There’s a New Sheriff at Grambling

One game. And a good start at that.

Now Doug Williams, who holds 10 Grambling passing records, needs only 408 more victories to set the school’s coaching record.

“That’s one we’re not going to worry about,” Williams said after his team beat Alcorn State by the awkward score of 11-0 in his debut Saturday night.

The school record will always be out of reach for Williams and every coach who follows him at Grambling. Eddie Robinson’s mark of 408 victories just happens to be the NCAA record, an achievement that was 57 years in the making.

Of more immediate concern for Williams was Robinson’s 6-16 mark the past two seasons. That became Williams’ problem when he took over the team in January.

For at least one game, he managed to restore this proud program’s winning ways.

“He gave us inspiration,” defensive tackle Freddie Hostler said. “We believe in ourselves. We believe we can win. Not just this game. We believe we can win the whole [Southwestern Athletic Conference].”

That’s the spirit, Freddie.

Now, back to reality.

The Tigers scored the only points of the first half on a safety. Their kicking game was a mess. And they scored their lone touchdown on a play in which the quarterback threw to the wrong place and right into the hands of a defender.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Williams told his players. “But it was a win. You guys played with a lot of heart.”

Williams takes an unorthodox position on the sidelines, donning his headset and heading to the far end of the bench area, away from the action.

“That’s me,” Williams said. “It’s good to get back and see the game. I’ve always done that.”

Robinson took a new position at a Grambling game for the first time since 1941. Clad in a cream jacket and wearing a tie emblazoned with “Peanuts” characters, he sat down in the president’s box and prepared for the novel experience of observing a Grambling game with no way to influence the outcome.

“We just hope that everything turns out the way we want it to turn out,” he said.

This wasn’t like the old game days from Robinson.

“He just hung around the bed,” his wife, Doris, said. “It must have been two or three o’clock.”

“I wasn’t rushing,” Eddie said. “I didn’t have a whole lot of things to do.”

Williams took things easy. He sat in his office--the one Robinson still occupied until a couple of weeks ago--and took visitors. His mother came by. So did his brother and his former college roommate.

“It kind of helped me relax,” Williams said.

He thought others made this game into a much bigger deal than he did. It wasn’t his first game as a coach; he had a 3-8 record himself last year at Morehouse.

Robinson always said he didn’t deserve all the credit because he never made a tackle or a block or threw a ball or caught a pass, and Williams seemed to borrow from that philosophy when it came to worrying about the game.

“If it would have been myself playing, I would have been a little bit more nervous than I was,” he said.

No doubt, there was a buzz. Paid attendance was 13,005 in the 19,000-seat Eddie Robinson Stadium, which was about four times as many as came for Robinson’s last home game.

They won’t get many chances to see Williams’ team on campus. Keeping with Grambling’s globe-hopping tradition, the Tigers will travel from coast to coast this season, including stops in East Rutherford, N.J., Dallas and a visit to San Diego on Nov. 14.

Grambling plays only two more games at Eddie Robinson Stadium. There will be two other in-state games, against Arkansas-Pine Bluff in Shreveport, La., and the annual season-ending Bayou Classic against Southern in New Orleans.

The Tigers did have a new look. They wore all-gold uniforms with black numbers and went with a pro-style offensive formation.

But even though it was the first game for the new offense, Grambling didn’t do anything to catch the Braves off-guard. The offense produced only 172 yards. Three trips inside the Alcorn State 10-yard line produced a single field goal. Another field-goal opportunity was wasted when the snap was botched, and the Tigers failed in two faked-field goal attempts. Fifty of their yards came on one erroneous play.

Williams took out starting quarterback Pete Burks after three ineffective quarters and replaced him with Lionel Hayes, a transfer from Grambling’s rival Southern University.

So the honor of the first Williams-coached touchdown pass went to a former Southern man in the fourth quarter, when receiver David Thompson plucked a sure interception from the hands of Alcorn State defensive back Mario Mouton and took it into the end zone for a 50-yard score.

The play changed so quickly that Williams didn’t know what had happened, at first.

He said he “was ready to go choke Lionel” for ignoring the play’s design and throwing the ball deep when he saw Thompson go into the end zone.

The defense played well, especially inside its own 20, so Willliams got a shutout in his first outing. He also got a dousing of ice water from the players with about a minute remaining.

It would be hard to imagine the players dreaming of dumping water on the legendary Robinson. That’s one thing that’s definitely changed. But something says Williams wouldn’t mind too much if his players dumped water on him 408 more times.