Robinson's players huddle up for last goodbye
Memories, tears flow throughout emotional reunion for proteges of late coach
April 10, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
BATON ROUGE -- Former players made a gathering to mark Eddie Robinson’s legendary 57-year career at Grambling into a lively reunion that crossed generations.
Members of Robinson teams from 1941-97 met for a private event before the general public was allowed into the state capitol for an all-day memorial, something typically reserved for heads of state.
“I’m so happy this happened for Coach,” said Frank Lewis, a wide receiver and running back at Grambling in the late 1960s. “Coach was so special. He deserves it.”
The day was marked by stark emotional contrasts -- beginning as the players, wearing white gloves and standing in parallel lines, passed Robinson’s cherry-wood casket up the imposing steps of one of Louisiana’s most iconic buildings.
GSU standouts Albert Lewis and Doug Williams, the lead pallbearers, were joined by more than 100 Robinson protégés in that solemn task, which led inside to Memorial Hall, the ornate, two-story space between the state’s Senate and House chambers.
Director Larry Pannell led the Tiger Marching Band through a sad, but swinging rendition of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” from the top of the steps.
“There’s no topping this legacy,” said Lewis, a Grambling defensive back in the early 1980s. “I consider Coach Robinson one of the greatest individuals -- not coaches, individuals -- in this country’s history.”
The 88-year-old Robinson, who still holds the record for Division I wins, died April 3 from complications related to Alzheimer’s disease. But not before shaping the lives of generations, said Williams, a former GSU quarterback who succeeded Robinson as coach.
“We’re all an extension of Coach Eddie Robinson,” Williams said. “He lives on through each of us. We are part of what Coach Robinson was, and what he will always be.”
Quiet sorrow turned to open grieving as the casket was opened.
A trio of state troopers presented the colors --- the United States, Louisiana and Grambling flags --- and placed them behind Robinson. Wreaths from the university and the state were also placed by former players, including Adolph Byrd, a tackle on Robinson’s first 1940s teams.
Robinson’s family sat at the feet of the former coach, while his ex-players lined up again to pass a football, hand to hand, from the back of the group to the waiting hands of Williams --- who held the ball aloft before handing it to Doris and son Eddie Robinson Jr. They then placed it in the casket with Robinson.
Robinson Jr. stood behind the GSU flag as more tributes followed, including a powerful speech by Williams, famous even now for his 1988 Super Bowl MVP performance.
“This is such a showing of support for what he did,” said Robinson Jr. “Just to know that so many people admired him, it’s an honor for the whole family.”
Personal touches surrounded the casket, including a painting by Ruston artist Reggie McLeroy, previously hanging in the Robinson family living room.
Next to it was a new creation by McLeroy that featured the former coach, wearing his familiar red suspenders and carrying his briefcase, walking across a football field. A shimmering image of Robinson rises in the clouds above.
“It’s a testament to him, when you get this kind of representation,” said Michael Haynes, a late 1970s-era defensive back. “He was charismatic. I will say this, the world lost a great one -- and heaven has truly gotten better.”
The team event’s finale included an emotional singing of the Grambling alma mater, and several players were overcome -- including Williams, who had to briefly leave the hall.
That somber moment turned to celebration with the Tiger Marching Band’s segue into the GSU fight song. Players and family members alike, tears still in their eyes, suddenly filled the Memorial Hall with ringing joy.
“This isn’t just what he taught us about football,” said Darrius Matthews, a defender on Robinson’s final black college national championship team in 1992. “It was about what he taught us about life.”
The players poured out on the capitol steps once more, where team mates from every decade gathered for what quickly became raucous group photos.
More than one player, when there was an unexpected hitch in the proceedings, reused Robinson’s well-worn practice mantra: “Run it again!”
Melvin Lee, a 1950s-era player for Robinson, later coached alongside him for 40 seasons. He ended up in nearly every photo.
“To see people come back and pay tribute to Coach Robinson like this, it’s sad but great at the same time,” said Lee, who still lives in Grambling. “It’s great to share stories and relive the memories.”
Henry Dyer, a running back for Robinson in the early 1960s, stepped out to take his own picture of former teammates.
“It was a great day for a great man,” Dyer said. “It was a celebration of a great life.”
Even as the band filed past the players on the capitol steps, a group of well wishers and fans had begun lining up for the public viewing of Robinson that followed. Back inside, many gathered around an exhibit of memorabilia, including a series of photos taken by James Terry.
Robinson’s casket remained under the towering brass doors that lead to the Senate until 4:30 p.m., when his body was moved into the House chambers for a memorial service. More than 3,000 passed in the first few hours of viewing.
Players lingered for a while, reminiscing about their time with Robinson and sharing tall tales.
“There’s a million words you can say,” said Larry Metevia, a center for Robinson in the early 1960s. “But, mostly, I’d like to say: Thank you.”
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Outpouring overwhelms busy Williams
April 10, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
BATON ROUGE — Former Grambling standout Doug Williams stood in the Louisiana House chamber and took stock of a powerful day.
He had spent the balance of Monday in the towering Memorial Hall that connects this room with the state Senate, overseeing the public memorial to his late college coach, Eddie Robinson.
More than 1,000 people an hour had entered the Capitol for the public viewing of Robinson, who died April 3 at 88 from complications related to Alzheimer's disease.
Williams was overwhelmed.
"I can honestly say that today we've had some heavy hearts, but it was a great day," Williams told the packed House chamber. "So many people passed by, took pictures, shook hands. We saw parents bringing kids — and the only way they are going to know who Eddie Robinson is, what Eddie Robinson was, and what he will always be, is if we tell them."
Williams appeared as part of a Monday night memorial service that featured Gov. Kathleen Blanco as the keynote speaker. State Sen. Bob Kostelka R-Monroe, and state Rep. Rick Gallot, D-Grambling, two area legislators, were also featured — along with state Sen. Charles Jones D-Monroe of the Legislative Black Caucus.
Guests included LSU coach Les Miles, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, former Alcorn State and Southern University administrator Marino Casem, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer and former GSU coach Melvin Spears, among others.
Blanco presented Doris, Eddie Robinson's wife of more than 65 years, the American flag that had flown over the Capitol building on Monday.
Williams began the day overseeing a private event for players. More than 100 former teammates shared the duty of carrying Robinson up the steps and into the Capitol's Memorial Hall earlier that morning.
"To see so many former players come and pay tribute to Coach Robinson made me feel good," Williams said. "Only Eddie Robinson could have done what happened today."
Williams immediately followed Jones, who had given an animated tribute sprinkled with poetic verse and snippets of Shakespeare.
But Williams, still flush from that morning event, said he remained undaunted — even if he couldn't match the poetry of Jones' speech.
"Ordinarily, I would want to wave the white flag, coming in after Senator Jones," Williams said. "But I was fortunate to be coached by Eddie Robinson, and he said if you are going to lose, lose trying to win."
Williams played quarterback for Robinson from 1974-77 before an NFL career that included Super Bowl MVP honors in 1988. He then succeeded Robinson as coach at Grambling, winning a trio of league championships between 2000-02.
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It's time
April 09, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
It's been eight years since the Legislature approved the idea of a state-run Eddie Robinson Museum. There's still no museum.
For all that time, the mantra amongst the organizers was getting it done before Robinson passed. That day has come, and gone.
There's still no museum.
But those who believe in the project think the museum could gain new life in the aftermath of Robinson's death, that some glimmer of hope might emerge from the grief over losing an American hero.
Doris Robinson, the late coach's wife of more than 65 years, is one of those people. (She was the one who asked the information on donating to the museum be distributed during today's memorial in Baton Rouge.) So is Doug Williams, Robinson's most visible protege this week.
"It's unfortunate that it took his going home for so many people to know what we already knew about Eddie Robinson," Williams said. "He was more than a football coach. He was more than 408 wins and 200 guys in the NFL. He was a great American."
I don't know why Robinson had to pass for us to get to that place, even though I'm glad that it might be possible.
After all, Robinson didn't send any more players to the NFL this week. He didn't win a 409th time. All that happened long ago.
