GSUperTiger
The "Icon" of BCF
<font size=7>Grambling!</font> America has chronicled Icon Gram as well as any program in the NCAA. There have been multiple articles in USA Today illustrating the resurgence of the Icon of BCF. Enjoy this one, in arguably the most respected newspaper in the world -- The NY Times!
November 9, 2001
Legacy Passed From Legend to Legend at
Grambling
By THOMAS GEORGE
GRAMBLING, La., Nov. 7 ? Slivers
of sunlight stream through half-closed
blinds as Doug Williams sits in his office at
Grambling State University. Williams is in an
athletic building named after the former
coach Eddie Robinson, adjacent to the
school's stadium, also named after
Robinson.
Williams is scanning the parking lot but is
looking at nothing in particular while his mind
is taking a wistful walk, reflecting on his bus
trip in 1973 from his hometown of Zachary,
La., to Grambling to begin his college
football career.
The setting suits Williams fine ? you cannot
see in, but he certainly can see out.
"I got on the old Salter Bus Line and made
my way up here, and after my first week of
practice, Coach Rob told me I was going to
be redshirted," Williams said. "I had never
sat out of anything; I had played ball all of
my life. But the next year I had a good
spring practice and yet I ended up being the
third quarterback. I didn't play in the first
game or the second game. Not the third and
just a little of the fourth. By the fifth game,
I'd had enough; I quit. I didn't go to film
study that Monday and I planned on missing
practice that Tuesday.
"I was sitting in my dorm room watching
`The Big Valley' show on TV when the
Grambling basketball coach, Fred Hobdy,
came in. I can't repeat everything with as
much color and with the language he used,
but basically it was, `Boy, get your tail up
and get to practice!' I went for the last bit of
it. But I had an attitude and I was going to
show everybody how upset I was by not
talking to anybody. And then I realized something: nobody was talking to
me, either. That brought me back to earth."
In the next game, the starting quarterback broke his wrist. The backup did
not play well. Williams entered, soared and Grambling beat Tennessee State,
21-6.
A star was born.
The rest is history.
And that is a fitting description of what Grambling football, what Robinson
and Williams are all about ? shimmering history, tangled history.
Grambling is a Division I-AA school that has won 10 national black college
championships (including one with Williams as coach last year) and has sent
more than 200 players to the National Football League.
Robinson is an 82-year-old icon who coached here for 57 years and won
408 games, a college football record.
Williams was the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl (XXII, a
42-10 Washington Redskins victory over the Denver Broncos in which
Williams threw four touchdown passes in the second quarter) and is the only
black quarterback to win a Super Bowl most valuable player award. He is
also the coach who in 1998 took command and followed Robinson at
Grambling.
It was not an easy transition.
How do you replace 57 years and 408 victories? How do you fill the s****
of your former coach? How do you create new history while being a
caretaker of cherished deeds?
On the Grambling campus and throughout the state of Louisiana, there was a
tendency to look for conflict, drama and a split between Robinson and
Williams.
Throughout their relationship, each man has left much unspoken. Each has
expected the other to simply deduce and understand, fueling misconceptions.
Both men have mastered the art of making it difficult for the other to see in as
much as the other sees out.
Take, for example, the idea that Williams helped force Robinson's exit in
1998 after Robinson's teams produced 5-6, 3-8 and 3-8 records in his last
three seasons.
"That rumor blew in the wind for some time and that is just what it was, a
rumor, and I do not deal in that," Williams said. "I was never one who came
to chitchat in Coach's office as a player and I don't do a lot of that now. No
man can fill his s****; they need to make him a pair of bronze s****, put
them up on a pedestal and let me put on my s**** and let the chips fall
where they may. But people have always wanted to talk Doug this and Doug
that when it comes to me and Coach Rob. Some people just want to find
wrong."
Take, for example, the idea that Robinson was forced out and that Williams
was not the choice he endorsed.
"It never happened; no one told me that I had to quit or I was finished
because if they had, I guarantee you, it all would have worked out another
way," Robinson said. "I recommended Doug for the job and he was the one
person that could do it. I have not been looking over his shoulder and I have
great respect for him. He's a good person and a hard worker and anything
he would need from me he can get it."
They are so different, yet alike. Each is cordial ? yet the one does not let
the other see in.
"When people talk about Eddie Robinson and Doug Williams, they would
prefer to see it buddy- buddy and not him go his way and I go my way,"
Robinson said. "Neither one of us are buddy- buddy like that but we have
mutual respect and there is no split. Doug is trying to win football games and
make his players better men. Those are beautiful traits to have in common."
