Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060042
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL LYON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He's not feeble and senile and tottering along.
They don't have to prop him up and wheel him out and park him in the shade and wrap a shawl around his bony shoulders and yell in his ear to be heard.
No, that's what strikes you most about Eddie Robinson - the vitality and the perseverance. At 76, he still has the bear's growl, and the lightning flashes in his eyes and the thunder rolls from him, and he still stalks a football sideline and the crowds part before him. He still sees everything amid the swirling chaos, and when he speaks, young men listen to him, attentive and respectful, eyes wide.
All his life, Eddie Robinson has had one job, one wife, one school.
Fifty-five years with all three.
He makes Joe Paterno look like a rootless wanderer.
Saturday, Robinson is apt to put up another unreachable number, and it couldn't come at a better time in the world of sports.
We need some healing right about now, some bridging, some coming together, and what more appropriate rallying point than Eddie Robinson, the Old Man River of college football, still running deep and swift?
The number is 400, as in victories coached. He has no peer. Probably never will. You want an unbreakable sports record? This is one. Look at it this way: When it comes to reporting for work day after day after decade, Eddie Robinson is 31 years ahead of Cal Ripken Jr.
The larger, more meaningful numbers, though, count up all those young men he has scooped up and nurtured and mentored and set on the right path. Not so much the cornerbacks and the flankers - all those players he has funneled into the NFL, almost 250 of them - but rather the future doctors and lawyers and accountants he encouraged.
And the larger victory is that Eddie Robinson has worked all this time within the white system. He has overcome all the shackles, won despite all the handicaps.
And he has done it without succumbing to bitterness and without preaching bitterness, which makes him a very big man indeed.
All he has ever told his players is that opportunity is everywhere and that all one needs do is look around for it.
His favorite quote belongs to Booker T. Washington: ``Cast down your bucket where you are.''
A decade ago, when he passed Bear Bryant, it was to seething resentment in some places, much of that resentment racial. Some wanted an asterisk after Eddie Robinson's name in the record book because he had beaten a lot of Division I-AA teams. This, of course, conveniently overlooks the segregated reality of his times, which was that he could play only those willing to go up against him.
The South worshipped Bryant. So, too, did Eddie Robinson, who frequently watched the Bear at work and unabashedly cribbed from him.
``I could win a thousand games and never replace the Bear,'' Eddie Robinson said, and he wasn't being tactful. He meant what he said. He always has. If you think before you speak, you don't have so many things to take back.
``People can do what they want with the record,'' he said. ``That's their business. I got my inspiration from ``all'' coaches, from college coaches and high school coaches, from black coaches and white coaches.
``All I want is for my story to be an ``American'' story, not black and not white. Just American. I want it to belong to everybody. I never let anybody change my faith in this country.''
As usual, Eddie Robinson found a way to rise above the pettiness and prejudice. And what he said then rings now with even more vibrant clarity, for his is a call to reason.
And isn't it nice to find a statesman among football coaches?
Robinson has had only two losing seasons.
Louisiana has a mandatory retirement age of 70, but that was happily waived for him. Just as well. He never has had any other plans.
``Coaching, it's all I know how to do,'' he said, ``but then it's all I ever wanted to do, so I guess everything turned out OK.''
And then some. Here's to you, Mr. Robinson.
by CNB