Unnecessary Roughness

By
Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

Trice-Edney Wire Service – I’ve lived much of my life experiencing great, wholesome college football with Coach Eddie Robinson of Grambling State University in Louisiana as our leader.  What’s happening at Penn State University was unimaginable under the leadership of Eddie Robinson, who more than ten years ago reached the title of “winningest coach” in college football.  He achieved that title through many challenges and meager resources.

He was the essence of character and taught so many young people how to make the most of what was available to them, never allowing them to complain about what they didn’t have.  No excuse was good enough for not giving every game, every situation all that they had.  When a young man deviated from his teachings to begin or respond to a ruckus on the field, he would pull the young man out of the game at the risk of losing, and give him the lecture that I have heard so many times:  “You satisfied yourself, but tell me what you did for your team?”

Always taking the high road, Coach Robinson spent all of his working years at Grambling when he could have gone places with far more resources and a far easier life.  He won his 408 games on the field through all kinds of weather and situations.  He was never known for retreating to the press box while others did the work on the field.  He never complained.  He respected the many administrations under whom he worked.  He appreciated alumni.  He loved and respected “his boys” as he called them.  I remember sitting in a theater in Detroit, Michigan with him as “Grambling’s White Tiger” was showing and the film showed a bit of rowdy behavior on the part of his team.  He was so taken aback by it that he reacted so strongly that his ring came off his finger as he told me, “Oh, no, my boys don’t do that!”  He was right because he cared about his players, and was involved in every aspect of their lives—so he knew them well.

Listening to the scenario play out this past week of the happenings at Penn State University over a period of nearly 20 years of silence about sexual abuse of boys known to already be at risk, would never have happened at Grambling under Coach Eddie Robinson. It is only now that I truly understand how blessed we were to have him nearly all of his adult life at Grambling.  Had he found any of his team or coaches involved in such activities as what happened under Coach Joe Paterno, he would have forfeited games without being asked, in his effort to teach his team what was right.

I wonder how long before Coach Paterno won one more game than Coach Robinson did university officials know he had not lived up to his moral, maybe legal, obligation to protect young children who were abused by someone so close to Paterno.

When athletes are found to have less than honorable behavior, bringing shame to themselves, their school, their team—they have to forfeit their honors, and give up their titles or their medals.  Shouldn’t Penn State forfeit its victories to the point (03/02/2002) we now know Paterno knew about the sexual abuse of innocent boys and in his own words, “could have done more”?  That would put Coach Robinson back in his rightful place—“the winningest coach” in college football. Obviously, I feel deep sadness for the victims and their families.  This is such a sad day for college football.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq. is National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women, Inc., as well as Board Chairman of the Black Leadership Forum.  She can be reached at 202/678-6788 or at drefayewilliams@gmail.com.  Also, see website at www.nationalcongressbw.org for more of her writings.)