It's time. Time for the university to sign off on the space. Time for the alumni to gather itself in mighty support. Time for this thing to happen.
There's still no museum. And that's a shocking rebuke to everything that is happening around Robinson right now. All of these tributes mean nothing if there isn't action to back up the sentiment.
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'His spirit will be with us'
Thousands come to Grambling to say goodbye to Eddie Robinson
April 12, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — They talked about the son of a sharecropper who rose to national fame, about a racial pioneer who refused to let the country's inequities dim his passion, about a football coach who cared more about people than games.
Services for Eddie G. Robinson, who had a 57-season tenure at Grambling, were Wednesday. He died April 3 at age 88 from complications related to Alzheimer's.
"Let's grieve and let's celebrate," said Willie Davis, a key member of Grambling State University's undefeated 1955 team before joining the legendary Green Bay Packers teams of the 1960s. "But let's walk away feeling better because he touched our lives."
The crowd, which numbered in the thousands, included scores of former Grambling players like Davis. Several of them spoke during the event, including Pro Football Hall of Famers Willie Brown, Davis and Charlie Joiner; former Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams; and James "Shack" Harris, one of the NFL's highest ranking black executives.
Davis admitted that Robinson's very constancy made his passing seem impossible.
"You can never prepare for an occasion of this type," said Davis, who later became a business leader in California. "We are witnessing a legend passing on, but his spirit will be with us forever."
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu announced a proclamation recognizing Robinson's accomplishments and presented the former coach's family with a flag that flew over the Senate during the body's deliberations.
Wednesday's event included comments from GSU President Horace Judson; Secretary of State Jay Dardenne; Grambling Mayor Martha Andrus; Robinson biographer Richard Lapchick; civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and former Grambling president Joseph Johnson and Shreveport pastor E.E. Jones, both of whom also played for Robinson.
"As we say goodbye to Coach Robinson, I know God is saying hello," said Joiner, now an assistant coach with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Williams revealed that he and Brown — an assistant with the Oakland Raiders, where he played pro ball — had a side bet on who would cry first. Williams won, but only because he spoke last.
"I loved the man," Brown said, then moved away from the podium to compose himself. He pointed at Williams and nodded, before continuing.
Brown said he had been overcome when his gaze fell on Doris, Eddie Robinson's wife of more than 65 years.
"Thank you for letting Coach Robinson be a part of our lives," Brown told Doris Robinson, finally.
Williams cut his own message short as he again was brought to the verge of tears.
"Coach used to say that the first to cry was a sissy," Williams said. "I've been a sissy all week."
Harris, a Monroe native, brought the crowd out of its solemn mood by remembering some of Robinson's best-known lines, comments that many of the players around him then echoed word for word.
"Coach always said he wanted a piece of us," Harris said. "Today we are all better for having a piece of him."
The Robinson family had asked that donations be made to the long-delayed Eddie Robinson Museum effort in lieu of flowers.
"I stayed with him until the last," said Wilbert Ellis, a close friend and former GSU baseball coach, as he too fought back emotion. "He was a great man, who stood for great things. He loved dear old Grambling."
Robinson's memorial was the first event to be held at Grambling's newly constructed Assembly Center, a project first envisioned when Johnson was president of the school in the late 1970s. Flags in front of the new building flew at half-staff in honor of Robinson.
"This facility will forever be a special place," said Judson, "a consecrated place."
Robinson family friend George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, couldn't attend, but sent a representative in his place. Singer Mary Griffin, a Grambling product, performed, as did the GSU choir and its Tiger Marching Band.
The services ended with Eddie Robinson IV, the former coach's great-grandchild, re-enacting one of Robinson's signature morning rituals — ringing the bell to wake his players for school.
Jackson's thoughts
Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson called the late Grambling coach Eddie Robinson a national treasure, saying his legacy of commitment would remain an important lesson to every American.
"I say to (former Grambling players) James (Harris) and Doug (Williams), you don't have a monopoly on Coach," Jackson said. "He was everybody's coach."
Jackson was added to the list of speakers when he made a surprise appearance Wednesday to honor Robinson, who established a Division I college football record for wins in a career that spanned 11 presidents and several wars between 1941-1997.
Jackson went on to connect Robinson's accomplishments in breaking through racial barriers with heroes from biblical times as well as the decade of the 1960s that produced Jackson's mentor, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
In closing crescendo, he led the crowd in a rousing cheer for Robinson: "Put your hands together like Grambling is playing Southern!" Jackson exhorted.
He then knelt before Doris, Eddie Robinson's wife of 65 years, and son Eddie Jr. and spoke privately with the family.
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A break in the clouds
April 12, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
As somber and quietly sorrowful as the Monday memorial for Coach Robinson had been in the state capitol, his final services back in Grambling were a consistent celebration.
Maybe it was an air of reunion that surrounding the school's new assembly hall, as generations -- literally -- of former Robinson players gathered, many for the first time since graduating.
Maybe it was because that earlier day in Baton Rouge had been so reverential.
The campus gathering was typified by comments like those of longtime Grambling trainer Eugene "Doc" Harvey, who had worked with Robinson for 32 years. He certainly mourned the passing of this giant, but there was a good bit more joy in the remembering.
"When we awoke today, it was clouded up," Harvey said on Wednesday, "and on days like that (when Eugene and Robinson worked together with the team), sometimes we would be slow going to the stadium to dress. Coach Robinson never understood that. He'd say: 'Why are you guys not dressed? It's not going to rain in Grambling!'"
Robinson, the enternal optimist, had given his old friend one last boost.
"I thought about that today, when the sun came out just before the service," Harvey said, moments before Robinson's casket was closed for a final time and the memorial began.
"He was a great, great man," Harvey added, then paused. "A great man."
Showing posts with label Willie Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Willie Davis. Show all posts
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.
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.”
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
GSUper Bowl memories
Another quarter 'black' -- or two
January 23, 2005
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
What a difference a Doug Williams makes.
Regardless of the outcome in today's NFC title game between Philadelphia and Atlanta, a black quarterback — either the Eagles' Donovan McNabb or the Falcons' Michael Vick — will start in the Super Bowl for just the third time ever.
This is will also be the first time two African-American quarterbacks face each other in a championship game.
Yet that hasn't received the kind of searing spotlight once trained on Williams when the former Washington Redskins signal caller broke the Super Bowl color barrier more than 15 seasons ago.
James Harris, the first black to be drafted into the NFL as a quarterback, says it's a sign of progress.
"I think it's good to know that we have players that can earn their way and be accepted by their play on the field," said Harris, a Carroll High and Grambling State product taken in the eighth round of the 1969 Draft by the Buffalo Bills. "They are talked about as quarterbacks rather than black quarterbacks. This year, we are fortunate to have two of the league's elite playmakers and two of the best quarterbacks in the NFC championship game. They just happen to be black."
In keeping, the debates have been more mundane.
Philadelphia is playing in its fourth straight conference championship game, but is 0-and-3 so far. Atlanta is trying to reach the title contest with a quarterback who's never been there.
"The media have not put as much emphasis on it," said Williams, now a personnel executive with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NFL club that drafted him out of GSU in 1978. "If anything, this championship game is not about the two black quarterbacks playing in it as much as it is the other story lines — like whether Philadelphia can get over the hump."
Williams — whose autobiography was titled "Quarterblack" — quieted detractors in 1988 by earning Most Valuable Player honors after leading Washington on an unprecedented Super Bowl scoring outburst. Down by 10 to Denver, the Redskins ran just 18 second-quarter plays — but scored 35 unanswered points on the way to a 42-10 win.
"The thing about a Super Bowl is, they may call you a black quarterback, but the truth is that they can't color that experience," said Williams.
The next African American to start was Alcorn State product Steve McNair, who did it with Tennessee in the 1999 title game.
Harris later broke racial barriers in NFL front offices as well — serving as assistant general manager of the New York Jets, pro personnel director for the Baltimore Ravens and now vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaquars.
