On October 5, 1985, the Grambling State University Tigers defeated Prairie View A&M University 27–7. The win made Coach Eddie Robinson the all-time wins leader in college football, surpassing Paul “Bear” Bryant of the University of Alabama. A decade later Grambling defeated Mississippi Valley State to achieve Robinson’s four-hundredth victory. When Robinson retired from coaching after fifty-six years in 1997, he had accumulated 408 wins against 165 losses and fifteen ties. He had won seventeen Southwest Athletic Conference championships and nine Black College Football National Championships. The Tigers’ success drew millions of fans while Robinson was head coach. Grambling played in front of sold-out crowds at the New Orleans Superdome, Yankee Stadium, the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Houston Astrodome, and the Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. In 1968 ABC produced a documentary, Grambling: 100 Yards to Glory, and in 1985 Robinson was the first Historically Black College and University (HBCU) coach or player to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. Since 1987 the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-AA) Coach of the Year award has been named for Robinson. In 1997 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Robinson epitomized the HBCU athletic coaches who thrived in the three and a half decades after World War II during what some historians have described as the “golden age” of Black college sports. Moreover, he led the Tigers to twenty-seven consecutive winning seasons between 1960 and 1986, making him the most successful HBCU football coach after integration. Robinson was a community leader and developer of the most important HBCU football program in American history.

Early Life

Robinson was born on February 13, 1919, in Jackson, Louisiana, approximately thirty miles north of Baton Rouge. His father, Frank, was a sharecropper, while his mother, Lydia, was a domestic worker. Robinson grew up in a two-room, tin-roof house on a dirt road. Like many rural Black Louisianans, Robinson faced acute poverty. In response to their economic situation, his parents instilled the values of hard work, religious faith, and independence. Around 1925 Robinson’s parents divorced, and both parents moved to Baton Rouge. The city increased Robinson’s educational opportunities and introduced him to football.

Robinson attended McKinley Colored High School, where Julius Kraft was the football coach and inspired Robinson. Under Kraft’s tutelage, McKinley had won every game for the six seasons before Robinson enrolled in high school. The Great Depression forced the suspension of the football team for Robinson’s first two years of high school. He secured the starting quarterback position when football resumed, leading his team to two undefeated seasons. Robinson remembered, “I dreamt about football and education every day after the first time I saw Coach Kraft. I knew then that I wanted to coach.”

Robinson enrolled at Leland College in 1937, a small Baptist school twelve miles north of Baton Rouge. He secured the starting quarterback position at Leland for the next four years. At the end of his career, Robinson set his eyes on coaching.

Coach Robinson, 1941–1997

In the summer of 1941, Robinson married Doris Mott after graduation. The couple had dated since junior high school and would be married for sixty-five years. The Robinsons would have two children—Lillian and Eddie Jr. The same year he married Mott, Robinson was offered the head coaching job at Louisiana Normal and Industrial Institute, now Grambling State University in Lincoln Parish. At twenty-two Robinson began his only coaching job.

Grambling was founded in 1904 and modeled on Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of vocational education. When Robinson arrived the school had a small enrollment. There were only 175 students and forty men in Robinson’s first season. Because America entered World War II, the team disbanded after his initial 3-8 season. When football resumed in 1945, Grambling, like other public HBCUs, took advantage of returning veterans’ desire to use their GI benefits for higher education. Robinson won nine games in 1945 and beat Southern University and A&M College for the first time in 1947.

Key to Robinson’s post-war success was fullback Paul “Tank” Younger. The six-foot-three-inch and 225-pound back was nearly impossible to tackle. In Younger’s senior season, the Pittsburgh Courier named him the best player in Black college football. The running back attracted the attention of the Los Angeles Rams, who made him the first HBCU player in the National Football League (NFL) in 1949. (Professional football was segregated from 1933 to 1946, and the Black players that integrated the league, such as Kenny Washington, had played college at predominately white colleges and universities.) Younger played in the NFL for ten seasons, opening the door for over one hundred Grambling alumni in the NFL. Robinson’s players continued to break unwritten barriers in professional football. Junious “Buck” Buchanan was the first pick for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1963 American Football League Draft, making him the first HBCU player taken as first pick. Robinson was instrumental in breaking down the NFL’s invisible ceiling on Black quarterbacks by tutoring James “Shack” Harris and Doug Williams. By the 1970s sports pages regularly noted that “Grambling had sent more players into pro football than any other school except Notre Dame.” Four former players—Willie Davis, Willie Brown, Buck Buchanan, and Charlie Joiner—have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

A critical part of Robinson’s career was bound by segregation and the fight for integration. Travel to games meant sleeping on a cramped bus and stops at segregated diners. Being on the road was an enduring reminder of the humiliation of segregation. As the civil rights movement emerged, Robinson’s activism was limited by his position as a state employee. He advised players to become the best version of themselves and to take advantage of the coming opportunities. Robinson steered his players from civil rights protests to protect them from violence or expulsion and to protect his football program from controversy. He tried to “transcend race.” Robinson’s civil rights work was to demonstrate athletic excellence.

Robinson’s last season was in 1997. Between 1941 and 1989, his teams had only four losing seasons, but the 1990s were more difficult. Robinson’s age and losing four seasons in the 1990s led some alumni to call for his firing. The calls grew louder after the NCAA charged program violations, including “lack of institutional control.” In December 1996 ESPN reported that Grambling was going to fire Robinson. Sportswriters and politicians condemned the decision. In response to reports and the violations, Robinson announced that 1997 would be his last season.

Accolades, Academics, and End of Life

College football coaches, sportswriters, community organizations, and politicians have honored Robinson with dozens of awards. He has, for example, been inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame (1983), Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame (1992), and College Football Hall of Fame (1997). He has received awards from the NAACP, American Football Coaches Association, and Football Writers Association of America.

Robinson received hundreds of coaching awards during his career but always emphasized academics. He reminded audiences that among his proudest accomplishments was that more than 80 percent of his players received their college degrees. He believed that higher education could transform young Black men’s lives regardless of their playing success. He recalled, “My mission was to produce good people and to make certain our boys took full advantage of their educational opportunities.”

Doctors diagnosed Robinson with Alzheimer’s disease shortly after he retired. The disease severely affected his memory in his final years. In April 2007 Robinson passed away surrounded by his family.

In 2010 the Eddie G. Robinson Museum, honoring Robinson’s coaching career and legacy, opened on Grambling State University’s campus.