Eddie Robinson and all the great coaches at Southern,” Williams said. “Scheduling played a part, too -- with so many families back to visit for Thanksgiving. Then, there’s the in-state rivalry. It was a natural.”
What had once been a football game is something far, far greater -- if only because, through these telecasts, so many got to meet Grambling’s great man.
“When Eddie Robinson came to Grambling, people in Lincoln Parish didn’t even know where Grambling was,” Nicholson once said.
Same with Robinson. The Bayou Classic changed that forever.
ALL THE KING'S MEN
Here’s a look at a baker’s dozen of Coach Eddie Robinson’s former players who advanced to the National Football league -- just a few of the more than 300 to do so during his tenure at Grambling State (with years in the league in parenthesis):
Paul “Tank” Younger, a running back and linebacker with Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh (1949-58):
Inducted into College Football Hall of Fame in 2000; also a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame
Willie Davis, a defensive and offensive lineman with Green Bay and Cleveland (1958-69):
First Grambling State player ever drafted; inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981
Junius “Buck” Buchanon, a defensive lineman with Kansas City (1963-75):
Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990; first GSU player to be drafted in first round
Willie Brown, a defensive back with Denver and Oakland (1963-78):
Posted 54 picks in 16-year career; inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984
Ernie “Big Cat” Ladd, defensive lineman with Kansas City and Houston Oilers (1966-68):
Twice named All-AFL; later had second career, earning induction into Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame
James “Shack” Harris, a quarterback with Buffalo, Los Angeles Rams, San Diego (1969-81):
First black quarterback drafted into NFL, former Carroll High standout was Pro Bowl MVP in 1975
Charlie Joiner, wide receiver with San Diego, Cincinnati and Houston Oilers (1969-86):
Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1996; had 50 or more catches in seven seasons
WR Frank Lewis, wide receiver with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills:
Inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame last summer; won two Super Bowls with the Steelers.
Gary “Big Hands” Johnson, defensive tackle with San Francisco and San Diego (1975-85):
Sheridan Black College Defensive Player of Year in 1974, inducted into College Hall of Fame in 1997
Sammy White, wide receiver with Minnesota (1976-86):
Two-time Pro Bowler is member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame; NFL Rookie of the Year in 1976
Doug Williams, quarterback with Tampa Bay and Washington (1978-89):
The 1988 Super Bowl winner and MVP; inducted into College Football Hall of Fame in 2001
Everson Walls, defensive back with Dallas, New York Giants and Cleveland (1981-93):
Four-time Pro Bowler; a walk on at GSU, still holds school’s single-season interception record
Albert Lewis, defensive back with Los Angeles Raiders and Kansas City (1983-98):
First-round pick by Chiefs; nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2003
Other NFL notables from the Robinson era: DB Fahkir Brown (New Orleans/St. Louis), OL Albert Dennis III (Cleveland and San Diego, former GSU athletics director), WR Andrew Glover Los Angeles Raiders, Minnesota and New Orleans) , DB Delles Howell (former Richwood High standout, New Orleans and New York Jets), WR Trumaine Johnson (Buffalo and San Diego), DE Billy Newsome (Baltimore Colts, New Orleans, New York Jets and Chicago) and Nate Singleton (San Francisco and Philadelphia).
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Bigger than football
April 03, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
UPDATED AT MIDNIGHT, TUESDAY.
The news that Eddie Robinson passed brought me back to the last in-depth on-the-record interview he ever did.
It was with me, talking about the 15th anniversary of protege Doug Williams' emotional Super Bowl victory.
Robinson, who was in San Diego on that day in 1988, at one point happily recalled going down on the field to remind Williams of the support he always had back home.
"I talked to him a long time after the game," Robinson said. "I told him how proud the people were - in our community and our churches."
Robinson was a football coach, his resume says as much. But he was bigger than that, even as he struggled in intensive care tonight -- losing a battle against his own body's failures at age 88.
Robinson never framed things by what happened on the field, never talked about winning 408 times. That wasn't what it was all about.
His pride in what his former players accomplished couldn't be contained on the gridiron. Fans talked about the Bayou Classic. But he always talked about his players as community leaders, as fathers, as great Americans.
"The thing we are most proud of is that they graduated from college," Robinson said.
Still, in microcosm, he helped smash the color barrier under center. Grambling products would use that piece of paper as a battering ram in a league locked up tight with misconceptions about an African-American's ability to master the complexity of a pro offense.
James "Shack" Harris, the Carroll product who starred for Robinson in the 1960s, cracked the door with his Pro Bowl MVP performance in 1975. Williams knocked the thing off its hinges in 1988.
Then they both, Coach said quite proudly, went on to other leadership roles -- Harris as an NFL general manager and Williams as Robinson's successor at Grambling and then, later, as a pro personnel executive as well.
"It makes you feel really fine that they can go out and do those kind of things," Robinson said. "It just makes you know what our school can do - and what our students can do."
He wouldn't say so, but it also reminds us - it always will - of what Coach Rob could do, too.
That was much bigger than football.
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Even at the last, Robinson was a giant
April 5, 2007
This column was part of eight pages of tributes we published on the Thursday morning after Robinson's passing.
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — The final days for Eddie Robinson were an ebb and flow, with good days and bad.
On the worst of them, football became a jumbled mess in his mind. Those were the times when his wife Doris has said she worried most about him, the times when he seemed sickest of all.
