People

By Guy D. Garcia

When he began coaching the Grambling College football team 44 years ago, Eddie Robinson did everything, including filing the news story on the game with Western Union. He had a basic all-purpose alibi format always at the ready. Since then he has revamped the marching band, had a new 20,000-person stadium named in his honor, produced more than 200 future professional football players (among them Paul ("Tank") Younger, Willie Davis, Willie Brown) and not had to use many alibis. Last week Robinson, 66, reached his greatest milestone. After leading the Tigers to victory over Prairie View at the Cotton Bowl, the plain-talking sharecropper's son from Jackson, La., was 324-106-15, passing Bear Bryant's record for winning the most games in college football history. Three more wins will push him past George Halas, who was the winningest coach in pro football. "Sometimes after practice," one awed player told a reporter, "we just stand and look at him."