A week after Williams finally took over at quarterback in 1974, Robinson
had a talk with him. He told Williams he knew he was good, but if he had
played him from the start, the other quarterbacks would have never gotten in.
Williams thought that was crazy, but he never said so. When Williams won
the Super Bowl M.V.P., Robinson has told others that it was his proudest
moment in football, but Williams said that Robinson never told him that ? "I
guess he figured I'd hear it," Williams said.
Robinson occasionally drives to Grambling practices but sits in his car and
watches. He comes to games but sits in the president's box, high above the
action. He has observed a coach, he said, that will be in demand.
"Doug comes over to me at the car and leaves practice to talk to me, but I
tell him I just come to watch and learn and don't leave his practice,"
Robinson said. "I told him if he keeps it up, I'll stop coming. I'm not a
drinking man but I see his coaching like a liquor that is its finest with age; he's
doing exceptionally well and the longer he coaches the more he's going to
find out about himself as a coach. I hope he doesn't leave; he's about the
best thing that's happened for Grambling."
Williams has gone 5-6, 7-4, 10-2 and, thus far this season, 7-1. Grambling
won its first seven before losing last week to Alabama State. It plays at
Nichols State on Saturday.
"Any coach that tells you after having losing teams at the end of a long career
that he just wants to walk away is lying," Robinson said. "I just didn't believe
people were supposed to beat me. But sometimes, when it's time to go,
that's just the way it is, and it was time to go. People have a short memory;
you can be a friend, even a relative as a coach, but they want you to win.
Doug can tell you about that."
Sure Williams can. His family and friends advised him not to succeed
Robinson. They said it was too much. Let someone else take over first.
Williams, though, would have none of that. He arrived and changed the
Grambling uniforms. He changed the offense from the longtime single wing
and Wing-T Robinson used to a multiple pro set. He initially had players run
at 5 a.m. He cut 31 in his first season. Some resisted change, even among
the Grambling players. But like Robinson throughout the years at Grambling,
guess who won out?
"Last year was the season where the rope was broken on the eras and I
think the fans now understand that this is the Doug Williams era while
appreciating the Coach Rob era," Williams said. "Coach Rob is a living
legend and he will always have my respect. We had a perfect dream for a
perfect season this year and we have lost one game, so that's over, and now
we can get back to real life and to playing Tiger football. And that means
playing at full speed, with attitude, with love and playing to win."
For a coach with a practical, direct, firm and winning hand.
For Robinson and Williams, for Grambling football, that is plenty of common
ground.
November 9, 2001
Legacy Passed From Legend to Legend at
Grambling
By THOMAS GEORGE
GRAMBLING, La., Nov. 7 ? Slivers
of sunlight stream through half-closed
blinds as Doug Williams sits in his office at
Grambling State University. Williams is in an
athletic building named after the former
coach Eddie Robinson, adjacent to the
school's stadium, also named after
Robinson.
Williams is scanning the parking lot but is
looking at nothing in particular while his mind
is taking a wistful walk, reflecting on his bus
trip in 1973 from his hometown of Zachary,
La., to Grambling to begin his college
football career.
The setting suits Williams fine ? you cannot
see in, but he certainly can see out.
"I got on the old Salter Bus Line and made
my way up here, and after my first week of
practice, Coach Rob told me I was going to
be redshirted," Williams said. "I had never
sat out of anything; I had played ball all of
my life. But the next year I had a good
spring practice and yet I ended up being the
third quarterback. I didn't play in the first
game or the second game. Not the third and
just a little of the fourth. By the fifth game,
I'd had enough; I quit. I didn't go to film
study that Monday and I planned on missing
practice that Tuesday.
"I was sitting in my dorm room watching
`The Big Valley' show on TV when the
Grambling basketball coach, Fred Hobdy,
came in. I can't repeat everything with as
much color and with the language he used,
but basically it was, `Boy, get your tail up
and get to practice!' I went for the last bit of
it. But I had an attitude and I was going to
show everybody how upset I was by not
talking to anybody. And then I realized something: nobody was talking to
me, either. That brought me back to earth."
In the next game, the starting quarterback broke his wrist. The backup did
not play well. Williams entered, soared and Grambling beat Tennessee State,
21-6.
A star was born.
The rest is history.
And that is a fitting description of what Grambling football, what Robinson
and Williams are all about ? shimmering history, tangled history.
Grambling is a Division I-AA school that has won 10 national black college
championships (including one with Williams as coach last year) and has sent
more than 200 players to the National Football League.
Robinson is an 82-year-old icon who coached here for 57 years and won
408 games, a college football record.
