Eddie Robinson

CTL-E-6112 · Person · other · 1919–2007

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07331 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6112.

Eddie Gay Robinson Sr. (February 13, 1919 – April 3, 2007) was the head football coach at Grambling State University in Louisiana, a historically Black university, from 1941 to 1942 and again from 1945 until his retirement in 1997. Born in Jackson, Louisiana, the son of a sharecropper and a domestic worker, Robinson earned a bachelor's degree at Leland College and a master's degree from the University of Iowa in 1954. In his second Grambling season his team went 9–0, unbeaten, untied and unscored upon. Working in an era when Southern college programs excluded Black players, he built Grambling into a national power, retiring with a record of 408 wins, 165 losses and 15 ties, 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference championships and nine Black college national championships. More than 200 of his players reached the National Football League, including Hall of Famers Buck Buchanan, Willie Brown and Charlie Joiner, and Super Bowl XXII most valuable player Doug Williams, who succeeded him in 1998. Robinson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1997, and the Football Writers Association of America coach-of-the-year award bears his name.

The record

• Also known as: Eddie Gay Robinson Sr., Coach Rob

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Eddie Robinson entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6112 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 27 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1892). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Canon record — HBCU football at Grambling, Louisiana; no Chicago tie claimed. Disambiguated from Eddie Robinson the baseball player. Vital status: Deceased: Eddie Gay Robinson Sr., born February 13, 1919, died April 3, 2007, in Ruston, Louisiana, aged 88 (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16, citing his hospital admission that day in Ruston). STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Career record 408–165–15, 17 Southwestern Athletic Conference championships, nine Black college national championships, 45 winning seasons, and more than 200 players sent to the NFL (Wikipedia; Grambling State University Athletics, both accessed 2026-10-16). Grambling's athletics site, republishing ESPN's 150 greatest coaches list (December 2019), ranks Robinson No. 5. CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: Wikipedia's biography text gives Robinson's first Grambling team a 3–5–1 record while its own head-coaching table lists the 1941 team at 2–6–1; tenure is also counted differently across accounts (56 years in Wikipedia's summary of 1941–42 and 1945–97). This packet uses only the agreed career totals. MEDIA: photo HELD (Portrait captioned "Robinson, c. 1980" on the Wikipedia biography page for Eddie Robinson (American football coach) — a later PHOTO-001 pass to verify source, credit, and rights; no license claimed here. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6112-eddie-robinson.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Persons carry no map in the packet standard.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Relationships

• Doug Williams — collaborated with
  Robinson coached Grambling quarterback Doug Williams, the Super Bowl XXII MVP, who succeeded Robinson as Grambling's head coach in 1998. Coach–player relation typed as collaborated_with for assembly review.
• Grambling State University — affiliated with
  Robinson was Grambling's head football coach from 1941 to 1997 — staged as affiliated_with because the schema's head_coach_of does not reach School-typed entities (blocked appendix, Gate D)

Sources

• Grambling State University Athletics (gsutigers.com), "Coach Robinson selected as 1 of 150 greatest coaches in college football's 150 year history" (December 11, 2019; accessed 2026-10-16) — Robinson ranked No. 5 of 150; record 408–165–15 at Grambling (1941–42, 1945–1997); took over in 1941 at age 22; second-season team 9–0, unbeaten, untied and unscored upon; nine Black college national championships and 17 SWAC titles; sent hundreds of players to professional football — https://gsutigers.com/news/2019/12/11/coach-robinson-selected-as-1-of-150-greatest-coaches-in-college-footballs-150-year-history (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Eddie Robinson (American football coach)" (accessed 2026-10-16) — born February 13, 1919, Jackson, Louisiana; died April 3, 2007, Ruston, Louisiana; education at Leland College and the University of Iowa (master's, 1954); more than 200 players to the NFL/AFL/CFL; coached Buck Buchanan, Willie Brown, Charlie Joiner and Doug Williams; College Football Hall of Fame inductee 1997; FWAA Eddie Robinson Award named for him — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Robinson_(American_football_coach) (build store)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Eddie Robinson', accessed 2026-11-03 (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6112 · Combined Graph record U-07331 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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