In the earliest days of his illness, which family members blamed on a series of small strokes, Robinson turned to Friday night boxing matches, something his late friend Collie J. Nicholson said was easier to follow. Later, he watched old football movies, but paid little attention.
On the best of days, however, Robinson gripped life like he’d always gripped an out-stretched hand — firmly and completely.
“Once he gets a line on you, he remembers you. He still remembers you,” Nicholson, Grambling’s long-time former sports information director, said as Robinson’s Alzheimer’s-like symptoms began to become noticeable in 2003. “And he keeps that smile, always that smile.”
Still, Robinson was more apt to remember former quarterback Doug Williams’ triumphal Super Bowl win in 1987 than his own final coaching days at Grambling State a decade later.
In the end, he only rarely came to the stadium on campus that bears his name — appearing at the contest against McNeese in 2003, then at 2004’s spring Black and Gold scrimmage but not much thereafter.
Doris Robinson said he was emotionally drained by the experience, and frustrated that he had trouble following the action on the field.
As his failing memory robbed him of so much, he spent more time at home. Doris, his only love, did all she could.
She worked tirelessly in caring for him, only revealing the specifics of Robinson’s deterioration as his career wins record fell in 2004 to a lower division coach. Still, Doris was so protective of him that she didn’t let anyone from the national press talk to her husband.
She said she never told him that the once thought-unassailable 408-win plateau had been reached.
I called, and stopped by, sometimes. When Robinson spoke to me, it was about the classic Wing-T formation, about players like Bell Pepper Anderson from the old days, about his grandchildren.
His trips away from there slowed to a stop. Robinson, in his final public appearances, attended 2004 birthday parties thrown both for himself and his old friend Nicholson — but Nicholson soon joined him in battling health problems and passed late in 2006.
Yet, even inside his modest brick home in Grambling, Robinson remained a source of inspiration.
A never-ending line of well wishers met him, old and young alike. Many were folks turning off the interstate, just because they saw the Grambling sign.
The football team also walked up the hill on Adams Street on more than one occasion to pay tribute to the former coach.
During one memorable visit in 2005, Robinson was animated and friendly, displaying a familiar gusto as he sang along with the school’s alma mater. His eyes lit up at the sight of former players, and he simply refused to let the moment end.
Sammy White, Andre Robinson and Charlie Lewis, all of whom played for Robinson and now coach at Grambling, bracketed Robinson. As the players trickled back onto the street afterward, Robinson asked to sing again — one more blazing moment of remembrance shared, and the last, with GSU’s coaching staff.
“I have had a lot of great things happen to me around football,” said an emotional White, a former GSU great who later helped lead Minnesota to a Super Bowl. “That was one of mine. Right there.”
And for me, someone who got a cherished opportunity to be around Robinson late in his career and, sadly, also late in his life.
Inside their home, Mrs. Doris worked as tour guide through 60 years of magical memory. She might point out the painting the emperor of Japan gave Robinson, or the photo with President Ronald Reagan.
After a hospital bed was brought in, mattresses from their room were stacked in Robinson’s treasured study. Slowly, his illness seemed to obscure everything that came before.
So a group of locals furiously attempted to establish a long-overdue museum in his honor. A temporary exhibit of memorabilia and trophies opened in June 2005 on campus, though Robinson never saw it.
An inaugural benefit banquet for the museum project followed in September at GSU, but neither Coach nor Mrs. Robinson could attend. Son Eddie Robinson Jr. spoke in their place.
Grambling resident Doug Porter, an assistant for nine seasons with Robinson and a family friend, was part of those efforts.
“Because he was as constant presence, people might have taken him for granted,” said Porter, who made several other subsequent coaching stops. “Anybody, like me, who has been away from Grambling knows well his mystique around the rest of the country. I guess I didn’t completely appreciate all of it until I left.”
Eddie Jr. could often be seen driving the elder Robinson around town. It was an effort to keep the former coach active and engaged that Eddie Jr. shared with Wilbert Ellis, a long-time former GSU baseball coach and athletic administrator.
Robinson fought until the very end, spending time in a Ruston nursing home and, on several occasions, in a Lincoln Parish hospital.
Ellis rushed there to visit on Dec. 12, for instance, just days after the Grambling football team won the 2005 Southwestern Athletic Conference championship.
“He said: ‘Boy, where you been?’” Ellis remembered. “I said, ‘I’ve been down there trying to win a game for you.’”
There were these moments of shimmering clarity.
Just weeks before he succumbed, Robinson had been hospitalized, only to rouse himself once again. He asked for a cheeseburger on the way out the door.
But finally, Robinson suffered a damaging heart attack on Tuesday afternoon and Ellis returned, desperately fighting back emotion, to read a family plea for privacy.
Robinson would pass later that night.
Ellis was overcome with the thought, as if a corner in the very foundation of Grambling had crumbled.
“Coach is gone,” Ellis kept saying. “Coach is gone.”
NICK DERISO is sports editor at The News-Star, 411 N. Fourth St., Monroe, La., 71201. Contact him at nderiso@thenewsstar.com or (318) 362-0234.
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A shared memory
April 04, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Wednesday brought a jumble of emotions, as people celebrated Eddie Robinson, even as they mourned him.
"I talked to a lot of teammates today, and we probably laughed more than anything," said Doug Williams, former GSU quarterback and Robinson's coaching successor, as tears welled up. "Today has been kind of a sad day, but also a celebration of the man."
