WELCOME!
Welcome to the online home of the Grambling Legends. Grambling State University emerged from the desire of African-American farmers in rural north Louisiana who wanted to educate black children in the northern and western parts of the state. Today, GSU is still regarded as the college “where everybody is somebody.”
We represent the important heritage of accomplished graduates of Grambling State University. Our members span all industries and include everyone from Hall of Fame inductees to successful executives. Grambling State University produced Paul "Tank" Younger, a College Hall of Famer and pioneering HBCU player in the NFL; four Pro Football Hall of Famers (Willie Davis, Junious "Buck" Buchanan, Willie Brown and Charlie Joiner); Pro Basketball Hall of Famer Willis Reed; Doug Williams, the first black QB to play in, win and earn MVP honors in Super Bowl; and James "Shack" Harris, the first black QB to start in the NFL and the first to be named Pro Bowl MVP.
We have committed ourselves to continue to grow the legacy of Grambling State University and its treasured memories. Past, present and future Grambling alumni now have a voice. The Grambling Legends are here to develop fundraisers and other special projects to make sure that key objectives are met each year.
Thank you so much for visiting our website and come back often for updates, new member info, and upcoming events.
- Grambling Legends -
Grambling Legends, Chesapeake Energy boost the Eddie G. Robinson Museum with $5000 checks
The Grambling Legends, Inc. presented a $5,000 check to the Friends of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum during a Dec. 14, 2011, news conference in the Doris Robinson room of the museum. In addition to this presentation, Chesapeake Energy of Shreveport also presented another $5,000 check to the Friends of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum.
TO SEE PHOTOS FROM THIS EVENT: http://www.gramblinglegends.net/media.html.
Limited number of souvenir programs from the 2011 Hall of Fame event still available!
A limited number of one-of-a-kind souvenir programs from the Grambling Legends Sports Hall of Fame's 2011 induction ceremony are still available at a cost of just $15. Checks/money orders can be made payable to: The Grambling Legends, Inc.
The program, which received rave reviews from all who attended the event, highlights each of this year's inductees -- a group that included former NFL Pro Bowl MVP James "Shack Harris; former Super Bowl champions Gary "Big Hands" Johnson, Frank Lewis and Everson Walls; former NBA champion Larry Wright; and Douglas Porter, already a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Also honored this year, during gala ceremonies held on the Grambling campus at Fredrick C. Hobdy Arena: Tarcha Hollis (women's basketball), Delles Howell (football), James Jones (basketball), Alex Pero (baseball), Robert Woods (track/football), James "Hound" Hunter (football), Frank Garnett (baseball). Al Dennis Jr. was a pre-1960 honoree, while Porter was recognized as a contributor.
Contact Al Dennis III at albertdennis3@bellsouth.net.
Find out more about this year's inductees!
Photos from the induction can be found by clicking HERE. Additional biographical information, and links to nationwide news coverage of this event can be found HERE.
CBS Sports to air documentary on the 1968 game in New York City between Grambling and Morgan State
CBS Sports Network presents 1ST & GOAL IN THE BRONX: GRAMBLING VS. MORGAN STATE 1968, a documentary about the first historically black college football game played in New York City. The one-hour documentary airs on Wednesday, Sept. 28 (7:00 PM, ET), exactly 43 years after the game was played at Yankee Stadium in front of more than 60,000 fans. Actor Keith David narrates the program.
Through the lens of this historic game, this documentary explores the history of black college football and its struggles in segregated America, as well as the political and cultural sub-text surrounding this match-up. The show features numerous interviews with players from Grambling and Morgan State including Shack Harris and Raymond Chester, as well as current Grambling coach Doug Williams, Willie Brown, Willie Lanier, Eddie Robinson’s widow Doris Robinson and veteran sports columnist Jerry Izenberg, among others. Overall, 31 players involved in the game were drafted to the NFL or AFL.
The game has been played every year since 1968 and officially became the New York Urban League Classic in 1971, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The New York Urban League Classic was played at Yankee Stadium until 1987, when it moved to the Meadowlands.