Williams was the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl (XXII, a
42-10 Washington Redskins victory over the Denver Broncos in which
Williams threw four touchdown passes in the second quarter) and is the only
black quarterback to win a Super Bowl most valuable player award. He is
also the coach who in 1998 took command and followed Robinson at
Grambling.
It was not an easy transition.
How do you replace 57 years and 408 victories? How do you fill the s****
of your former coach? How do you create new history while being a
caretaker of cherished deeds?
On the Grambling campus and throughout the state of Louisiana, there was a
tendency to look for conflict, drama and a split between Robinson and
Williams.
Throughout their relationship, each man has left much unspoken. Each has
expected the other to simply deduce and understand, fueling misconceptions.
Both men have mastered the art of making it difficult for the other to see in as
much as the other sees out.
Take, for example, the idea that Williams helped force Robinson's exit in
1998 after Robinson's teams produced 5-6, 3-8 and 3-8 records in his last
three seasons.
"That rumor blew in the wind for some time and that is just what it was, a
rumor, and I do not deal in that," Williams said. "I was never one who came
to chitchat in Coach's office as a player and I don't do a lot of that now. No
man can fill his s****; they need to make him a pair of bronze s****, put
them up on a pedestal and let me put on my s**** and let the chips fall
where they may. But people have always wanted to talk Doug this and Doug
that when it comes to me and Coach Rob. Some people just want to find
wrong."
Take, for example, the idea that Robinson was forced out and that Williams
was not the choice he endorsed.
"It never happened; no one told me that I had to quit or I was finished
because if they had, I guarantee you, it all would have worked out another
way," Robinson said. "I recommended Doug for the job and he was the one
person that could do it. I have not been looking over his shoulder and I have
great respect for him. He's a good person and a hard worker and anything
he would need from me he can get it."
They are so different, yet alike. Each is cordial ? yet the one does not let
the other see in.
"When people talk about Eddie Robinson and Doug Williams, they would
prefer to see it buddy- buddy and not him go his way and I go my way,"
Robinson said. "Neither one of us are buddy- buddy like that but we have
mutual respect and there is no split. Doug is trying to win football games and
make his players better men. Those are beautiful traits to have in common."
A week after Williams finally took over at quarterback in 1974, Robinson
had a talk with him. He told Williams he knew he was good, but if he had
played him from the start, the other quarterbacks would have never gotten in.
Williams thought that was crazy, but he never said so. When Williams won
the Super Bowl M.V.P., Robinson has told others that it was his proudest
moment in football, but Williams said that Robinson never told him that ? "I
guess he figured I'd hear it," Williams said.
Robinson occasionally drives to Grambling practices but sits in his car and
watches. He comes to games but sits in the president's box, high above the
action. He has observed a coach, he said, that will be in demand.
"Doug comes over to me at the car and leaves practice to talk to me, but I
tell him I just come to watch and learn and don't leave his practice,"
Robinson said. "I told him if he keeps it up, I'll stop coming. I'm not a
drinking man but I see his coaching like a liquor that is its finest with age; he's
doing exceptionally well and the longer he coaches the more he's going to
find out about himself as a coach. I hope he doesn't leave; he's about the
best thing that's happened for Grambling."
Williams has gone 5-6, 7-4, 10-2 and, thus far this season, 7-1. Grambling
won its first seven before losing last week to Alabama State. It plays at
Nichols State on Saturday.
"Any coach that tells you after having losing teams at the end of a long career
that he just wants to walk away is lying," Robinson said. "I just didn't believe
people were supposed to beat me. But sometimes, when it's time to go,
that's just the way it is, and it was time to go. People have a short memory;
you can be a friend, even a relative as a coach, but they want you to win.
Doug can tell you about that."
Sure Williams can. His family and friends advised him not to succeed
Robinson. They said it was too much. Let someone else take over first.
Williams, though, would have none of that. He arrived and changed the
Grambling uniforms. He changed the offense from the longtime single wing
and Wing-T Robinson used to a multiple pro set. He initially had players run
at 5 a.m. He cut 31 in his first season. Some resisted change, even among
the Grambling players. But like Robinson throughout the years at Grambling,
guess who won out?
"Last year was the season where the rope was broken on the eras and I
think the fans now understand that this is the Doug Williams era while
appreciating the Coach Rob era," Williams said. "Coach Rob is a living
legend and he will always have my respect. We had a perfect dream for a
perfect season this year and we have lost one game, so that's over, and now
we can get back to real life and to playing Tiger football. And that means
playing at full speed, with attitude, with love and playing to win."
For a coach with a practical, direct, firm and winning hand.
For Robinson and Williams, for Grambling football, that is plenty of common
ground.
