Few in sports really deserve the title of “great” for their efforts. Eddie Robinson was clearly one of those.

Former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson, who created a football powerhouse at the small, black college in northern Louisiana that turned out hundreds of NFL players, has died. He was 88.

The soft-spoken coach spent nearly 60 years at Grambling State University, where he set a standard for victories with 408 and nearly every season saw his top players drafted by NFL teams.

Doug Williams, a Super Bowl MVP quarterback was one of them. Williams said Robinson died shortly before midnight Tuesday. Robinson had been admitted to Lincoln General Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

“For the Grambling family this is a very emotional time,” Williams said Wednesday. “But I’m thinking about Eddie Robinson the man, not in today-time, but in the day and what he meant to me and to so many people.”

RobinsonÂ’s career spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil-rights movement. His older records are what people will remember: In 57 years, Robinson compiled a 408-165-15 record. Until John Gagliardi of St. JohnÂ’s, Minn., topped the victory mark four years ago, Robinson was known as the winningest coach in all of college football.

“The real record I have set for over 50 years is the fact that I have had one job and one wife,” Robinson said.

And if you look at the caliber of young men who came out of the Grambling program, you see the real measure of his success as a coach. His players overwhelmingly stayed out of trouble, and he often said he coached them like they were going to marry his daughter. By all accounts, Robinson was an outstanding individual – the sort who comes along all too rarely in the high pressure field of big-time sports.

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