There was no problem too big for Robinson

Eddie Robinson, who died Wednesday at the age of 88, won an astounding 408 games as head coach at Grambling State University. That number would have been higher, but Grambling suspended its football program in 1943 and 1944 because of World War II.

During those years, with no college players to coach, Robinson took on the job of football coach at Grambling High, winning a championship in the process.

Robinson’s resourcefulness would be tested further when the university resumed football in 1945.

“That year a daddy pulled his sons, our best running backs, off the team and said they couldn’t play anymore because they had to pick cotton,” Robinson said. “So I got all of the boys on the team, we packed up and went out there to pick the cotton and went on to win the championship.”

Trivia time

Grambling participated in the first college football game played in Asia. What city was it held in?

How to receive favorable press coverage

Hundreds of football newspaper accounts over the decades have been littered with praise for the all-purpose hero who did everything on the field except play tuba during the halftime show.

Well, during his early years at Grambling, Robinson actually directed the women’s drill team at halftime.

And before each home game, he would mow the field.

And after each home game, he would write the game story and deliver it to local newspapers.

“Yes, I was the football coach, but all of us on the staff had to handle more than one task,” Robinson said. “That’s what life was like at our small black colleges. I wouldn’t trade a moment of it.”

Team, band

on the run

Robinson believed football players and coaches were entertainers, and used to treat his team like a traveling headliner act, taking it across the country to play other black-college opponents at such venues as the Coliseum, the Astrodome, Yankee Stadium and Soldier Field.

“The stadiums of the world are our home,” Robinson often said.

And wherever the Tigers went, the Grambling band followed.

“There’s more than football at Grambling,” Robinson would say. “We have a great show band. You can be killing us on the field, but people aren’t going to leave until after the half.”

Taking it to another level

Several of Robinson’s players changed the course of NFL history.

Paul “Tank” Younger became the first player from a predominantly black college to play in the NFL when he joined the Rams in 1949.

James Harris became the first black quarterback to start regularly for an NFL team when he led the Rams to the 1974 NFC championship game.

Doug Williams became the first black quarterback to reach, and win, the Super Bowl when he passed for four touchdowns during the Washington Redskins’ 42-10 triumph over Denver in Super Bowl XXII.

From 1961 to 1980, NFL teams drafted 80 Grambling players. In 1971, Grambling had 43 players in NFL training camps, a record that still stands.

Trivia answer

Tokyo. Grambling defeated Morgan State in the 1976 game, 42-16.

And finally

Jerry Izenberg, sports columnist emeritus at the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., and a close friend of Robinson since 1963, told the Associated Press that the coach was a major source of inspiration in the Deep South.

“People look at black pride in America and sports’ impact on it,” Izenberg said. “In the major cities it took off the first time Jackie Robinson stole home. In the Deep South, it started with Eddie Robinson, who took a small college in northern Louisiana with little or no funds and sent the first black to the pros and made everyone look at him and Grambling.”

mike.penner@latimes.com