"When you think about the performance that Doug had in the Super Bowl," Harris marvels, "that's probably as fine a game as we've seen. It's refreshing to see that this kind of thing is happening again — and going unnoticed. Doug's play and performance in the Super Bowl, for most young kids growing up, that truly gave them a taste of how it could actually happen."
Harris said he takes great pride in the fact that the Southwestern Athletic Conference produced the first two African Americans to start in the Super Bowl, though that string will end this year. McNabb went to Syracuse, while Vick is a Virginia Tech product.
"That will never change," said Harris, named MVP of the 1975 Pro Bowl. "We had the first two, no matter how long this league goes on."
Williams agrees: "That's says a lot. It's more or less saying that you can get there from here."
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GLORY DAYS
Area legends celebrated for their Super Bowl success
January 29, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Maybe sports people are the nostalgic type.
Or, perhaps it's the two-week layoff. Given 14 days to fill, they might just get a little desperate.
But the bye week before the Super Bowl always seems to provide us another chance to say hello to players with local connections who have starred in the NFL's season-ending title game.
Here's a look at this long week's longing looks back:
--While no area player made ESPN's list of starters last Thursday night for the "Ultimate Super Bowl 40-Man Roster," there were familiar faces throughout the broadcast.
Louisiana Tech product Terry Bradshaw was recognized for his dominance with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s by being named the backup signal-caller. "
As the first quarterback to win four Super Bowl rings, Bradshaw set the standard for excellence in the big game," ESPN's Chris Berman said during the broadcast. In total, Bradshaw threw for 932 yards and nine Super Bowl touchdowns, a figure bested only by starter Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers.
Several of Bradshaw's Steelers teammates were also named starters - including receiver Lynn Swann, running back Franco Harris and center Mike Webster.
Meanwhile, Grambling State product Willie Davis, defensive end on the Green Bay Packers championship squads for Super Bowls I and II, was given an honorable mention at his position.
Ironically, Berman notes that Davis had 4-1/2 sacks in those two games alone. What he doesn't mention is that because the NFL didn't officially begin recording sacks until the Super Bowl XVII season, Davis' record goes unrecorded.
The ESPN program's opening sequence includes fellow Grambling product Willie Brown's dramatic 75-yard interception return for a touchdown in the Oakland Raiders' Super Bowl XI victory; a Bradshaw pass to Swann; and an interview with former GSU quarterback and coach Doug Williams, winner of Super Bowl XXII.
While Williams wasn't a starter, he was recognized for that MVP performance.
"I think that day was the epitome of what execution was all about," Williams said on camera. "In 18 plays, only 18 plays, we scored 35 points."
--Bradshaw wins accounted for two of NFL.com's list of Top 10 Super Bowls of all time - including, at No. 9, Super Bowl X, where Bradshaw won his second consecutive ring with a 64-yard pass to Swann.
At No. 3 was Super Bowl XIII, where Bradshaw was even more impressive, throwing a record four TD passes. Also mentioned is Billy Joe Dupree, a West Monroe native who caught a touchdown pass in that game for Dallas.
Dennis "Dirt" Winston, a two-time assistant coach under GSU's Eddie Robinson, is noted for a fumble recovery he made for the Steelers.
Included links take readers to more details on Bradshaw's MVP performance in XIII, and reproductions of the game ticket and winner's ring.
--Super Bowl XXIX, featuring Louisiana-Monroe product Stan Humphries under center for San Diego, got bashed as part of ESPN.com writer Eric Peel's worst-ever list - called "The Average Bowl."
San Francisco cruised to a 49-26 win on the strength of a record-smashing six TD passes by Niners quarterback Steve Young.
"Like SB III, this one kicked off with an 18-point spread," Peel wrote, naming this game his No. 6 worst-ever. "Unlike that game, the dogs were down 14 in the first five minutes and they never got up."
--Don Banks, who writes SportsIlllustrated.com's "Inside the NFL Column," ranked the Top 10 Super Bowl MVPs of all time - and put Williams at No. 2.
Williams was recognized for throwing "a record four touchdowns to turn a 10-0 first-quarter deficit into a 35-10 lead" during that romp over Denver. "He finished with 340 yards passing, and remains the only black quarterback to win the Super Bowl."
The attached photo gallery features eight shots, including Williams' Feb. 8, 1988 appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The head was, simply: "WOW!"
Still in the books
Players with local connections still dot the all-time Super Bowl record book:
AVERAGE GAIN PER PASS: No. 1: 11.1, Terry Bradshaw (La. Tech); 932 yards on 84 attempts in four games.
LONGEST INT RETURN: No. 1: 75 yards, Willie Brown (Grambling); scored touchdown in XI
TD PASSES IN CAREER: No. 2: 9, Bradshaw
LONGEST PASS COMPLETION: No. 3: 80 yards, Doug Williams (Grambling) in XXII TD
PASSES IN GAME: No. 3: 4, Bradshaw (XIII) and Williams (XXII)
CAREER PASSING YARDS: No. 3: 932, Bradshaw Source: NFL.com
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The 'question' that just won't go away
January 31, 2004
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
For the past 15 years, during Super Bowl week, Grambling State coach Doug Williams has gotten the calls. Most mention The Question.
"It comes up every year," said Williams, who made history as the first black to start a Super Bowl in 1988 for the Washington Redskins. "This past week, I might have done six or seven radio shows - not to mention newspaper and magazine articles. That still comes up. They start with: 'Did he really ask that question?' "
Well, actually, no. But here it is anyway: Legend has it that a reporter, in the frenzy of media day before the game, asked: "How long have you been a black quarterback?"
The reporter was Butch John, a one-time sports writer at The News-Star - where, in 1980, he covered the final year of Doug's brother Mike Williams' tenure under center for Grambling State. John was working for The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger by then - and has said he got fed up with the media's sharp focus on race.
"For about 20 minutes, Doug's getting all these questions about the significance (of Williams' race)," John has said. "All these questions, blah-de-blah-de-blah. Never let up. Being from the South, having covered Grambling and his brother Mike, Doug being a black quarterback was no big deal to me."
Here's what John says he asked: Doug, it's obvious you've been a black quarterback all your life. When did it start to matter?
"There was a little blurb - no more than a paragraph - in the San Diego paper the next day about 'a question from a well-meaning writer,'" John said. "From there, things just kind of shot out of control. By the end of the week, it was 'The Question.' "
Williams answered the question honestly, he said.
"This is the take I had on it," he said. "Being black at the time was a big thing. Where the guy was coming from, he meant how long has there been an emphasis on your being black?"
Not that history records any of that.
John - who later moved on to investigative reporting at Louisville - will forever be remembered, even if nobody knows his name, for The Question: How long have you been a black quarterback?
"The way it came out, nobody gave it a chance to sink in," said Williams - who, ironically, is in Houston during this Super Bowl week to attend the initial meeting of a group of former black quarterbacks called "The Field Generals."
Still, all of this begs the obvious question - even if John never asked it. So, how long have you been a black quarterback?
"I'm not one anymore," Williams said, and laughed heartily. "I'm past that. It's been a long time."
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Greats still in high regards
GSU quartet on all-time college list
July 4, 2004
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Four Grambling State greats were among those honored Saturday as part of Family Digest magazine's salute to the best black college athletes of all time.
Willie Brown, Junious "Buck" Buchanan, Willie Davis and Doug Williams - all former players under the legendary Eddie Robinson - were recognized.
"It's good to have four from Grambling honored," Williams said. "But there could be an argument that there should be more. The thing with honors like this is that you are grateful that people recognize you - but you realize that there are other people who deserve the same kind of honor. I'm certainly glad to be in that number."
Only Brown, now a coach and personnel director with the Oakland Raiders, attended the ceremony, held in Las Vegas. Buchanan died of lung cancer in 1992.
All four men are members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference's Hall of Fame:
· An undrafted rookie out of Grambling College in 1963, Brown eventually was signed by Houston - which then traded him away in 1967.
Bad move. Brown sparked two Super Bowls runs with the Oakland Raiders, winning one. He has also been an assistant with the Raiders during two more title games.