THE GRAMBLING LEGENDS
Ralph Waldo Emerson "Prez' Jones
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
Wilbert Ellis, then an assistant baseball coach at Grambling, used to welcome the most uncommon of sights.
The school president would leave his office, like clockwork, just before 3 p.m. and change into his cleats, his ballcap and his uniform. Then Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones would coach the baseball team.
"He had a great energy," said Ellis, who was an assistant to Jones for 17 seasons before serving another 25 years as his successor. "We would practice until 6. This was before NCAA regulations. Back then, we just practiced until we were ready." Jones' teams rumbled through conference play, winning seven titles between 1958-67. He was also a two-time runner up in the national NAIA baseball tournament.
"He had a unique style in serving both as president and as a coach," said Ellis. "He cared about people. No matter what the color the skin, he just wanted to reach out and help people. That's what he came to Grambling to do. He wanted to build an institution that would reach out, not only to the various area communities, but to the nation."
A former Negro Leagues player, Jones (called "Prez" by teachers and students alike) knew the value of work — and was used to making do with little.
"I shall never forget," Ellis said. "It rained all night and rained all day then stopped about 12 o'clock on a day when we were to play Southern. They had packed up, but 'Prez' would have none of that. He had dirt moved in, and we played. Bob Lee was coaching Southern at that time, and he couldn't believe it. For so long after that, he'd say: 'Don't go to Grambling and expect not to play.' 'Prez' was able to get the most out of you."
That never-quit attitude helped spread the word about this country school and its surprisingly successful athletic programs.
Jones and Ellis mentored dozens of players who signed major league contracts, notably Ralph "Gator" Garr — who led the National League in hitting in 1974.
"Those men turned out to be great men. Some played ball but others went into other professions. They've done extremely well," said Ellis, a 1959 graduate of Grambling who won 715 games in his own right, advancing to three NCAA Tournaments and winning three SWAC titles.
"He had a way of talking that made you feel like you were the best," Ellis said. "He made a believer out of you — just by saying: 'You can do it.' If you listened to him, you just knew you would make it to the top, whatever your profession."
But while Jones worked tirelessly, often getting up before the sun for his workdays, Ellis is quick to note that he was dedicated to his loved ones.
"He was a family man," said Ellis. "He believed in the family unit. One thing about 'Prez,' he maintained the character that he wanted you to exemplify. He earned respect."
About 'Prez'
NAIA Hall of Famer Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones founded the Grambling baseball team, then led the Tigers to the national NAIA baseball tournament in 1961, '63, '64 and '67 — earning runner-up honors in 1963 and '64. Jones won seven conference titles, coached 11 All-Americans, and was named the 1967 NAIA Coach of the Year. But he was much more than a skipper. Known affectionately even today as "Prez," Jones took over as president at Grambling in 1936 when the school was a segregated teachers college. By the time he retired in 1977, he had added four colleges to elevate the school to university status. Jones composed the school's alma mater, and was the driving force behind creating the Tiger Marching Band. He also hired a youngster named Eddie Robinson to coach the football team in 1941.
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Eddie G. Robinson
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
Doug Williams valued his relationship with former Grambling State football coach Eddie Robinson because it was always about more than football.
"He wasn't a guy that everything that came out of his mouth was Xs and Os," said Williams, who was quarterback for Robinson in the 1970s then followed him as coach at Grambling State in 1998. "Everything that he did and related to was about life. He related football to life. It was about being able to survive in America."
Robinson passed legendary coach Paul "Bear" Bryant for career victories in 1984, finishing with 408 wins. That number was even more impressive, when you consider the circumstances. Williams said the way it was earned will stand the test of time.
"Coach Rob's victories were tougher than anybody else's," said Williams. "The key wasn't so much Division I or Division II. His was the tougher job because of the times. There was no practice equipment. They were playing on sand. They couldn't even stay in town when they travelled."
But Robinson's easy-going approach to the challenge, and his straightforward nature, still resonate with Williams today.
"A leader is somebody that you have to believe in," said Williams - who, after an all-conference career at Grambling, made history as the first black Super Bowl quarterback and MVP in 1988.
