The game has changed. Everything has changed really. When Eddie
Robinson got to Grambling, La., in 1941, the school was called
the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute. He was the
football, basketball and baseball coach, and he made $63.75 a
month. In those days he lined the field and led the drill team
at the half and even wrote the game story for the local
newspaper. Once, when two brothers who were his star running
backs were forced to leave the team to help their family pick
cotton, Robinson gathered his other players (roughly half the
men's enrollment) and lent a hand until the crop was in and the
brothers could rejoin the squad.
Nowadays the school is called Grambling State University, surely
one of the most famous small-college names in the country, and
Robinson has even been delivered to the sideline of the stadium
that bears his name by a white stretch limo. It's all very
different, as anything might be after 57 years.