Williams wasn't alone as he openly wept. In fact, he joined countless others who found themselves honestly unable to imagine the school, the town and their own lives without Robinson's towering presence.
"Wow, this guy was bigger than life itself. He really impressed me by the way he handled himself, what he believed in and what he stood for," said Pro Football Hall of Famer Willie Brown, a standout in the 1960s at Grambling for Rob. "He was a man of high class, a motivator and innovator. He loved his players. I couldn't have learned from a better coach than Robinson."
Robinson passed away late Tuesday night, in a story first reported around the nation in the print and online editions of The News-Star.
Fans almost immediately began sending text messages and then e-mails, to the point that I had to delete out some old sent-files in order to open by box.
A fast-food restaurant on U.S. 167 in Ruston immediately changed its sign to read: "We'll Miss You, Coach Rob." The phones began ringing early, and they were still ringing late.
"I'm so empty," said Tom Lavigne, a 1970s-era All-America defensive back at Grambling who lost everything to the hurricane in his native New Orleans. "This is nothing compared to Katrina. I'd go through Katrina every day to not feel like this."
As celebrated as he was in life, and that continued today with his passing, several former players said Robinson deserved more. Much more.
"There will never be another one like him," said Everson Walls, who led the nation in picks for Rob in 1980 before a standout pro career. "There will never be another one that will do it the way he did it. He put Grambling on the map and made it a football powerhouse. But I never thought he got the respect he deserved. Even when the talent dried up, when black athletes starting going to white schools, he built champions on and off the field."
We're putting out eight pages of stuff about Rob on Wednesday -- stories, columns, pictures, the works. And we kept coming back to the same conclusion.
It's not enough. Every conversation we had, every word we wrote, made that all the more clear.
There's no top to Eddie Robinson's legacy. Every one he ever knew says that, in their own way.
May he forever, and ever, live on through that sweeping influence.
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Searching for the right way to say goodbye
April 6, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING -- The driveway was filled with cars at 234 Adams St., and still they came up the hill.
They parked in the yard, then across the street.
And more still arrived.
Once inside, they spoke of the late Eddie G. Robinson not in hushed tones, but like he was only in the next room.
Instead, one door down from the boisterous reunion in the den, Robinson’s hospital bed had been dissembled -- replaced with the original queen-sized model he shared for many of his 65 years of marriage to Doris Robinson before passing at 88 this week.
Every door was open, and friends and family streamed in from them all. Many arrived so early on Thursday, as news of Robinson’s passing crisscrossed the world, that his wife was still in her housecoat.
Doris Robinson quickly changed into a fashionable purple outfit, even as friends like Ruby Higgins -- a longtime administrator at Grambling State, where her husband coached football for nearly 60 seasons -- helped answer the ever-ringing phones.
Careful notes were taken so that Doris could return the calls.
Like the cars, they never stopped.
There were messages left by former players from across the spectrum of a coaching career that spanned 1941-97 -- everyone from Willie Davis (who anchored Robinson’s first National Black College championship team in ’55) to Michael Kornblau (who was quarterback on his final squad.)
Doris looked over the morning’s newspaper accounts, and wondered aloud what her reliably humble spouse would have made of all that attention.
“He’d probably say: ‘They did all that for me?’” she said, chuckling softly. “‘I guess I must have done pretty good.’ That was how he was.”
Television coverage of Robinson’s passing ran on a loop, captivating an ever-changing group of well wishers that included Larry Wright, the Grambling men’s basketball coach.
Moments after one segment, he walked into the Robinsons’ kitchen, visibly shaken. Wright hasn’t begun to come to grips yet, he said, with what Grambling might be like without Robinson.
Less than two days after his passing, not many could.
In particular, the woman he married in 1941, Robinson’s childhood sweetheart.
“When I saw her today, Mrs. Robinson grabbed me and cried,” said former GSU baseball coach and family friend Wilbert Ellis. “I don’t think we knew all that would happen to us when Eddie Robinson was gone.”
Asked more than once what she would do without him, Doris Robinson said simply: “I have no idea.”
Grambling president Horace Judson sat with her for much of the morning --- reminiscing, like most of the visitors on this day, about one of the many games Robinson coached.
There were 588 of them, and several times as many stories.
Former school president Joseph Johnson called, and so did classmates like Mildred Jones.
Richard Lapchick, the co-author of Eddie Robinson’s as-told-to autobiography, called at midmorning to speak with Doris. He had already left a message of “love from he and his wife Ann” the day before.
Well wishes arrived from coaches who had worked with Robinson (40-year sidekick Melvin Lee), succeeded him (former GSU coach Melvin Spears) or simply admired him (West Virginia State’s Oree Banks, who preceded Willie Jeffries at South Carolina State in the 1960s).
A sign-in sheet was placed near the door, and several friends left personal messages for the Robinson family: “Try not to worry; God will supply your needs. I love you, Denene Stringfellow.”
Doris Robinson held up well for most of the morning, though the sight of some treasured friends would sometimes bring her to tears.
“I’m not the first to go through this,” she said, holding one well-wisher’s hand. “I’ve just got to buckle down.”
She was shaking by then, and soon retired to bed for an afternoon nap.
The group -- which by then included Eddie Robinson Jr. and family friend James Davison, among others -- later toured Grambling’s new assembly center, where services for Robinson will be held on Wednesday.
They then met for several hours to discuss the details of the event.