"Coach Rob was a person who had your attention. I can remember sitting in a meeting and he could say things that would get you in the frame of mind to do whatever it took to get it done."
Robinson's abiding patriotism sprung from a life's journey that began as a sharecropper's son, but ended in the company of presidents and hall of famers. He talked about that love for America in ways large and small, usually with a splash of self-deprecating humor.
"I will never forget that we had a guy named Michael Moore at tight end," Williams said. "They were playing the National Anthem and Michael stood up with his fist in the air. Coach went up to him and said: `Don't you ever clinch your fist like that - if you ain't got no money in it.' "
Williams chuckles at the memory, now almost two decades old. "That made a lot of sense. That's the American dream," Williams said. "Coach Rob waved the flag better than anybody. He wanted everyone to believe that if can be accomplished, it can be happen in America. He preached that, because it was his life."
Williams spent one of his career's most important moments - celebrating on the field after leading Washington to the NFL championship - with his former college coach.
"I won the Super Bowl and credit all of that to Grambling and Eddie Robinson," Williams said.
"That day, he told me: `You will not understand the impact of this until you get older.' You know, he's right? That's the old saying, that you grow up and you realize that your daddy was right all along. I find myself to this day saying that about things Coach Robinson first told me."
About Robinson
Robinson, whose entire 56-season career as a coach was spent at Grambling State, retired in 1997 as the winningest college football coach in history with 408 victories, passing Paul "Bear" Bryant in 1984. He sent more than 200 players into the pros - of which four have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The championship subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) recognizes its best coach each year with an award named after Robinson, a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. He would lead Grambling State to 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference titles.
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Fred C. Hobdy
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
Fredrick C. Hobdy's players at Grambling would find themselves still huffing and puffing from drills, when he'd abruptly switch the subject.
There was more to life, the late coach would say, than just basketball.
"He wanted all of us to grow up to be productive citizens," said Larry Wright, the Southwestern Athletic Conference's 1975-76 Player of the Year under Hobdy. "He used to say that all the time: 'Basketball is not going to last forever.' He would always talk about that. When you first came, he made sure that you understand that basketball was a means to an education."
Wright would later win the 1978 NBA title with the Washington Bullets before returning to coach in the same office where Hobdy once sat.
"He was tough as coach; don't get me wrong," said Wright. "He worked your butt off. But at the end of the day, when you needed him, it was all together different."
Often times, Wright said, life lessons would come just after one of Hobdy's now-legendary practices — sweat-drenched affairs that stressed preparation and conditioning.
"He would be drilling you, running you like there is no more tomorrows, but afterwards if you had a problem he would switch hats," Wright said. "Instead of your coach, he became your father — so understanding of the problem, whatever it might have been. There was no way you could think a guy who had just been screaming at the top of his voice do that, but he did. I will always remember that."
Wright, whose voice colors with emotion at the very mention of his mentor, was one of the principal voices to lobby in the hopes that the basketball arena on campus would be named after Hobdy. The re-naming ceremony took place in 2010.
"I could say so many things about Coach Hobdy," said Wright. "When you start talking about the people who built Grambling," Wright mused, "you have to say (former football coach) Eddie Robinson. You have to say (former school president) R.W.E. Jones. I think you also have to say Fred Hobdy. He should be mentioned in the same breath."
About Fredrick C. Hobdy
Hobdy, a member of the Louisiana Sports and Southwestern Athletic Conference halls of fame, is rightly remembered for his contributions as a basketball genius. After all, he remains the winningest college coach in Louisiana with 572 victories between 1957-86. His teams won seven Southwestern Athletic Conference titles and the National Athletic Intercollegiate Association championship in 1961 - the last men's national title from this state. But that's not the full measure of Hobdy's legacy. A three-sport letter winner at Grambling, he later served as athletics director before passing in 1998. He's perhaps best known as a collegiate athlete for his contribution to a legendary 1942 squad that went unbeaten, even unscored upon, under Eddie Robinson.
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Collie J. Nicholson
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
Collie J. Nicholson, Grambling's first sports information director, wrote the school right into the national consciousness.