"The satisfaction as a coach was just as strong as they were as a player," Brown said. "I coached the position that I played, and I love those ball players that I coached."
Perhaps best remembered for his 75-yard interception return for a touchdown against the Vikings in Super Bowl XI, Brown was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984. He's also a member of the All-Time American Football League Team.
"I just played as hard as I could," said Brown, who remains the only player in NFL history to intercept a pass in 16 consecutive seasons. "Being in the Hall of Fame probably means more to your family than to yourself. I have always been the mellow guy who doesn't put a lot of value in terms of how good I was."
· Williams, who led GSU to three Black College National Championships and two SWAC titles, was the first All-America quarterback from a black college and the first black passer picked in the first round.
The problem: He was drafted by the perennially losing Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1978. But Williams would lead the Bucs to their first winning season ever and then on to the NFC title game.
After a two-season stint in the doomed USFL, Williams then played for Washington's Joe Gibbs, his former offensive coordinator at Tampa Bay.
He would become the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. That win over Denver in 1988 was sparked by what was then the most prolific single quarter of passing ever, earning Williams MVP honors.
He returned to Grambling State in 1997 for a six-year run as head coach, replacing Robinson, and won three consecutive SWAC titles.
"I used to always tell Coach Rob that we players were `coach-makers.' Without us, they're nothing," said Williams, who is now back with Tampa Bay as a personnel executive. "He always used to always make a statement - and it took me being a coach to understand it: He said he was the luckiest man in the world. I can see who that's true now. But at the same time, we were lucky too that we had Coach Robinson. Luckier than we knew."
Named Street and Smith's Black College Coach of the Year in 2000, Williams was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001.
· Davis, the first Grambling player to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was an All-NFL selection five times in the six years from 1962-67 for Green Bay - and was selected to play in five consecutive Pro Bowls.
A stalwart presence on the decade's most dominant team, Davis helped the Packers to five NFL championships - including the first two Super Bowls - and six divisional titles in eight seasons.
The Lisbon native was the very portrait of reliability: Davis didn't miss a contest in his 12-year, 162-game career. The Sporting News placed him at No. 69 in its list of the Football's 100 Greatest Players Ever.
But Davis always had other aspirations, often saying that he wanted people to "remember me as a player who moved on to success off the field."
He would use a University of Chicago MBA to launch a second career. Davis is now chief executive of five radio stations - and has served on as many as 10 corporate boards of directors, including Sara Lee, Dow Chemical and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
"I guess it's a lot of stuff," Davis said. "But I certainly don't have any specific day in mind for when I'll retire. At the moment I'm not having fun, I'll step back. But right now, I feel blessed and I'm enjoying myself."
· Buchanan, who played both ways for Robinson at Grambling State, was the first player chosen in the 1963 AFL Draft by the Dallas Texans, who later moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs.
So dominant was this three-time All-America and All-SWAC honoree that the Sports Network established the Buck Buchanan Award in 1995 to honor Division I-AA football's best defensive performer.
A prototypical defender, Buchanan was always a favorite of his former coach's. In fact, Robinson called the 1962 NAIA All-American "the finest lineman I have seen."
He recorded the first sack ever in a Super Bowl, bringing down Bart Starr in a losing effort to Green Bay, then later helped Kansas City to a win in the fourth Super Bowl. In all, Buchanan played in six AFL All-Star games and two Pro Bowls at defensive tackle.
He missed just one game in a stellar 13-year career that earned him induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. Buchanan later started two businesses in Kansas City, All-Pro Construction Co. and All-Pro Advertising, and would co-found the Black Chamber of Commerce, where he served as president from 1986-89.
Best black college athletes
Family Digest magazine honored the Best Black College Athletes of All Time at a Saturday luncheon held at the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Here are the 26 honorees, including four from Grambling State, grouped by their respective sport:
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San Diego, 1988: The start of something revolutionary
January 26, 2003
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
"The significance," muses Doug Williams, "stands out more than it did 15 years ago."
Less than six minutes of game clock had elapsed in 1988's Super Bowl under the San Diego skies. Washington, once down by 10 to Denver, had run just 18 second-quarter plays - but scored 35 unanswered points.
Game over.
The Redskins, powered by that offensive outburst from an African-American quarterback, would go on to win 42-10. Williams was named the game's Most Valuable Player.
Remembered today as a moment of redemption for black signal-callers, Williams' California dream was made possible with a down payment by local hero James "Shack" Harris - the first African-American to start at quarterback in the NFL.
But Williams, in one of the countless interviews he gave as the anniversary loomed this week, said you couldn't call that day a dream. It's not that simple. With dreams, he said, you'd have to at least visualize that such an eye-popping opportunity could happen for an African-American.
The legendary figure who coached both Harris and Williams at Grambling State University has a different idea about the historical significance of it all.
"The thing we are most proud of is that they graduated from college," says Eddie Robinson, who was succeeded as Grambling coach by Williams.
They took that piece of paper into a league locked up tight with misconceptions about an African-American's ability to master the complex strategies of an NFL offense. Most blacks were automatically converted to receiver or cornerback.
Harris, the former Carroll star, cracked the door with his Pro Bowl MVP performance in 1975. Williams knocked the thing off its hinges that day in 1988.
The record books relate Williams' four touchdown passes - in one quarter of play. He also set a new mark for passing yards in the Super Bowl.
It was, then, Williams' personal redemption too - after years of struggles in his first job at Tampa Bay, then a stint in the now-defunct USFL, and finally getting back to the NFL only as a backup to the now-forgotten Jay Schroeder at Washington.
Robinson, who was in San Diego that day, went 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," says Robinson. "I told him how proud the people were - in our community and our churches."
The Super Bowl returns to the site of Williams' greatest glory today.
Moreover, we find Tampa Bay - the expansion team that drafted Williams, after opening with a 2-26 record - finally playing in its first championship game. (Williams picks his old team to win, saying they have "more heart. It's about the way they play and how they play the game.")
But the Buccaneers' success is the least of what has changed in this league since Williams was forced into retirement by a bad back.
This year's playoffs included not one black quarterback struggling against years of wrong-headed assumptions, but three (Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb and Steve McNair) who are routinely accepted as league superstars. African-Americans are regularly seen under center - including the Saints' Aaron Brooks.
Then there's Harris himself, who was named vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars on Thursday. Williams praised the Monroe native this week, saying: "I would line up Shack's football mind with that of anybody in the league."
Harris had been pro personnel director for Baltimore since 1997, a stint that included the Ravens' 2000 title season.
"It makes you feel really fine that they can go out and do those kind of things," says Robinson - who retired as the first football coach to notch more than 400 victories. "It just makes you know what our school can do - and what our students can do."
Tellingly, Williams says his sense of the importance of that Super Bowl win continues to grow.
He says strangers still stop to talk about what it meant to blacks. Seeing it through his children's eyes also gives Williams a clearer perspective than even the passage of time did.
Meaningful history will do that.
"I can enjoy the fact that my kids can watch what happened and say: `My daddy accomplished this and that,' " Williams says. "I wasn't to the point that I could realize 15 years ago what a great, great feat it was."
Turns out, the revolution in football was, in fact, televised. And on Super Bowl Sunday, no less.
January 23, 2005
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
What a difference a Doug Williams makes.
Regardless of the outcome in today's NFC title game between Philadelphia and Atlanta, a black quarterback — either the Eagles' Donovan McNabb or the Falcons' Michael Vick — will start in the Super Bowl for just the third time ever.
This is will also be the first time two African-American quarterbacks face each other in a championship game.
Yet that hasn't received the kind of searing spotlight once trained on Williams when the former Washington Redskins signal caller broke the Super Bowl color barrier more than 15 seasons ago.
James Harris, the first black to be drafted into the NFL as a quarterback, says it's a sign of progress.
"I think it's good to know that we have players that can earn their way and be accepted by their play on the field," said Harris, a Carroll High and Grambling State product taken in the eighth round of the 1969 Draft by the Buffalo Bills. "They are talked about as quarterbacks rather than black quarterbacks. This year, we are fortunate to have two of the league's elite playmakers and two of the best quarterbacks in the NFC championship game. They just happen to be black."
