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Hearing John Robinson at the Little Rock Touchdown Club was very enjoyable. Earlier I posted about asking him the question: “Do you remember John McKay’s halftime speech at the 1974 Notre Dame at USC game?” Did you know that John Robinson was the offensive coordinator in 1974 when the Hogs beat USC 22-7 in Little Rock?

Robinson also told a funny story about sending in an young inexperienced player who helped UNLV lose the game against the Hogs in Little Rock. I have put links below to several of the earlier posts I did on John Robinson’s speech in Little Rock.

The LA Times reported:

Former USC Coach John Robinson a College Football Hall of Famer

John Robinson, who guided USC’s football team to a national title in 1978, has been selected to the College Football Hall of Fame. This was his second year on the ballot.

Robinson compiled a record of 104-35-4 in 12 seasons during two coaching stints with the Trojans. He won five Pac-10 Conference titles and led his teams to eight bowl games, including three Rose Bowl victories.

He also coached the Los Angeles Rams and completed his coaching career at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he was 28-42 in six seasons.

Random fact: Robinson went to elementary school, coached on the same sideline and worked in the broadcast booth with recently retired John Madden.

Other members of the 2009 Hall of Fame class:

Players:

•PERVIS ATKINS — HB, New Mexico State (1958-60)
•TIM BROWN —WR,Notre Dame (1984-87)
•CHUCK CECIL — DB, Arizona (1984-87)
•ED DYAS — FB, Auburn (1958-60)
•MAJOR HARRIS — QB, West Virginia (1987-89)
•GORDON HUDSON — TE, Brigham Young (1980- 83)
•WILLIAM LEWIS* — C, Harvard (1892-93)
•WOODROW LOWE — LB, Alabama (1972-75)
•KEN MARGERUM — WR, Stanford (1977-80)
•STEVE McMICHAEL — DT, Texas (1976-79)
•CHRIS SPIELMAN — LB, Ohio State (1984-87)
•LARRY STATION — LB, Iowa (1982-85)
•PAT SWILLING — DE, Georgia Tech (1982-85)
•GINO TORRETTA — QB, Miami (Fla.) (1989-92)
•CURT WARNER — RB, Penn State (1979-82)
•GRANT WISTROM — DE, Nebraska (1994-97)
* Selection from the FBS Veterans Committee, deceased

COACHES:

•DICK MacPHERSON — 111-73-5 (.601) — Massachusetts (1971-77), Syracuse (1981-90) 

— Gary Klein and Adam Rose

Photo: USC Coach John Robinson being carried of the field in 1979. Credit: Joe Kennedy / Los Angeles Times

 

John Robinson did not have much success at UNLV. Here are the results against Tennessee in 2004:

By ELIZABETH A. DAVIS
AP Sports Writer

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP)Brent Schaeffer was a little nervous making history in his collegiate debut before more than 108,000 fans.

After a fumble early in the game, Tennessee’s quarterback settled down and ran for one touchdown and threw for another in the 14th-ranked Volunteers’ 42-17 win over UNLV on Sunday night.

Schaeffer was the first true freshman to start an opener in the Southeastern Conference since Georgia’s John Rauch in 1945.

Fellow freshman Erik Ainge, bracketed with Schaeffer at No. 1 on the depth chart, passed for two touchdowns.

“I had a couple of butterflies, but after those first couple of plays, I felt good,” Schaeffer said.

Both showed off their special skills: Schaeffer’s elusive running, and Ainge’s strong arm.

Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer was pleased by all of it.

“That’s really about as good as you could hope for,” Fulmer said. “I think the team around them lifted them up. … I don’t think there was pressure for them to win the game.”

Schaeffer fumbled to end his first series, but he ran for a 1-yard touchdown in his second series.

On third-and-1, Schaeffer got past a defender in the backfield, rolled right, dodged more defenders and ran into the end zone to give Tennessee a 7-3 lead.

After the fumble, Schaeffer got some advice from offensive coordinator Randy Sanders.

“He told me to forget it and play like it never happened,” Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer went 7-of-10 for 123 yards and ran seven times for 29 yards.

Ainge came in for the Volunteers’ third possession and capped an 80-yard drive with a 42-yard touchdown pass to C.J. Fayton.

Ainge’s best effort came in the second half, when he completed a 3-yard pass to Tony Brown for a touchdown at the end of a 13-play, 82-yard drive.

Ainge was 7-of-9 for 69 yards in the drive and finished 10-of-17 for 118 yards. He said he didn’t mind splitting time with Schaeffer.