And he did it with nothing more than a battered typewriter and a big heart.
"Collie was the catalyst that put Grambling in the consciousness of America," said Douglas Porter, a former GSU assistant football coach. "His perseverance in promoting the team and the band across the country meant that eventually everywhere you went, people were aware of Grambling. And that's to his credit."
Nicholson served as SID at Grambling for 30 years through 1978, forging a lasting identity for the country college, and shaping the careers of countless young student athletes with his flair for descriptive writing.
"When people think of Grambling, they think of (legendary former football coach) Eddie Robinson, and rightfully so. But the one who taught people about him was Collie J.," said Doug Williams, a former GSU quarterback and football coach. "He's the reason all of America knows about all that we did."
That no one had ever heard of marketing in the 1940s, well, that never stopped Nicholson — who had an unbendable optimism. When he was done, Grambling had established a far-flung reputation far beyond its humble and distinctly rural beginnings.
"We just came along at the right time. I tell you, the Lord was in the plan," Nicholson once said. "It was timing: Coach Robinson was developing all these players for pro football — and we had a marketing plan. We didn't know what it was — they didn't call it marketing, back then — but we had a concept."
Nicholson, the Marine Corps' first black correspondent during World War II, had been hired on the spot in 1948 by former Grambling president R.W.E. Jones during a chance meeting on campus. That proved to be an inspired choice.
Nicholson began building momentum by sending stories to a widespread national network of black newspapers, eventually contributing regularly to more than 400 of them. In those primitive times, he would type up dispatches and then drive 75 miles to the Western Union station in Shreveport to wire them out.
"When we wanted something to happen, we had to do it for ourselves," Nicholson said. "Black college football and Grambling had to stick up for itself."
After the Grambling brand became better known, Nicholson then set about promoting a series of neutral-site games — eventually dubbed "classics" — to be played in large American cities against other historically black football programs.
Sold-out games followed in the late 1960s at Yankee Stadium and then later at Giants Stadium. The initial event, in 1968 against Morgan State, drew 64,000 fans.
Later, he negotiated deals that saw Grambling play in Hawaii and Japan — becoming the first American college program to play overseas — and also helped found the Bayou Classic, an in-state rivalry game against Southern played at the Superdome in New Orleans.
"There were naysayers when it came to neutral-site games," said Porter, who made that groundbreaking marketing trip to New York with Nicholson in the segregated 1960s. "But he was so positive. There was a never a shadow of a doubt. He had a tremendous amount of confidence — in himself, and in Grambling."
Much of Nicholson's — and Grambling's — legend was built around football. But Nicholson worked just as hard at promoting other sports, making household names out of talents like Willis Reed and Larry Wright on the basketball court, as well as slugger Ralph Garr and sprinter Stone Johnson, among others.
"He believed in all of the programs," said former baseball coach Wilbert Ellis, who worked with Nicholson for two decades at GSU. "He just loved Grambling. It's a great loss not just for Grambling, but for the entire sports world."
More personal marketing triumphs bookended his career at Grambling.
In Nicholson's first years at the school, he was instrumental in pushing Paul "Tank" Younger into the NFL, ensuring that Younger became the first black college player to sign a pro contract.
Nicholson's tireless promotion also lifted Williams to a fourth-place finish in the 1977 Heisman Trophy voting and to first-team honors on the Associated Press All-America team, both firsts among black colleges.
"To be mentioned for the Heisman?" Williams said, still a bit incredulous. "That was all Collie J. When he told me he was going to put me up, I though that was as funny as Bugs Bunny. It was the highest a player from a black school had ever finished. That's never going to happen again."
Nicholson's legacy continued to play out in ways both large and small.
He never stopped writing about sports. This was, after all, a man so dedicated to his craft that he actually learned Japanese while negotiating the Toyko game.
Years after retiring from Grambling, he was still working as a freelancer — and oftentimes for the same newspapers he'd once cold-called in the 1940s.