Six decades of protégés had to be turned into a short list of pallbearers. Flowers had to be selected. Doris had insisted that informational material on donating to a proposed museum in her husband’s honor be included in the program booklet, so a group of friends began stuffing envelopes.
The smallest details consumed those trying both to pay tribute to an American icon, and perhaps to busy themselves in a time of shattering grief.
“When you look around at this, everybody has been really positive,” Ellis said. “This is so big, though. The kind of person we are dealing with, we recognize what we have. People from all over the world will be there to see this man’s home going.”
Rusty Ponton, who coaches the women’s basketball team at GSU, brought over one of his celebrated cheesecakes.
He had made it for Robinson, after hearing that the late coach had been discharged from the hospital early this week. He couldn’t deliver it before Robinson was readmitted on Tuesday and passed away.
Ponton said Doris Robinson (who he calls ‘Mama D’) told him to bring it anyway: “She said: ‘I like cheesecake, too, you know.’”
The Robinson kitchen exploded with laughter, a welcome and increasingly common respite.
As the day went on, there was more laughter. And more food.
And always, always, more cars.
A group of guys fired up the charcoal grill in the backyard, with the idea of cooking some chicken for those inside, when Robinson Jr. volunteered to go to the store.
“Junior, you know your money doesn’t spend this weekend,” Wright said.
A smile, a rare one, curled up the unusually solemn Robinson’s face.
Later, he took everything in.
“It’s helping,” Robinson Jr. said. “It’s important for me to have everyone around, and my mom, too. I appreciate what everybody is doing. We can’t ask for more support.”
As the sun set behind the stadium that bears Robinson’s name, passersby stopped to take pictures of his red brick home, even though he wasn’t inside anymore.
Some were strangers, people Robinson never knew but had nevertheless touched.
Those inside at 234 Adams St. found no small amount of comfort in scenes like that.
“Eddie Robinson is beyond a king; a king is just for one country.” Ellis said. “A guy from The New York Times said that to me. Eddie Robinson belongs to everyone, and in that way he’ll never die. He will live on in our memories and in our men.”
Grambling's Eddie Robinson, winningest coach in Division I, dies at 88
April 4, 2007
We were the first in the nation to disclose Eddie Rob's passing, which happened after 11 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. This began an emotional week in northeastern Louisiana, and around the world.
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Eddie Robinson, coach at Grambling for nearly 60 years, has died at age 88.
He was rushed to a Lincoln Parish hospital Tuesday afternoon with heart problems and died just after 11 p.m., family members confirmed. Robinson had suffered from Alzheimer’s-like symptoms for several years.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete this morning for a coach who still holds the Division I record for wins in college football, 10 seasons after retiring.
Robinson logged 408 victories at Grambling between 1941-97. He also produced 45 winning seasons; won nine National Black College championships and 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles; coached four college football Hall of Famers (Buck Buchanan, Younger, Gary “Big Hands” Johnson and Doug Williams); and sent more than 200 players to the NFL, including four Pro Football Hall of Famers (Buchanan, Willie Davis, Willie Brown and Charlie Joiner).
“He ranks right up there with Bear Bryant and Amos Alonzo Stagg,” Joiner said. “It reminds me of one time when another person asked this one guy if Coach Rob was in a class by himself. He stood there and thought for a long time. I really can’t say, but it doesn’t take long to call the roll.”
Robinson’s greatest influence, many former players said, was outside of football.
“I think the thing that stands out about Coach the most is the development of transforming boys into men and preparing them for life,” said Monroe native James “Shack” Harris, vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars and a former Grambling and NFL quarterback. “He understood the players and where they came from and what it took to be successful.”
Robinson once estimated he coached more than 4,500 varsity athletes in football, basketball and baseball with an 85 percent graduation rate.
“I tended to want to bring things out in a football player as a student,” Robinson said. “We were blessed to have some good football players, but when you graduate people, they seem to be good people. They get a degree, and they can go out and handle things.”
EDDIE ROB ON ... EDDIE ROB
On the band
“There’s more than football at Grambling. We have a great show band. You can be killing us on the field, but people aren’t going to leave until after the half.”
On the secrets of having one job and one wife
"It takes two to tango. It takes two to make a good marriage. You have to respect each other."
“People talk about the record I’ve compiled at Grambling, but the real record is the fact that for over 50 years I’ve had one job and one wife. I don’t believe anybody can out-American me.”
What he learned from his players
"I learned more about what they meant to me and what they meant to the game. I never won a game - they did. You learn from every player because they’re not the same.”
“Means can be justifiable in the end. The football players are the most important people in the world to me. Without them, there would be no me.”
“I firmly believe that football players and coaches are entertainers.”
On being called a legend
"I can’t even spell it. Whatever it means, I hope I didn’t let anyone down. What I’ve done since 1941 has been more for them than for me.”
“Everything I’ve done, I think I dreamed of it first.”
“I can still remember when I was three years old and I had it in my mind then to do this for a living.”
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Bayou Classic stands as Rob's final legacy
Legendary Grambling coach left signature rivalry game for future generations
April 4, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING -- Back then, even the participants couldn’t have imagined how successful the Bayou Classic would someday become -- or how it would help propel the late Eddie Robinson onto the national stage.
“We just came along at the right time. I tell you, the Lord was in the plan,” Collie J. Nicholson, Grambling State’s original sports information director from 1948-78, once said.