In keeping, the debates have been more mundane.
Philadelphia is playing in its fourth straight conference championship game, but is 0-and-3 so far. Atlanta is trying to reach the title contest with a quarterback who's never been there.
"The media have not put as much emphasis on it," said Williams, now a personnel executive with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the NFL club that drafted him out of GSU in 1978. "If anything, this championship game is not about the two black quarterbacks playing in it as much as it is the other story lines — like whether Philadelphia can get over the hump."
Williams — whose autobiography was titled "Quarterblack" — quieted detractors in 1988 by earning Most Valuable Player honors after leading Washington on an unprecedented Super Bowl scoring outburst. Down by 10 to Denver, the Redskins ran just 18 second-quarter plays — but scored 35 unanswered points on the way to a 42-10 win.
"The thing about a Super Bowl is, they may call you a black quarterback, but the truth is that they can't color that experience," said Williams.
The next African American to start was Alcorn State product Steve McNair, who did it with Tennessee in the 1999 title game.
Harris later broke racial barriers in NFL front offices as well — serving as assistant general manager of the New York Jets, pro personnel director for the Baltimore Ravens and now vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaquars.
"When you think about the performance that Doug had in the Super Bowl," Harris marvels, "that's probably as fine a game as we've seen. It's refreshing to see that this kind of thing is happening again — and going unnoticed. Doug's play and performance in the Super Bowl, for most young kids growing up, that truly gave them a taste of how it could actually happen."
Harris said he takes great pride in the fact that the Southwestern Athletic Conference produced the first two African Americans to start in the Super Bowl, though that string will end this year. McNabb went to Syracuse, while Vick is a Virginia Tech product.
"That will never change," said Harris, named MVP of the 1975 Pro Bowl. "We had the first two, no matter how long this league goes on."
Williams agrees: "That's says a lot. It's more or less saying that you can get there from here."
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GLORY DAYS
Area legends celebrated for their Super Bowl success
January 29, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Maybe sports people are the nostalgic type.
Or, perhaps it's the two-week layoff. Given 14 days to fill, they might just get a little desperate.
But the bye week before the Super Bowl always seems to provide us another chance to say hello to players with local connections who have starred in the NFL's season-ending title game.
Here's a look at this long week's longing looks back:
--While no area player made ESPN's list of starters last Thursday night for the "Ultimate Super Bowl 40-Man Roster," there were familiar faces throughout the broadcast.
Louisiana Tech product Terry Bradshaw was recognized for his dominance with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s by being named the backup signal-caller. "
As the first quarterback to win four Super Bowl rings, Bradshaw set the standard for excellence in the big game," ESPN's Chris Berman said during the broadcast. In total, Bradshaw threw for 932 yards and nine Super Bowl touchdowns, a figure bested only by starter Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers.
Several of Bradshaw's Steelers teammates were also named starters - including receiver Lynn Swann, running back Franco Harris and center Mike Webster.
Meanwhile, Grambling State product Willie Davis, defensive end on the Green Bay Packers championship squads for Super Bowls I and II, was given an honorable mention at his position.
Ironically, Berman notes that Davis had 4-1/2 sacks in those two games alone. What he doesn't mention is that because the NFL didn't officially begin recording sacks until the Super Bowl XVII season, Davis' record goes unrecorded.
The ESPN program's opening sequence includes fellow Grambling product Willie Brown's dramatic 75-yard interception return for a touchdown in the Oakland Raiders' Super Bowl XI victory; a Bradshaw pass to Swann; and an interview with former GSU quarterback and coach Doug Williams, winner of Super Bowl XXII.
While Williams wasn't a starter, he was recognized for that MVP performance.
"I think that day was the epitome of what execution was all about," Williams said on camera. "In 18 plays, only 18 plays, we scored 35 points."
--Bradshaw wins accounted for two of NFL.com's list of Top 10 Super Bowls of all time - including, at No. 9, Super Bowl X, where Bradshaw won his second consecutive ring with a 64-yard pass to Swann.
At No. 3 was Super Bowl XIII, where Bradshaw was even more impressive, throwing a record four TD passes. Also mentioned is Billy Joe Dupree, a West Monroe native who caught a touchdown pass in that game for Dallas.
Dennis "Dirt" Winston, a two-time assistant coach under GSU's Eddie Robinson, is noted for a fumble recovery he made for the Steelers.
Included links take readers to more details on Bradshaw's MVP performance in XIII, and reproductions of the game ticket and winner's ring.
--Super Bowl XXIX, featuring Louisiana-Monroe product Stan Humphries under center for San Diego, got bashed as part of ESPN.com writer Eric Peel's worst-ever list - called "The Average Bowl."
San Francisco cruised to a 49-26 win on the strength of a record-smashing six TD passes by Niners quarterback Steve Young.
"Like SB III, this one kicked off with an 18-point spread," Peel wrote, naming this game his No. 6 worst-ever. "Unlike that game, the dogs were down 14 in the first five minutes and they never got up."
--Don Banks, who writes SportsIlllustrated.com's "Inside the NFL Column," ranked the Top 10 Super Bowl MVPs of all time - and put Williams at No. 2.
Williams was recognized for throwing "a record four touchdowns to turn a 10-0 first-quarter deficit into a 35-10 lead" during that romp over Denver. "He finished with 340 yards passing, and remains the only black quarterback to win the Super Bowl."
The attached photo gallery features eight shots, including Williams' Feb. 8, 1988 appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The head was, simply: "WOW!"
Still in the books
Players with local connections still dot the all-time Super Bowl record book:
AVERAGE GAIN PER PASS: No. 1: 11.1, Terry Bradshaw (La. Tech); 932 yards on 84 attempts in four games.
LONGEST INT RETURN: No. 1: 75 yards, Willie Brown (Grambling); scored touchdown in XI
TD PASSES IN CAREER: No. 2: 9, Bradshaw
LONGEST PASS COMPLETION: No. 3: 80 yards, Doug Williams (Grambling) in XXII TD
PASSES IN GAME: No. 3: 4, Bradshaw (XIII) and Williams (XXII)
CAREER PASSING YARDS: No. 3: 932, Bradshaw Source: NFL.com
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The 'question' that just won't go away
January 31, 2004
By NICK DERISO
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
For the past 15 years, during Super Bowl week, Grambling State coach Doug Williams has gotten the calls. Most mention The Question.
"It comes up every year," said Williams, who made history as the first black to start a Super Bowl in 1988 for the Washington Redskins. "This past week, I might have done six or seven radio shows - not to mention newspaper and magazine articles. That still comes up. They start with: 'Did he really ask that question?' "
Well, actually, no. But here it is anyway: Legend has it that a reporter, in the frenzy of media day before the game, asked: "How long have you been a black quarterback?"
The reporter was Butch John, a one-time sports writer at The News-Star - where, in 1980, he covered the final year of Doug's brother Mike Williams' tenure under center for Grambling State. John was working for The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger by then - and has said he got fed up with the media's sharp focus on race.
"For about 20 minutes, Doug's getting all these questions about the significance (of Williams' race)," John has said. "All these questions, blah-de-blah-de-blah. Never let up. Being from the South, having covered Grambling and his brother Mike, Doug being a black quarterback was no big deal to me."
Here's what John says he asked: Doug, it's obvious you've been a black quarterback all your life. When did it start to matter?
"There was a little blurb - no more than a paragraph - in the San Diego paper the next day about 'a question from a well-meaning writer,'" John said. "From there, things just kind of shot out of control. By the end of the week, it was 'The Question.' "
Williams answered the question honestly, he said.
"This is the take I had on it," he said. "Being black at the time was a big thing. Where the guy was coming from, he meant how long has there been an emphasis on your being black?"
Not that history records any of that.
John - who later moved on to investigative reporting at Louisville - will forever be remembered, even if nobody knows his name, for The Question: How long have you been a black quarterback?
