John Robinson, longtime coach in college football and in the NFL, has died. He was 89.
To some, Robinson was known as John Madden’s best friend from the time they were at Our Lady of Perpetual Hope as young kids in Daly City, Calif. They were two gregarious personalities — “two doofuses,” as Robinson liked to joke — who loved football and later rose up the ranks all the way to the top of the NFL.
To others, Robinson was best known as the coach behind the powerhouse USC teams of the 1970s. His 1978 team won a national title; his 1979 team was arguably the most talented squad ever assembled in college football.
“I think the thing that I’ll remember about Coach Robinson is that the bar was very, very high in terms of expectations, and he was right in the middle of it,” said former USC star Paul McDonald, the quarterback of Robinson’s 1978 national title team. “He wasn’t one of these guys who stood in the tower. He was in the middle of the action, demonstrating how to block, how to tackle, how to move. He really loved the physicality of the game. That’s what he was drawn to, and because of that, we were an incredibly physical team. He instilled this whole philosophy of wearing the other guys down, and that was really smart, because you don’t win games with flash. You win games with punching people in the mouth.”
John Robinson, one of USC’s most popular and successful football coaches, died today (Monday, Nov. 11) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana of complications from pneumonia. He was 89.#FightOnForever pic.twitter.com/tPvQVFBcIO
— USC Football ✌️ (@uscfb) November 12, 2024
Those 1979 Trojans, powered by the nucleus of the ’78 national title team which shared the national title with Alabama (a team it had beat resoundingly in Birmingham that season), featured four Pro Football Hall of Famers: Anthony Munoz, Ronnie Lott, Marcus Allen and Bruce Matthews. Seven more of those Trojans went on to play in NFL Pro Bowls: Dennis Smith, Joey Browner, Chip Banks, Don Mosebar, Roy Foster, Hoby Brenner and Charles White. Three others helped teams win Super Bowls: Keith Van Horne and Jeff Fisher with the 1985 Chicago Bears and Riki Ellison with three San Francisco 49ers teams.
To put that group into better context, compare it with the 2001 Miami Hurricanes, often considered the most stacked college football roster of all time. Those Canes, led by Ed Reed, Andre Johnson and Clinton Portis, combined to appear in 46 Pro Bowls. Robinson’s 1979 team collectively played in 64. USC’s offensive line alone combined for 30. The two starting running backs, Allen and White, both won Heismans.
“John Robinson was the best head coach I ever had,” said All-American offensive tackle Van Horne. “He knew when to be tough on you. He would hold you accountable and he also knew when to let you loose too. He let his coaches coach.”
“It was all coaching,” Robinson told The Athletic in 2020. “They really weren’t worth a s— till I got hold of ’em.”
Robinson, with his deadpan sense of humor, was adept at putting together top coaching talent and managing it all seamlessly.
“It was so much fun coaching because we had a great head coach,” said former USC offensive line coach Hudson Houck, who would coach for four decades in the NFL. “John Robinson let you coach. I think I worked with him for 16 years (between stints with USC and the LA Rams). I was best man in one of his weddings. We could talk and argue, and at the end of the day no one was upset at anybody.”
“He stressed to the players that we’re gonna go good against good on a daily basis,” Norv Turner, the Trojans receivers coach from 1976-79, said. “That’s how we’re going to get better. That was the first thing he talked about in meetings.”
Robinson attended Oregon, where he played tight end. He was part of the 1958 Rose Bowl team. He became the Ducks’ offensive coordinator in 1960, after graduating, before taking the same job at USC under legendary USC coach John McKay in 1972. Robinson helped the Trojans win two national titles on McKay’s staff in the early 1970s before spending the 1975 season on Madden’s Oakland Raiders staff as running backs coach.
When McKay left USC to coach the NFL expansion team Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976, Robinson succeeded him. His first year coaching the Trojans concluded with an 11-1 record and a win in the Rose Bowl. Robinson’s storied 1979 Trojans finished 11-0-1; they’d squandered a 21-0 lead against Stanford going into the second half and finished with a 21-21 tie after the Trojans had a 39-yard field goal blocked with three seconds remaining.
“That was a great team,” Hall of Fame safety Ronnie Lott told The Athletic in 2020. “Coach Robinson would say we could go play the Rams any day and we’ll kick their butt. And you know what? I think we could have. I’m telling you. I don’t know if we would’ve beat them, but we would’ve competed. The worst team in the NFL, we would’ve beat them. Don Mosebar and Bruce Matthews were backup offensive linemen. We had some great players.”
Robinson left USC for the Rams after the 1982 season. He led them to six playoff seasons in his first seven years, twice reaching the NFC Championship Game. He was fired after the 1991 season with a career record of 75-68. He is still the Rams’ all-time leader in coaching wins, one ahead of current coach Sean McVay entering Monday.
Robinson returned the USC in 1993, leading the Trojans to three AP Top 25 seasons in five years, but was forced out after the 1997 season. He later spent six seasons coaching at UNLV, where he also doubled as the Rebels athletic director.
In 2019, Robinson returned the sidelines as a senior consultant at LSU. That Tigers team finished 15-0 en route to winning the national title. He was on staff three years in Baton Rouge, La.
“He’s going to be missed greatly because he was a great guy who was very relatable,” said McDonald. “You could talk to him. He wasn’t up in the tower. He was down there amongst the players, mixing it up, holding everyone accountable. You could always walk into his office and have a conversation with him, and he had a great sense of humor. He just had a way of lightening the load with ease of conversation and making it fun. We worked like crazy, but we had a blast. He was able to get the best out of people because he took the time to get to know everybody. That was the coolest thing about him. To me, he was a great human being.”
(Top photo of John Robinson at the Rose Bowl in 1979: Richard Mackson / Sports Illustrated via Getty)