As word of his passing spreads, the Bayou Classic stands as the most visible portion of Robinson's legacy -- a nationally televised testament to his dreams for this small country school.
“It was timing: Coach Robinson was developing all these players for pro football - and we had a marketing plan,” said Nicholson, who also passed last year. “Eddie and I didn’t know what it was -- they didn’t call it marketing, back then -- but we had a concept.”
The anchor for the weekend remains the football game between Grambling State and Southern University. These two schools -- rivals both in the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s West Division and in the state of Louisiana -- have fought to a virtual draw in New Orleans.
“To appreciate the rivalry,” Robinson said a few years ago, “you have to realize Grambling and Southern fans are close -- friends, as well as relatives. In fact, in the early years, when Southern people came to Grambling for the game, they would stay at my house -- because there were no hotels for blacks. They were for Southern, but it didn’t make a difference.”
Late in Robinson’s long tenure at GSU, Southern began to assemble what would be the Bayou Classic’s longest win streak, taking eight in a row in the 1990s. Yet, the all-time record stands at 17-16, with SU now just one game ahead.
A matchup so evenly matched can only gather fan interest.
But the Bayou Classic is more than Xs and Os. In the three decades since its founding, the game has been surrounded by a lively slate of social events - including a legendary Battle of the Bands and Greek Show, a job fair, elaborate formals, a gospel brunch, countless smaller get-togethers and various sponsored business events.
Doug Williams still marvels at the game’s sweeping glory.
“Playing in the Superdome?” asked Williams, a redshirt starting freshman quarterback in the inaugural game in 1974. “Playing for a championship? Playing in front of 75,000? It wasn’t like that at that particular time.”
Nicholson agreed: “We didn’t think we’d do that many. We thought it might attract about 50,000,” he said.
At its pre-Katrina peak, the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau reported that 200,000 people visit the Big Easy for Bayou Classic weekend -- representing an economic impact of $85 million.
In honor of those sweeping contributions, a banner with Robinson’s name hangs in the Superdome.
The truth is, the rivalry was squarely in place, long before the game had a name: In 1971, an estimated 35,000 stood at Grambling to watch these two schools battle. A sold-out game in northwestern Louisiana was followed by another in New Orleans - where 76,753 fans crammed into Tulane Stadium.
“I looked around and said: ‘What am I doing here?’ ” Williams said. “We had 75,000 at a historically black college football game. I was a redshirt freshman, and scared to death. I was blessed to have some veterans around me and Coach Robinson ran a conservative offense that didn’t put too much pressure on me.”
Robinson coached Grambling State to the series’ only shutout in 1974, beating Southern 21-0. The Tigers, at 11-1, finished as co-champions of the SWAC with Alcorn State. GSU then defeated South Carolina State 28-7 in the Pelican Bowl.
The following year, in 1975, the game found its current home with the completion of the Superdome. Later, with the addition of a national viewing audience through NBC in 1990 and the sponsorship of State Farm in 1996, the Bayou Classic became an even larger cultural event.
“It used to just be the local fans,” said GSU assistant coach Sammy White, the game’s MVP in 1975. “Now, it’s a national thing.”
With the televised coverage, every corner of America could finally put a face with the name of Eddie G. Robinson -- who died at 88 just before midnight on Tuesday after battling Alzheimer's-like symptoms for years.
“It became a showcase for Eddie Robinson and all the great coaches at Southern,” Williams said. “Scheduling played a part, too -- with so many families back to visit for Thanksgiving. Then, there’s the in-state rivalry. It was a natural.”
What had once been a football game is something far, far greater -- if only because, through these telecasts, so many got to meet Grambling’s great man.
“When Eddie Robinson came to Grambling, people in Lincoln Parish didn’t even know where Grambling was,” Nicholson once said.
Same with Robinson. The Bayou Classic changed that forever.
ALL THE KING'S MEN
Here’s a look at a baker’s dozen of Coach Eddie Robinson’s former players who advanced to the National Football league -- just a few of the more than 300 to do so during his tenure at Grambling State (with years in the league in parenthesis):
Paul “Tank” Younger, a running back and linebacker with Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh (1949-58):
Inducted into College Football Hall of Fame in 2000; also a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame
Willie Davis, a defensive and offensive lineman with Green Bay and Cleveland (1958-69):
First Grambling State player ever drafted; inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1981
Junius “Buck” Buchanon, a defensive lineman with Kansas City (1963-75):
Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990; first GSU player to be drafted in first round
Willie Brown, a defensive back with Denver and Oakland (1963-78):
Posted 54 picks in 16-year career; inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984
Ernie “Big Cat” Ladd, defensive lineman with Kansas City and Houston Oilers (1966-68):
Twice named All-AFL; later had second career, earning induction into Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame
James “Shack” Harris, a quarterback with Buffalo, Los Angeles Rams, San Diego (1969-81):
First black quarterback drafted into NFL, former Carroll High standout was Pro Bowl MVP in 1975
Charlie Joiner, wide receiver with San Diego, Cincinnati and Houston Oilers (1969-86):
Inducted into Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1996; had 50 or more catches in seven seasons
WR Frank Lewis, wide receiver with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills:
Inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame last summer; won two Super Bowls with the Steelers.