"The way it came out, nobody gave it a chance to sink in," said Williams - who, ironically, is in Houston during this Super Bowl week to attend the initial meeting of a group of former black quarterbacks called "The Field Generals."
Still, all of this begs the obvious question - even if John never asked it. So, how long have you been a black quarterback?
"I'm not one anymore," Williams said, and laughed heartily. "I'm past that. It's been a long time."
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Greats still in high regards
GSU quartet on all-time college list
July 4, 2004
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Four Grambling State greats were among those honored Saturday as part of Family Digest magazine's salute to the best black college athletes of all time.
Willie Brown, Junious "Buck" Buchanan, Willie Davis and Doug Williams - all former players under the legendary Eddie Robinson - were recognized.
"It's good to have four from Grambling honored," Williams said. "But there could be an argument that there should be more. The thing with honors like this is that you are grateful that people recognize you - but you realize that there are other people who deserve the same kind of honor. I'm certainly glad to be in that number."
Only Brown, now a coach and personnel director with the Oakland Raiders, attended the ceremony, held in Las Vegas. Buchanan died of lung cancer in 1992.
All four men are members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference's Hall of Fame:
· An undrafted rookie out of Grambling College in 1963, Brown eventually was signed by Houston - which then traded him away in 1967.
Bad move. Brown sparked two Super Bowls runs with the Oakland Raiders, winning one. He has also been an assistant with the Raiders during two more title games.
"The satisfaction as a coach was just as strong as they were as a player," Brown said. "I coached the position that I played, and I love those ball players that I coached."
Perhaps best remembered for his 75-yard interception return for a touchdown against the Vikings in Super Bowl XI, Brown was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1984. He's also a member of the All-Time American Football League Team.
"I just played as hard as I could," said Brown, who remains the only player in NFL history to intercept a pass in 16 consecutive seasons. "Being in the Hall of Fame probably means more to your family than to yourself. I have always been the mellow guy who doesn't put a lot of value in terms of how good I was."
· Williams, who led GSU to three Black College National Championships and two SWAC titles, was the first All-America quarterback from a black college and the first black passer picked in the first round.
The problem: He was drafted by the perennially losing Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1978. But Williams would lead the Bucs to their first winning season ever and then on to the NFC title game.
After a two-season stint in the doomed USFL, Williams then played for Washington's Joe Gibbs, his former offensive coordinator at Tampa Bay.
He would become the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. That win over Denver in 1988 was sparked by what was then the most prolific single quarter of passing ever, earning Williams MVP honors.
He returned to Grambling State in 1997 for a six-year run as head coach, replacing Robinson, and won three consecutive SWAC titles.
"I used to always tell Coach Rob that we players were `coach-makers.' Without us, they're nothing," said Williams, who is now back with Tampa Bay as a personnel executive. "He always used to always make a statement - and it took me being a coach to understand it: He said he was the luckiest man in the world. I can see who that's true now. But at the same time, we were lucky too that we had Coach Robinson. Luckier than we knew."
Named Street and Smith's Black College Coach of the Year in 2000, Williams was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2001.
· Davis, the first Grambling player to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was an All-NFL selection five times in the six years from 1962-67 for Green Bay - and was selected to play in five consecutive Pro Bowls.
A stalwart presence on the decade's most dominant team, Davis helped the Packers to five NFL championships - including the first two Super Bowls - and six divisional titles in eight seasons.
The Lisbon native was the very portrait of reliability: Davis didn't miss a contest in his 12-year, 162-game career. The Sporting News placed him at No. 69 in its list of the Football's 100 Greatest Players Ever.
But Davis always had other aspirations, often saying that he wanted people to "remember me as a player who moved on to success off the field."
He would use a University of Chicago MBA to launch a second career. Davis is now chief executive of five radio stations - and has served on as many as 10 corporate boards of directors, including Sara Lee, Dow Chemical and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
"I guess it's a lot of stuff," Davis said. "But I certainly don't have any specific day in mind for when I'll retire. At the moment I'm not having fun, I'll step back. But right now, I feel blessed and I'm enjoying myself."
· Buchanan, who played both ways for Robinson at Grambling State, was the first player chosen in the 1963 AFL Draft by the Dallas Texans, who later moved to Kansas City and became the Chiefs.
So dominant was this three-time All-America and All-SWAC honoree that the Sports Network established the Buck Buchanan Award in 1995 to honor Division I-AA football's best defensive performer.
A prototypical defender, Buchanan was always a favorite of his former coach's. In fact, Robinson called the 1962 NAIA All-American "the finest lineman I have seen."
He recorded the first sack ever in a Super Bowl, bringing down Bart Starr in a losing effort to Green Bay, then later helped Kansas City to a win in the fourth Super Bowl. In all, Buchanan played in six AFL All-Star games and two Pro Bowls at defensive tackle.
He missed just one game in a stellar 13-year career that earned him induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990. Buchanan later started two businesses in Kansas City, All-Pro Construction Co. and All-Pro Advertising, and would co-found the Black Chamber of Commerce, where he served as president from 1986-89.
Best black college athletes
Family Digest magazine honored the Best Black College Athletes of All Time at a Saturday luncheon held at the Riviera Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Here are the 26 honorees, including four from Grambling State, grouped by their respective sport:
g g g
San Diego, 1988: The start of something revolutionary
January 26, 2003
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
"The significance," muses Doug Williams, "stands out more than it did 15 years ago."
Less than six minutes of game clock had elapsed in 1988's Super Bowl under the San Diego skies. Washington, once down by 10 to Denver, had run just 18 second-quarter plays - but scored 35 unanswered points.
Game over.
The Redskins, powered by that offensive outburst from an African-American quarterback, would go on to win 42-10. Williams was named the game's Most Valuable Player.
Remembered today as a moment of redemption for black signal-callers, Williams' California dream was made possible with a down payment by local hero James "Shack" Harris - the first African-American to start at quarterback in the NFL.
But Williams, in one of the countless interviews he gave as the anniversary loomed this week, said you couldn't call that day a dream. It's not that simple. With dreams, he said, you'd have to at least visualize that such an eye-popping opportunity could happen for an African-American.
The legendary figure who coached both Harris and Williams at Grambling State University has a different idea about the historical significance of it all.
"The thing we are most proud of is that they graduated from college," says Eddie Robinson, who was succeeded as Grambling coach by Williams.
They took that piece of paper into a league locked up tight with misconceptions about an African-American's ability to master the complex strategies of an NFL offense. Most blacks were automatically converted to receiver or cornerback.
Harris, the former Carroll star, cracked the door with his Pro Bowl MVP performance in 1975. Williams knocked the thing off its hinges that day in 1988.
The record books relate Williams' four touchdown passes - in one quarter of play. He also set a new mark for passing yards in the Super Bowl.
It was, then, Williams' personal redemption too - after years of struggles in his first job at Tampa Bay, then a stint in the now-defunct USFL, and finally getting back to the NFL only as a backup to the now-forgotten Jay Schroeder at Washington.
Robinson, who was in San Diego that day, went 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," says Robinson. "I told him how proud the people were - in our community and our churches."
The Super Bowl returns to the site of Williams' greatest glory today.
Moreover, we find Tampa Bay - the expansion team that drafted Williams, after opening with a 2-26 record - finally playing in its first championship game. (Williams picks his old team to win, saying they have "more heart. It's about the way they play and how they play the game.")
But the Buccaneers' success is the least of what has changed in this league since Williams was forced into retirement by a bad back.
This year's playoffs included not one black quarterback struggling against years of wrong-headed assumptions, but three (Michael Vick, Donovan McNabb and Steve McNair) who are routinely accepted as league superstars. African-Americans are regularly seen under center - including the Saints' Aaron Brooks.
Then there's Harris himself, who was named vice president of player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars on Thursday. Williams praised the Monroe native this week, saying: "I would line up Shack's football mind with that of anybody in the league."
Harris had been pro personnel director for Baltimore since 1997, a stint that included the Ravens' 2000 title season.