Known for his flair with the pen, Nicholson conjured dozens of nicknames that stuck forever — from Paul "Tank" Younger and Ernie "Big Cat" Ladd to Gary "Big Hands" Johnson and Ernest "Monster" Sterling.
"He described players in such a way that it captured the imagination," Porter said. "He had a way of attaching a name that fit the player. And he told their stories just as well. A lot of them never would have gotten a chance to play if not for Collie."
He earned national recognition 13 times during his time at Grambling for press guides. And, even in the end, awards continued to line his mantel.
The Louisiana Sports Writers Association gave Nicholson its Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism in 1990. The College Sports Information Directors of America followed with its Trailblazer Award 12 years later, even as Nicholson was inducted into the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame.
Nicholson remained humble, framing his legacy in simple terms.
"I would like to be remembered as someone who tried to find a way to fit the Grambling program into the general marketplace," he said. "I've tried my best to do that."
Nicholson received the Louisiana Sports Writers Association's distinguished service award in 1990, the Bayou Classic Founders Award in 1992 and the College Sports Information Directors of America's Trailblazer Award in 2002. He was inducted into the SWAC Hall of Fame in 2002, as well.
In 2006, the University of Louisiana System Board, which oversees GSU, approved a plan to rename the Robinson Stadium press box on campus after Nicholson. His old typewriter was placed inside a special display at the Robinson Stadium Support Facility.
Friends and family hailed the honor, saying it will stand forever as a reminder of all that he'd accomplished.
"He made Coach a household name," Porter said. "He had a gift for putting together words. That gift was to Grambling's great benefit. Without Collie J. Nicholson, such a great many things would not have been."
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Willie Brown
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
So deep was Grambling’s roster in 1959-62, the only NFL player to intercept a least one pass in 16 consecutive seasons — and a five-time Super Bowl participant as a corner and secondary coach — never played defensive back.
Still, the stalwart Willie Brown lettered all four years at split end and outside linebacker, and GSU won a title in 1960 — its first championship in the Southwestern Athletic Conference under the late Eddie Robinson, who would eventually add a record 16 more.
“He was one of the guys with great ability,” Robinson once said of Brown.” It wasn’t real important where he put him. He would have been a great running back. Or a great tight end, because he was an exceptional blocker. And he had character.”
An undrafted rookie out of Grambling in 1963, Brown eventually was signed by Houston — which then traded him away.
Bad move. Brown became a premier shut-down corner (combining speed, mobility, a fierce determination and a sharp football mind) after signing with Denver, and was all-American Football League just a year later. Over one memorable season, the Broncos secondary included a trio of Grambling products: Brown, Goldie Sellers and Nemiah Wilson.
But they didn’t do much winning. So in 1967, Brown signed with Oakland — where he sparked two Super Bowl runs, falling in 1968′s II and then winning a decade later in 1977′s XVI. In all, he pulled down 54 picks (setting a new career mark for the Raiders), and appeared in a total of five AFL All-Star games, four AFC-NFC Pro Bowls and nine AFL/AFC title games.
After retiring at ageless age of 38 in 1978, Brown became an assistant with the Raiders, and has helped the club to three more Super Bowls — and two more victories (XV in 1980 and XVIII in ’83; Oakland dropped 2002′s XXXVII).
“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 still-record 75-yard interception return for a touchdown against the Vikings in Super Bowl XI, Brown was inducted into the GSU Hall of Fame in 1983 and 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,” Brown said. “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.”
Brown’s long coaching career has included overseeing a number of standout defensive backs, notably fellow Grambling product Albert Lewis — whom he mentored at Oakland for the final five years of Lewis’ own lengthy 15-season NFL career.
“This all started at Grambling, with the things that Coach Eddie Robinson instilled in all the players,” Brown told me. “That work ethic carried over to the pros. If you look at the history of guys who came to the pros from Grambling, they had that kind of stamina.”
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Doug Williams
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
Grambling State might never again author a master stroke as deft as replacing the towering Eddie Robinson with an outsized protégé like Doug Williams.