Gary “Big Hands” Johnson, defensive tackle with San Francisco and San Diego (1975-85):
Sheridan Black College Defensive Player of Year in 1974, inducted into College Hall of Fame in 1997
Sammy White, wide receiver with Minnesota (1976-86):
Two-time Pro Bowler is member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame; NFL Rookie of the Year in 1976
Doug Williams, quarterback with Tampa Bay and Washington (1978-89):
The 1988 Super Bowl winner and MVP; inducted into College Football Hall of Fame in 2001
Everson Walls, defensive back with Dallas, New York Giants and Cleveland (1981-93):
Four-time Pro Bowler; a walk on at GSU, still holds school’s single-season interception record
Albert Lewis, defensive back with Los Angeles Raiders and Kansas City (1983-98):
First-round pick by Chiefs; nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2003
Other NFL notables from the Robinson era: DB Fahkir Brown (New Orleans/St. Louis), OL Albert Dennis III (Cleveland and San Diego, former GSU athletics director), WR Andrew Glover Los Angeles Raiders, Minnesota and New Orleans) , DB Delles Howell (former Richwood High standout, New Orleans and New York Jets), WR Trumaine Johnson (Buffalo and San Diego), DE Billy Newsome (Baltimore Colts, New Orleans, New York Jets and Chicago) and Nate Singleton (San Francisco and Philadelphia).
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Bigger than football
April 03, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
UPDATED AT MIDNIGHT, TUESDAY.
The news that Eddie Robinson passed brought me back to the last in-depth on-the-record interview he ever did.
It was with me, talking about the 15th anniversary of protege Doug Williams' emotional Super Bowl victory.
Robinson, who was in San Diego on that day in 1988, at one point happily recalled going down on the field to remind Williams of the support he always had back home.
"I talked to him a long time after the game," Robinson said. "I told him how proud the people were - in our community and our churches."
Robinson was a football coach, his resume says as much. But he was bigger than that, even as he struggled in intensive care tonight -- losing a battle against his own body's failures at age 88.
Robinson never framed things by what happened on the field, never talked about winning 408 times. That wasn't what it was all about.
His pride in what his former players accomplished couldn't be contained on the gridiron. Fans talked about the Bayou Classic. But he always talked about his players as community leaders, as fathers, as great Americans.
"The thing we are most proud of is that they graduated from college," Robinson said.
Still, in microcosm, he helped smash the color barrier under center. Grambling products would use that piece of paper as a battering ram in a league locked up tight with misconceptions about an African-American's ability to master the complexity of a pro offense.
James "Shack" Harris, the Carroll product who starred for Robinson in the 1960s, cracked the door with his Pro Bowl MVP performance in 1975. Williams knocked the thing off its hinges in 1988.
Then they both, Coach said quite proudly, went on to other leadership roles -- Harris as an NFL general manager and Williams as Robinson's successor at Grambling and then, later, as a pro personnel executive as well.
"It makes you feel really fine that they can go out and do those kind of things," Robinson said. "It just makes you know what our school can do - and what our students can do."
He wouldn't say so, but it also reminds us - it always will - of what Coach Rob could do, too.
That was much bigger than football.
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Even at the last, Robinson was a giant
April 5, 2007
This column was part of eight pages of tributes we published on the Thursday morning after Robinson's passing.
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — The final days for Eddie Robinson were an ebb and flow, with good days and bad.
On the worst of them, football became a jumbled mess in his mind. Those were the times when his wife Doris has said she worried most about him, the times when he seemed sickest of all.
In the earliest days of his illness, which family members blamed on a series of small strokes, Robinson turned to Friday night boxing matches, something his late friend Collie J. Nicholson said was easier to follow. Later, he watched old football movies, but paid little attention.
On the best of days, however, Robinson gripped life like he’d always gripped an out-stretched hand — firmly and completely.
“Once he gets a line on you, he remembers you. He still remembers you,” Nicholson, Grambling’s long-time former sports information director, said as Robinson’s Alzheimer’s-like symptoms began to become noticeable in 2003. “And he keeps that smile, always that smile.”
Still, Robinson was more apt to remember former quarterback Doug Williams’ triumphal Super Bowl win in 1987 than his own final coaching days at Grambling State a decade later.
In the end, he only rarely came to the stadium on campus that bears his name — appearing at the contest against McNeese in 2003, then at 2004’s spring Black and Gold scrimmage but not much thereafter.
Doris Robinson said he was emotionally drained by the experience, and frustrated that he had trouble following the action on the field.
As his failing memory robbed him of so much, he spent more time at home. Doris, his only love, did all she could.
She worked tirelessly in caring for him, only revealing the specifics of Robinson’s deterioration as his career wins record fell in 2004 to a lower division coach. Still, Doris was so protective of him that she didn’t let anyone from the national press talk to her husband.
She said she never told him that the once thought-unassailable 408-win plateau had been reached.
I called, and stopped by, sometimes. When Robinson spoke to me, it was about the classic Wing-T formation, about players like Bell Pepper Anderson from the old days, about his grandchildren.
His trips away from there slowed to a stop. Robinson, in his final public appearances, attended 2004 birthday parties thrown both for himself and his old friend Nicholson — but Nicholson soon joined him in battling health problems and passed late in 2006.
Yet, even inside his modest brick home in Grambling, Robinson remained a source of inspiration.
A never-ending line of well wishers met him, old and young alike. Many were folks turning off the interstate, just because they saw the Grambling sign.
The football team also walked up the hill on Adams Street on more than one occasion to pay tribute to the former coach.
