Reaching milestones in college athletics is usually a time for jubilant celebration. Monday’s major college sports news was an exception.
Grambling University learned Monday its legendary football coach, Eddie G. Robinson, had regained his rank as the winningest coach in college football history.
The ranking, which Robinson lost just last year, came after the NCAA stripped Joe Paterno, another college football legend who had coached for decades at Penn State University, of all his victories from 1998 to 2011.
The harsh move by the NCAA was part of a sweeping penalty against Paterno, now deceased, and the university for failing to report their knowledge of alleged child alleged sex crimes committed by a former Paterno assistant coach.
The NCAA also fined the university $60 million (equivalent to a year’s revenue from its football program), barred Penn State from post season and bowl football games for four years and cut the number of football scholarships it can offer each year. The university did not challenge the decision.
Grambling State President Frank G. Pogue Jr., a former president of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania for a decade, said he welcomed the NCAA decision, hastening to mute his enthusiasm with acknowledgment that he recognized today’s turn of events was the result of “a regrettable series of events” at Penn State.
“The Grambling State University family continues to recognize that what happened at Penn State University was an unfortunate tragedy that is much larger than athletics and football,” Pogue said in a statement. “…Because of the human being he was known to be, Eddie G. Robinson would have been the first person to express regrets about the tragedies that occurred at Penn State that led to the removal of Joe Paterno as head football coach of the Nittany Lions…,” Pogue said.