It wasn't easy. This is a school that had witnessed its last coaching transition in 1941, when gas was 19 cents a gallon. World War II was still an idea, not a headline. Robinson would go on to cast a shadow that not many could escape: His 1942 GSU squad, one of two to go undefeated, was unbeaten, untied -- even unscored upon. Robinson retired in 1997 after 57 years at Grambling State, but not before adding 81 victories to Paul "Bear" Bryant's once-unassailable 323 college football wins.
Yet Williams -- primarily through the force of his towering personality -- managed to carve out his own niche, leading Grambling to a trio of SWAC championships as coach in 2000-02 and establishing a .743 winning percentage over six years.
He had a name coming in, and not just based on those oft-repeated heroics in Super Bowl XXII. Williams built his legend first in Lincoln Parish, taking took over in the fifth game of his freshman season in 1974, and never sitting back down. Seventeen of Grambling State's league-best 22 SWAC championships came on Robinson's watch. Two of those titles (in 1974 and '77) featured eventual Heisman Trophy finalist Williams, who posted an impressive 36-7 record as a starter.
Already a member of the College Football, Louisiana Sports and SWAC halls of fame, he was inducted into the Grambling Legends Hall of Fame in 2010.
"It says a lot," Williams enthused about this Legends designation. "Grambling will always be home."
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected Williams in the first-round of the NFL Draft in 1978. Over a five-year tenure there, he would lead the Buccaneers to their first three playoff appearances in team history, an appearance in the 1979 NFC championship game and Tampa's first-ever NFC Central title. But Williams had a nasty contract dispute with late owner Hugh Culverhouse and left for the since-disbanded United States Football League.
History awaited. Williams returned to the NFL in 1986 with the Washington Redskins and head coach Gibbs, who had been the Bucs' offensive coordinator when Williams was drafted out of Grambling. At the end of their second season back together, Williams became the first African-American quarterback to start, and win, the Super Bowl -- and the first to claim the game's most-valuable player award.
It happened in what seemed like a split second: Williams, once down by 10 to Denver, ran just 18 second-quarter plays -- but scored 35 unanswered points in Super Bowl XXII. Game over. The Redskins went on to win 42-10.
"It makes you feel really fine that they can go out and do those kind of things," Robinson once said. "It just makes you know what our school can do -- and what our students can do."
Gone forever were the misconceptions about an African-American's ability to master the complex strategies of an NFL offense. In a locked-up environment where most blacks had been automatically converted to receiver or cornerback, Williams knocked the door off its hinges that day in 1988 -- setting a new mark for passing yards in an NFL title match.
"The thing about a Super Bowl is," Williams said, "they may call you a black quarterback, but the truth is that they can't color that experience."
Williams' sense of the importance of his Super Bowl triumph, even now, continues to grow. He says strangers still stop to talk about what it meant to African Americans. Seeing it through his children's eyes also gives Williams a clearer perspective than even the passage of time did.
"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 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.
Robinson rushed down on the field to embrace his former player.
"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."
Ten seasons later, Williams took on another daunting rebuilding project when he returned to Grambling as head coach.
He went 5-6 in 1998 and then 7-4 in 1999 -- but that seven-win mark was one more than GSU had in two combined seasons before he arrived. His teams then reeled off that trio of conference-championship seasons, and were a win away from a fourth-straight berth in 2003.
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. While Williams assembled his own addendum to a memorable playing tenure, he never forgot who originally opened the door.
"My time at Grambling will be secure," Williams said during this final season of coaching at Grambling. "But I also think that Eddie Robinson's time at Grambling is the reason why I am here. You can't lose sight of that."
Williams then embarked on new career in pro football front offices back back at Tampa Bay, where he worked from 2004 until earlier this year, and now in the fledgling UFL as general manager.
"I used to always tell Coach Rob that we players were 'coach-makers.' Without us, they're nothing," Williams said. "He always used to 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 how that's true now. But at the same time, we were lucky too that we had Coach Robinson. Luckier than we knew."
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Willie Davis
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
It was never just about football for Willie Davis.
Though, of course, the linemen they called “Thumper” at Grambling was remarkably talented on the field.