"It makes you feel really fine that they can go out and do those kind of things," says Robinson - who retired as the first football coach to notch more than 400 victories. "It just makes you know what our school can do - and what our students can do."
Tellingly, Williams says his sense of the importance of that Super Bowl win continues to grow.
He says strangers still stop to talk about what it meant to blacks. Seeing it through his children's eyes also gives Williams a clearer perspective than even the passage of time did.
Meaningful history will do that.
"I can enjoy the fact that my kids can watch what happened and say: `My daddy accomplished this and that,' " Williams says. "I wasn't to the point that I could realize 15 years ago what a great, great feat it was."
Turns out, the revolution in football was, in fact, televised. And on Super Bowl Sunday, no less.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Grambling greats: Willie Davis
One step further
May 29, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Former Green Bay legend Willie Davis, Grambling's first Pro Football Hall of Famer, returned in a reflective mood from an emotional recent reunion at GSU.
"I was down at my old school just last week for a 50-year celebration of my class," he told The Green Bay Press-Gazette, "and I tell you, I was just shocked with the number of football players that were part of the teams I was on that are no longer with us."
Davis helped former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson win his first black college national championship as part of a 1955 squad that went 10-0 - earning him a spot on our GRAMBLING80 list.
Davis was then part of all 5 NFL title-winning teams under Packers coach Vince Lombardi, making 4 1/2 sacks in Super Bowls I and II - marks that would rank as the best ever, if that stat had been officially recorded back then.
Years later, he's considerate of that legacy.
"I want my grandkids to have this (memorabilia) as a reminder of their granddad," Davis said. "There is some stuff I'm willing to part with, and if that helps some fundraising efforts (for charity), I plan to contribute some of those things."
This Lisbon native has gone on to an impressive career, establishing several businesses in the hopes, he's said, that people would "remember me as a player who moved on to success off the field."
He deserves it. Davis got some of that recognition, quiet as it was, in his return trip to Grambling. But I'd like to see the community go one step further, perhaps by establishing a larger, more public event in honor of this SWAC Hall of Famer.
Why not have Willie Davis Week during the upcoming football season? That would be fitting tribute to one of Robinson's most influential former pupils.
g g g
Greats still in high regards
July 4, 2004
By Nick Deriso
mailto:mnderiso@thenewsstar.com
Four Grambling State greats were among those honored Saturday as part of Family Digest magazine's salute to the best black college athletes of all time.
Willie Brown, Junious "Buck" Buchanan, Willie Davis and Doug Williams - all former players under the legendary Eddie Robinson - were recognized.
"It's good to have four from Grambling honored," Williams said. "But there could be an argument that there should be more. The thing with honors like this is that you are grateful that people recognize you - but you realize that there are other people who deserve the same kind of honor. I'm certainly glad to be in that number."
Only Brown, now a coach and personnel director with the Oakland Raiders, attended the ceremony, held in Las Vegas. Buchanan died of lung cancer in 1992.
All four men are members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference's Hall of Fame.
Here's a look at Willie Davis:
-- Davis, the first Grambling player to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was an All-NFL selection five times in the six years from 1962-67 for Green Bay - and was selected to play in five consecutive Pro Bowls.
A stalwart presence on the decade's most dominant team, Davis helped the Packers to five NFL championships and six divisional titles in eight seasons.The Lisbon native was the very portrait of reliability: Davis didn't miss a contest in his 12-year, 162-game career. The Sporting News placed him at No. 69 in its list of the Football's 100 Greatest Players Ever.
But Davis always had other aspirations, often saying that he wanted people to "remember me as a player who moved on to success off the field."
He would use a University of Chicago MBA to launch a second career. Davis is now chief executive of five radio stations - and has served on as many as 10 corporate boards of directors, including Sara Lee, Dow Chemical and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
"I guess it's a lot of stuff," Davis said. "But I certainly don't have any specific day in mind for when I'll retire. At the moment I'm not having fun, I'll step back. But right now, I feel blessed and I'm enjoying myself."
g g g
Glory days always close for legends
GSU family paid honor to '55 team
October 31, 2005
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - It's been 50 years, a half century of football. But for Melvin Lee, center on the 1955 undefeated team at Grambling State, the time has flown by.
"To the individuals on the team, we remember it like it was yesterday," said Lee, who was honored before last Saturday's homecoming game along with the rest of that black college national championship squad.
"We had an opportunity to bring some legends back," said GSU coach Melvin Spears. "With the alumni coming back, looking to see what kind of product we are putting on the field, it's important to show them that the legacy continues."
Lee said the players, even as college-aged youngsters, could sense that Eddie Robinson was not only a bright football mind, but also an emerging leader of national scope.
"We all looked up to him, and the country would recognize how special he was in later years," said Lee, who was later Robinson's long-time offensive coordinator. "As individuals, we were really impressed by his leadership. He always inspired you. There was always something that was different and unique and very stimulating."
Among those also in attendance at Robinson Stadium were: halfbacks Paul Green and Edward Murray; fullbacks Howard Scott and Levi Washington; ends Mack Moore and Fred Franklin; guards Joseph Dixon and Huey Hill; center Leon Larce; and quarterbacks Jammie Caleb, Dorth Blade, Robert Smith and Willie Kennedy.
With these men, Robinson forged a tough, run-oriented team that also played stingy, gritty defense.
"We're proud the fact that we didn't allow more than 24 points in any game that year," said Lee. "The offense was based around the tailback; there was never a question about passing. We ran to the right most of the time. We more or less came right at you."
Lee credited the school president and its sports information director for helping establish the team - and spreading the word about this then-new football power.
"It started at the top, of course," said Lee. "R.W.E. Jones set the stage and then Collie J. Nicholson gave us so much attention in news print. That helped Coach Robinson focus on being a consistent fundamentalist. They allowed us to learn and progress as the years went by."
Willie Davis, a senior tackle, was the only player to find consistent success at the next level, earning Pro Football Hall of Fame honors for his part in the 1960s championships of Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. Yet Lee said many of the lessons taught on the practice fields spurred the players to leadership roles in the community, working as educators and businessmen.
"As we played for that championship, Coach talked about giving your best effort and that, looking back, you would see this as your finest hour," said Lee. "I'm sure most of us look back and realize that was a fantastic time. It can only happen to a few individuals, and not very often."
g g g
A legacy that lingers
January 30, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Green Bay's 1966 team -- with Grambling product Willie "Thumper" Davis as a cornerstone -- was named the No. 6 all-time Super Bowl squad by a 53-member panel of pro football experts during an NFL Network special tonight.
No surprise there, since Davis was part of a startling roster of legends on that first-ever title team, from Coach Vince Lombardi to players like Bart Starr, Bill Curry and Willie Wood.
Curry, though, turns the whole show on its ear with a frank exchange about how Davis helped him overcome whatever last whispers of latent racism he'd harbored having grown up in the old rural South.
Davis ran into the rookie during Curry's first Green Bay training camp, then held at tiny St. Norbert College. That was a long way from College Park, Ga., where the future standout center was raised during the 1940s.
"This voice," Curry says on the program, "comes out of the darkness, 'Bill.' It was Willie Davis; I thought it was God. I just sat down in the grass terrified. He said, 'I'd like to speak with you.'"
Davis offered something that Curry never forgot, something that illustrated both Davis' towering leadership but also what made this team so special: Davis said he would become Curry's benefactor, his port in the storm.
"He said ... when (legendary Packers defender Ray) Nitschke's snapping your facemask and Lombardi is screaming in your face and you don't think you can take another step," Curry remembered, "you look at me and I'll get you through it.'"
This wasn't about football anymore. This was the beginning of something else, a friendship that thundered through Curry's heart.
"He didn't just help me to play in the NFL for 10 years, he changed my life because I was never able to look at another human being in the same way I had," Curry said on the program. "It was an unexpected, undeserved, unrewarded act of kindness by a great leader and a great man. I've never forgotten that and that is the difference in the outstanding teams and the others. If you've got Willie Davis, nobody can beat you."