During one memorable visit in 2005, Robinson was animated and friendly, displaying a familiar gusto as he sang along with the school’s alma mater. His eyes lit up at the sight of former players, and he simply refused to let the moment end.
Sammy White, Andre Robinson and Charlie Lewis, all of whom played for Robinson and now coach at Grambling, bracketed Robinson. As the players trickled back onto the street afterward, Robinson asked to sing again — one more blazing moment of remembrance shared, and the last, with GSU’s coaching staff.
“I have had a lot of great things happen to me around football,” said an emotional White, a former GSU great who later helped lead Minnesota to a Super Bowl. “That was one of mine. Right there.”
And for me, someone who got a cherished opportunity to be around Robinson late in his career and, sadly, also late in his life.
Inside their home, Mrs. Doris worked as tour guide through 60 years of magical memory. She might point out the painting the emperor of Japan gave Robinson, or the photo with President Ronald Reagan.
After a hospital bed was brought in, mattresses from their room were stacked in Robinson’s treasured study. Slowly, his illness seemed to obscure everything that came before.
So a group of locals furiously attempted to establish a long-overdue museum in his honor. A temporary exhibit of memorabilia and trophies opened in June 2005 on campus, though Robinson never saw it.
An inaugural benefit banquet for the museum project followed in September at GSU, but neither Coach nor Mrs. Robinson could attend. Son Eddie Robinson Jr. spoke in their place.
Grambling resident Doug Porter, an assistant for nine seasons with Robinson and a family friend, was part of those efforts.
“Because he was as constant presence, people might have taken him for granted,” said Porter, who made several other subsequent coaching stops. “Anybody, like me, who has been away from Grambling knows well his mystique around the rest of the country. I guess I didn’t completely appreciate all of it until I left.”
Eddie Jr. could often be seen driving the elder Robinson around town. It was an effort to keep the former coach active and engaged that Eddie Jr. shared with Wilbert Ellis, a long-time former GSU baseball coach and athletic administrator.
Robinson fought until the very end, spending time in a Ruston nursing home and, on several occasions, in a Lincoln Parish hospital.
Ellis rushed there to visit on Dec. 12, for instance, just days after the Grambling football team won the 2005 Southwestern Athletic Conference championship.
“He said: ‘Boy, where you been?’” Ellis remembered. “I said, ‘I’ve been down there trying to win a game for you.’”
There were these moments of shimmering clarity.
Just weeks before he succumbed, Robinson had been hospitalized, only to rouse himself once again. He asked for a cheeseburger on the way out the door.
But finally, Robinson suffered a damaging heart attack on Tuesday afternoon and Ellis returned, desperately fighting back emotion, to read a family plea for privacy.
Robinson would pass later that night.
Ellis was overcome with the thought, as if a corner in the very foundation of Grambling had crumbled.
“Coach is gone,” Ellis kept saying. “Coach is gone.”
NICK DERISO is sports editor at The News-Star, 411 N. Fourth St., Monroe, La., 71201. Contact him at nderiso@thenewsstar.com or (318) 362-0234.
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A shared memory
April 04, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Wednesday brought a jumble of emotions, as people celebrated Eddie Robinson, even as they mourned him.
"I talked to a lot of teammates today, and we probably laughed more than anything," said Doug Williams, former GSU quarterback and Robinson's coaching successor, as tears welled up. "Today has been kind of a sad day, but also a celebration of the man."
Williams wasn't alone as he openly wept. In fact, he joined countless others who found themselves honestly unable to imagine the school, the town and their own lives without Robinson's towering presence.
"Wow, this guy was bigger than life itself. He really impressed me by the way he handled himself, what he believed in and what he stood for," said Pro Football Hall of Famer Willie Brown, a standout in the 1960s at Grambling for Rob. "He was a man of high class, a motivator and innovator. He loved his players. I couldn't have learned from a better coach than Robinson."
Robinson passed away late Tuesday night, in a story first reported around the nation in the print and online editions of The News-Star.
Fans almost immediately began sending text messages and then e-mails, to the point that I had to delete out some old sent-files in order to open by box.
A fast-food restaurant on U.S. 167 in Ruston immediately changed its sign to read: "We'll Miss You, Coach Rob." The phones began ringing early, and they were still ringing late.
"I'm so empty," said Tom Lavigne, a 1970s-era All-America defensive back at Grambling who lost everything to the hurricane in his native New Orleans. "This is nothing compared to Katrina. I'd go through Katrina every day to not feel like this."
As celebrated as he was in life, and that continued today with his passing, several former players said Robinson deserved more. Much more.
"There will never be another one like him," said Everson Walls, who led the nation in picks for Rob in 1980 before a standout pro career. "There will never be another one that will do it the way he did it. He put Grambling on the map and made it a football powerhouse. But I never thought he got the respect he deserved. Even when the talent dried up, when black athletes starting going to white schools, he built champions on and off the field."
We're putting out eight pages of stuff about Rob on Wednesday -- stories, columns, pictures, the works. And we kept coming back to the same conclusion.
It's not enough. Every conversation we had, every word we wrote, made that all the more clear.
There's no top to Eddie Robinson's legacy. Every one he ever knew says that, in their own way.
May he forever, and ever, live on through that sweeping influence.
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Searching for the right way to say goodbye
April 6, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING -- The driveway was filled with cars at 234 Adams St., and still they came up the hill.
They parked in the yard, then across the street.
And more still arrived.