A two-time black college All-America defensive tackle in 1954-55, Davis anchored the program’s first national black college championship team — the 10-0 squad from 1955.
“Willie had hitting power,” the late Grambling coach Eddie Robinson once recalled. “He was our captain, an outstanding leader.”
Davis went on to become the first GSU product to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A stalwart presence on the Vince Lombardi-era Green Bay Packers, Davis helped the 1960s-era’s most dominant team to five NFL championships and six divisional titles in eight seasons.
Davis often credits Eddie Robinson for helping him understand the character needed to succeed — on the field and off: “Whether Eddie was coming through the dormitory checking on your work habits or getting athletes out to class, this thing was extremely important to him,” Davis said. “He was always someone you could go to to discuss a personal problem and come away with the feeling you’d been with someone who showed sensitivity and understanding.”
An All-NFL selection five times in the six years from 1962-67 for Green Bay, he was selected to play in five consecutive Pro Bowls. Davis had also had 4-1/2 sacks in the NFL’s first two Super Bowls, but because the league didn’t officially begin recording that stat until the Super Bowl XVII season, Davis’ feat goes unrecorded.
“Willie Davis was a great football player,” Robinson said. “Nobody knew the game better than Lombardi, and he talked about (Davis’) amazing feet, his intelligence, and his ability to deliver a blow. That underlined my experience with Willie.”
Perhaps his most impressive statistic is this: Davis didn’t miss a contest in his 12-year, 162-game pro career. The Sporting News placed him at No. 69 in its list of the Football’s 100 Greatest Players Ever. He was GSU’s second SWAC Hall of Famer in 1977, and was inducted into GSU hall in ’82.
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 would become 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.”
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Patricia Cage-Bibbs
By Nick Deriso, http://www.TheDerisoReport.com
Fred Hobdy had simple words of encouragement when Patricia Cage-Bibbs talked about leaving: "If you can make it at Grambling," he told her, "you can make it anywhere."
Hobdy, the legendary former GSU men's basketball coach and athletic administrator, was right, of course.
Cage-Bibbs, after putting the Grambling women's basketball program on the map, has since tacked on a string of championships during stops at Hampton and North Carolina A&T.
Her story cames full circle in 2010, as Cage-Bibbs -- a native of nearby Choudrant, and former girls coach at Dubach High -- earned enshrinement into the Grambling Legends Hall of Fame.
Fellow inductees included Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams, two-time American Football League all-star Garland Boyette, hall of fame trainer Eugene "Doc" Harvey, 1950s-era basketball standout James Hooper, former Grambling school president Joseph B. Johnson, two-time NFL Pro Bowler Roosevelt Taylor, and former NFL rookie of the year Sammy White, among others.
"God has truly blessed me," said Cage-Bibbs, who is a 1972 graduate of Grambling. "When you look at the list of great athletes and overall great people that are going in with me, it is truly humbling."
Cage-Bibbs coached the women's basketball team to 238 wins and six championships over a 13-year tenure at Grambling -- including three over a four-year span that featured the first-ever undefeated season in SWAC conference play. She also led the Tigers to their first NCAA tournament appearance in 1994.
"I have so many fond memories of Grambling," Cage-Bibbs said. "It is where I met my husband, it is where I was educated and it is where I got my start in college coaching."
Cage-Bibbs has added six more league titles at Hampton and then at North Carolina A&T, where she still coaches. On Nov. 23, 2007, she became just the second coach of an HBCU (historically black college or university) women's basketball team to win 400 games, joining Alcorn State's Shirley Walker.
Cage-Bibbs just completed a record-breaking year with A&T, where she led the Lady Aggies to the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference's regular-season title with a 14-2 mark, then became the first HBCU to make it to the Sweet 16 of a Division I postseason event -- advancing to the third round of the Women's National Invitational Tournament.
"I've always had dreams and goals, and I never let anyone deter from the things I wanted to accomplish," Cage-Bibbs said. "It's the same message I try to pass along to the young ladies in my program."
She was inducted into Grambling State University's Gallery of Distinction in 2008.
In 2009, she claimed her 10th career coach of the year award.
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