And few did, not on Eddie Robinson's Grambling teams of the 1950s (where Davis sparked an undefeated '55 campaign) or on Lombardi's 1960s teams (where he helped Green Bay to five NFL titles in seven years).
Curry, however, helped underscore something that's made Davis just as important in the long legacy that he built after football, as a leading businessman and philanthropist.
Willie Davis was just getting started back then. You can't say that about many football players, once their careers are over.
May 29, 2006
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Former Green Bay legend Willie Davis, Grambling's first Pro Football Hall of Famer, returned in a reflective mood from an emotional recent reunion at GSU.
"I was down at my old school just last week for a 50-year celebration of my class," he told The Green Bay Press-Gazette, "and I tell you, I was just shocked with the number of football players that were part of the teams I was on that are no longer with us."
Davis helped former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson win his first black college national championship as part of a 1955 squad that went 10-0 - earning him a spot on our GRAMBLING80 list.
Davis was then part of all 5 NFL title-winning teams under Packers coach Vince Lombardi, making 4 1/2 sacks in Super Bowls I and II - marks that would rank as the best ever, if that stat had been officially recorded back then.
Years later, he's considerate of that legacy.
"I want my grandkids to have this (memorabilia) as a reminder of their granddad," Davis said. "There is some stuff I'm willing to part with, and if that helps some fundraising efforts (for charity), I plan to contribute some of those things."
This Lisbon native has gone on to an impressive career, establishing several businesses in the hopes, he's said, that people would "remember me as a player who moved on to success off the field."
He deserves it. Davis got some of that recognition, quiet as it was, in his return trip to Grambling. But I'd like to see the community go one step further, perhaps by establishing a larger, more public event in honor of this SWAC Hall of Famer.
Why not have Willie Davis Week during the upcoming football season? That would be fitting tribute to one of Robinson's most influential former pupils.
g g g
Greats still in high regards
July 4, 2004
By Nick Deriso
mailto:mnderiso@thenewsstar.com
Four Grambling State greats were among those honored Saturday as part of Family Digest magazine's salute to the best black college athletes of all time.
Willie Brown, Junious "Buck" Buchanan, Willie Davis and Doug Williams - all former players under the legendary Eddie Robinson - were recognized.
"It's good to have four from Grambling honored," Williams said. "But there could be an argument that there should be more. The thing with honors like this is that you are grateful that people recognize you - but you realize that there are other people who deserve the same kind of honor. I'm certainly glad to be in that number."
Only Brown, now a coach and personnel director with the Oakland Raiders, attended the ceremony, held in Las Vegas. Buchanan died of lung cancer in 1992.
All four men are members of the Southwestern Athletic Conference's Hall of Fame.
Here's a look at Willie Davis:
-- Davis, the first Grambling player to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was an All-NFL selection five times in the six years from 1962-67 for Green Bay - and was selected to play in five consecutive Pro Bowls.
A stalwart presence on the decade's most dominant team, Davis helped the Packers to five NFL championships and six divisional titles in eight seasons.The Lisbon native was the very portrait of reliability: Davis didn't miss a contest in his 12-year, 162-game career. The Sporting News placed him at No. 69 in its list of the Football's 100 Greatest Players Ever.
But Davis always had other aspirations, often saying that he wanted people to "remember me as a player who moved on to success off the field."
He would use a University of Chicago MBA to launch a second career. Davis is now chief executive of five radio stations - and has served on as many as 10 corporate boards of directors, including Sara Lee, Dow Chemical and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
"I guess it's a lot of stuff," Davis said. "But I certainly don't have any specific day in mind for when I'll retire. At the moment I'm not having fun, I'll step back. But right now, I feel blessed and I'm enjoying myself."
g g g
Glory days always close for legends
GSU family paid honor to '55 team
October 31, 2005
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING - It's been 50 years, a half century of football. But for Melvin Lee, center on the 1955 undefeated team at Grambling State, the time has flown by.
"To the individuals on the team, we remember it like it was yesterday," said Lee, who was honored before last Saturday's homecoming game along with the rest of that black college national championship squad.
"We had an opportunity to bring some legends back," said GSU coach Melvin Spears. "With the alumni coming back, looking to see what kind of product we are putting on the field, it's important to show them that the legacy continues."
Lee said the players, even as college-aged youngsters, could sense that Eddie Robinson was not only a bright football mind, but also an emerging leader of national scope.
"We all looked up to him, and the country would recognize how special he was in later years," said Lee, who was later Robinson's long-time offensive coordinator. "As individuals, we were really impressed by his leadership. He always inspired you. There was always something that was different and unique and very stimulating."
Among those also in attendance at Robinson Stadium were: halfbacks Paul Green and Edward Murray; fullbacks Howard Scott and Levi Washington; ends Mack Moore and Fred Franklin; guards Joseph Dixon and Huey Hill; center Leon Larce; and quarterbacks Jammie Caleb, Dorth Blade, Robert Smith and Willie Kennedy.
With these men, Robinson forged a tough, run-oriented team that also played stingy, gritty defense.
"We're proud the fact that we didn't allow more than 24 points in any game that year," said Lee. "The offense was based around the tailback; there was never a question about passing. We ran to the right most of the time. We more or less came right at you."
Lee credited the school president and its sports information director for helping establish the team - and spreading the word about this then-new football power.
"It started at the top, of course," said Lee. "R.W.E. Jones set the stage and then Collie J. Nicholson gave us so much attention in news print. That helped Coach Robinson focus on being a consistent fundamentalist. They allowed us to learn and progress as the years went by."
Willie Davis, a senior tackle, was the only player to find consistent success at the next level, earning Pro Football Hall of Fame honors for his part in the 1960s championships of Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. Yet Lee said many of the lessons taught on the practice fields spurred the players to leadership roles in the community, working as educators and businessmen.
"As we played for that championship, Coach talked about giving your best effort and that, looking back, you would see this as your finest hour," said Lee. "I'm sure most of us look back and realize that was a fantastic time. It can only happen to a few individuals, and not very often."
g g g
A legacy that lingers
January 30, 2007
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Green Bay's 1966 team -- with Grambling product Willie "Thumper" Davis as a cornerstone -- was named the No. 6 all-time Super Bowl squad by a 53-member panel of pro football experts during an NFL Network special tonight.
No surprise there, since Davis was part of a startling roster of legends on that first-ever title team, from Coach Vince Lombardi to players like Bart Starr, Bill Curry and Willie Wood.
Curry, though, turns the whole show on its ear with a frank exchange about how Davis helped him overcome whatever last whispers of latent racism he'd harbored having grown up in the old rural South.
Davis ran into the rookie during Curry's first Green Bay training camp, then held at tiny St. Norbert College. That was a long way from College Park, Ga., where the future standout center was raised during the 1940s.
"This voice," Curry says on the program, "comes out of the darkness, 'Bill.' It was Willie Davis; I thought it was God. I just sat down in the grass terrified. He said, 'I'd like to speak with you.'"
Davis offered something that Curry never forgot, something that illustrated both Davis' towering leadership but also what made this team so special: Davis said he would become Curry's benefactor, his port in the storm.
"He said ... when (legendary Packers defender Ray) Nitschke's snapping your facemask and Lombardi is screaming in your face and you don't think you can take another step," Curry remembered, "you look at me and I'll get you through it.'"
This wasn't about football anymore. This was the beginning of something else, a friendship that thundered through Curry's heart.
"He didn't just help me to play in the NFL for 10 years, he changed my life because I was never able to look at another human being in the same way I had," Curry said on the program. "It was an unexpected, undeserved, unrewarded act of kindness by a great leader and a great man. I've never forgotten that and that is the difference in the outstanding teams and the others. If you've got Willie Davis, nobody can beat you."
And few did, not on Eddie Robinson's Grambling teams of the 1950s (where Davis sparked an undefeated '55 campaign) or on Lombardi's 1960s teams (where he helped Green Bay to five NFL titles in seven years).
Curry, however, helped underscore something that's made Davis just as important in the long legacy that he built after football, as a leading businessman and philanthropist.
Willie Davis was just getting started back then. You can't say that about many football players, once their careers are over.
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