Once inside, they spoke of the late Eddie G. Robinson not in hushed tones, but like he was only in the next room.
Instead, one door down from the boisterous reunion in the den, Robinson’s hospital bed had been dissembled -- replaced with the original queen-sized model he shared for many of his 65 years of marriage to Doris Robinson before passing at 88 this week.
Every door was open, and friends and family streamed in from them all. Many arrived so early on Thursday, as news of Robinson’s passing crisscrossed the world, that his wife was still in her housecoat.
Doris Robinson quickly changed into a fashionable purple outfit, even as friends like Ruby Higgins -- a longtime administrator at Grambling State, where her husband coached football for nearly 60 seasons -- helped answer the ever-ringing phones.
Careful notes were taken so that Doris could return the calls.
Like the cars, they never stopped.
There were messages left by former players from across the spectrum of a coaching career that spanned 1941-97 -- everyone from Willie Davis (who anchored Robinson’s first National Black College championship team in ’55) to Michael Kornblau (who was quarterback on his final squad.)
Doris looked over the morning’s newspaper accounts, and wondered aloud what her reliably humble spouse would have made of all that attention.
“He’d probably say: ‘They did all that for me?’” she said, chuckling softly. “‘I guess I must have done pretty good.’ That was how he was.”
Television coverage of Robinson’s passing ran on a loop, captivating an ever-changing group of well wishers that included Larry Wright, the Grambling men’s basketball coach.
Moments after one segment, he walked into the Robinsons’ kitchen, visibly shaken. Wright hasn’t begun to come to grips yet, he said, with what Grambling might be like without Robinson.
Less than two days after his passing, not many could.
In particular, the woman he married in 1941, Robinson’s childhood sweetheart.
“When I saw her today, Mrs. Robinson grabbed me and cried,” said former GSU baseball coach and family friend Wilbert Ellis. “I don’t think we knew all that would happen to us when Eddie Robinson was gone.”
Asked more than once what she would do without him, Doris Robinson said simply: “I have no idea.”
Grambling president Horace Judson sat with her for much of the morning --- reminiscing, like most of the visitors on this day, about one of the many games Robinson coached.
There were 588 of them, and several times as many stories.
Former school president Joseph Johnson called, and so did classmates like Mildred Jones.
Richard Lapchick, the co-author of Eddie Robinson’s as-told-to autobiography, called at midmorning to speak with Doris. He had already left a message of “love from he and his wife Ann” the day before.
Well wishes arrived from coaches who had worked with Robinson (40-year sidekick Melvin Lee), succeeded him (former GSU coach Melvin Spears) or simply admired him (West Virginia State’s Oree Banks, who preceded Willie Jeffries at South Carolina State in the 1960s).
A sign-in sheet was placed near the door, and several friends left personal messages for the Robinson family: “Try not to worry; God will supply your needs. I love you, Denene Stringfellow.”
Doris Robinson held up well for most of the morning, though the sight of some treasured friends would sometimes bring her to tears.
“I’m not the first to go through this,” she said, holding one well-wisher’s hand. “I’ve just got to buckle down.”
She was shaking by then, and soon retired to bed for an afternoon nap.
The group -- which by then included Eddie Robinson Jr. and family friend James Davison, among others -- later toured Grambling’s new assembly center, where services for Robinson will be held on Wednesday.
They then met for several hours to discuss the details of the event.
Six decades of protégés had to be turned into a short list of pallbearers. Flowers had to be selected. Doris had insisted that informational material on donating to a proposed museum in her husband’s honor be included in the program booklet, so a group of friends began stuffing envelopes.
The smallest details consumed those trying both to pay tribute to an American icon, and perhaps to busy themselves in a time of shattering grief.
“When you look around at this, everybody has been really positive,” Ellis said. “This is so big, though. The kind of person we are dealing with, we recognize what we have. People from all over the world will be there to see this man’s home going.”
Rusty Ponton, who coaches the women’s basketball team at GSU, brought over one of his celebrated cheesecakes.
He had made it for Robinson, after hearing that the late coach had been discharged from the hospital early this week. He couldn’t deliver it before Robinson was readmitted on Tuesday and passed away.
Ponton said Doris Robinson (who he calls ‘Mama D’) told him to bring it anyway: “She said: ‘I like cheesecake, too, you know.’”
The Robinson kitchen exploded with laughter, a welcome and increasingly common respite.
As the day went on, there was more laughter. And more food.
And always, always, more cars.
A group of guys fired up the charcoal grill in the backyard, with the idea of cooking some chicken for those inside, when Robinson Jr. volunteered to go to the store.
“Junior, you know your money doesn’t spend this weekend,” Wright said.
A smile, a rare one, curled up the unusually solemn Robinson’s face.
Later, he took everything in.
“It’s helping,” Robinson Jr. said. “It’s important for me to have everyone around, and my mom, too. I appreciate what everybody is doing. We can’t ask for more support.”
As the sun set behind the stadium that bears Robinson’s name, passersby stopped to take pictures of his red brick home, even though he wasn’t inside anymore.
Some were strangers, people Robinson never knew but had nevertheless touched.
Those inside at 234 Adams St. found no small amount of comfort in scenes like that.
“Eddie Robinson is beyond a king; a king is just for one country.” Ellis said. “A guy from The New York Times said that to me. Eddie Robinson belongs to everyone, and in that way he’ll never die. He will live on in our memories and in our men.”
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