“I’m not worried about how many passes I have as long as we get the win,” he said.

The freshmen fared better in their debuts than Tennessee’s defense, which, at times, had trouble stopping UNLV’s tailbacks. The Rebels, who have lost four of six openers under coach John Robinson, rolled up 164 yards on the ground.

Dominique Dorsey had 18 carries for 121 yards and a 17-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. He went over 100 yards for the sixth time in his career.

Dyante Perkins ran 3 yards for another score in the third quarter.

Tennessee lost starting tailback Cedric Houston to a right ankle injury in the third quarter. He rushed for 97 yards. Gerald Riggs filled in and finished with 79 yards on 13 carries, including a 3-yard touchdown run. Corey Larkins added a 23-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

UNLV led 3-0 early in the first quarter, but the Vols responded with 28 straight points to put the game out of reach. The Rebels avoided a rout similar to the 62-3 thrashing they took in their only other meeting with Tennessee, in 1996 in Knoxville.

UNLV dropped to 3-13 against ranked opponents after winning their last two games against then No. 14 Wisconsin and then-No. 13 Colorado State last season.

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Related posts:

Hate that we lost, but I love watching games from this era. Fans were really into the games and it was a great game.
All video footage is copyright of the University of Tennessee, but legally reproduced here in conjunction with Fair Use laws.

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John Robinson actually coached a highschool team to be close to his grandkids:

Gideon Rubin John Robinson has decided to coach high school football to be closer to his grandchildren.

SAN MARCOS, Calif. — The second of San Marcos High School’s two-a-days is set to start under a scorching, late-afternoon San Diego County sun, when John Robinson emerges from the “Blue Barn.”

He’s a bit more stooped and graying than you might remember, but, yes, it is that John Robinson, the man who took the Los Angeles Rams to two NFC Championships and who led USC to a shared national championship. Robinson, now 75 and out of football since 2004 after a stint at UNLV, calls a 600-square foot prefab shed his office.

Until now, Robinson had never coached high school ball. But earlier this year, he signed on as the defensive coordinator at San Marcos, where he can get back to the grass roots of coaching.

“We have everything we need [in the Blue Barn],” Robinson said. “They have computers and high-tech tools [in college and the NFL], but it’s the really the same thing. Eventually, it has to come up on a screen and somebody has to take a look at it and make a judgment on what they see and explain it [to the players].”

Robinson said he took the gig because he wanted to give back to the sports community in which his two grandsons, Johnny Jay and Tyson McWilliams, 13 and 9, are involved. They play youth basketball and Pop Warner football. Johnny Jay will be a San Marcos freshman next fall.

San Marcos, a perennially down program in one of the most competitive high school sports regions in the nation, isn’t the type of program where John Robinsons typically surface. Players acknowledge that college scout sightings at practice are a rarity, usually the result of a missed turn on San Marcos Boulevard.

But Robinson isn’t here for glamour and glitz.

“Within this field, this is no less important than what the Chargers are doing in practice five miles away,” he said. “It’s great fun. These are tough kids, and they want to be successful.”

During an intra-squad scrimmage, Robinson is animated as he pushes his players.

“Don’t slow down at the end,” he implored his players during a linebackers drill, “Finish it! It’s the last five yards that count!”

Although separated from them by as much as 60 years, Robinson is by all accounts in tune with today’s player, whose respect he commands like no other.

Defensive co-captain Connor Kuehnle credits Robinson with helping instill in him the discipline to stick to the script on a Cover 3 zone defense, fighting his own instinctive pull to chase after the slot receiver.

Just as important, he’s learned how to bark orders at teammates without sounding like he’s barking orders at teammates.

“It’s definitely changed the way I run the defense out there,” Kuehnle said. “Instead of just yelling at somebody because they did something wrong, now it’s ‘let’s do this and you’ll be fine.'”

And nobody ever, ever, argues with “Coach.”

“It helps if you don’t say anything,” defensive co-captain Noel Garcia said. Everything Robinson says “is final.”

For Robinson, whether he’s in the tech-savvy NFL or a shed in suburban San Diego, he believes his job is about building athletes.

“It really doesn’t matter if it’s Noel [Garcia] or Shawne Merriman or Ray Lewis,” he said. “If you get a person to develop a skill, it’s the same thing. You can find differences, but the essence is the same.”

Gideon Rubin is a freelance writer for Sports Media Exchange, a national freelance writing network.

Steve Sullivan, Wally Hall and Jim Harris talk at Little Rock Touchdown Club on 11-28-11