Blue White Illustrated

chance to come back. I���m 71 years old. When you are a senior candidate, you���re likely to be cycled every 15 years. I had a sense of finality. If I didn���t do it this year, I wasn���t going to see it all.��� When the Hall of Fame selection board voted for him as a Senior Committee candidate ��� the committee was established to recognize players who have been removed from the regular ballot ��� Robinson was elated. ���It���s like wine,��� he said. ���It gets sweeter with age. The longer I���ve waited, the better it got, because now I���ve finally popped the cork.��� Robinson is the sixth former Nittany Lion to make the Hall of Fame, joining Jack Ham, Franco Harris, August Michalske, Lenny Moore and Mike Munchak. A native of Mount Laurel, N.J., he was a three-year letterwinner for Penn State, helping lead the Lions to a 24-8 record in that span. He won first-team All-America honors as a senior in 1962 after excelling at both offensive and defensive end. In 1963 the Packers selected him in the first round of the NFL Draft with the No. 14 overall pick. They moved him to linebacker, and he went on to revolutionize the position with his mixture of size (6-foot-3, 245 pounds) and athletic ability. Robinson spent 10 seasons in Green Bay before playing the last two years of his career with the Washington Redskins. In his 12 seasons, he was selected to the Pro Bowl three times and twice earned first-team Associated Press All-Pro honors. He was later named to the NFL���s All-Decade Team of the 1960s. Robinson���s statistics, which included 27 interceptions, helped secure his place in the Hall of Fame. But after his selection, he chose to focus on the people who supported him along the way. ���I���m talking about high school coaches, college [coaches],��� he said. ���I played for Penn State with Joe Paterno and Rip Engle.��� Robinson, who resides in Akron, Ohio, will be enshrined Aug. 3 in Canton. A fitting reward for a true pioneer Dave Robinson, who has finally been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and deservedly so, was more than a great Penn State player on the field and a gentleman off it. Robinson is one of the pioneering figures in the battle against racism in sports. In December 1961, he became the first African-American to play in the then-16-year-old Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla. And it wasn���t a pleasant experience. ���I had never been in the Deep South, and Jim Crow lived in those days,��� Robinson told me a few years ago. ���Racial discrimination was not only the rule, but the law. White and black fountains were commonplace.��� Blacks were forbidden to stay in the same hotels in Jacksonville, so coach Rip Engle took the team to nearby St. Augustine, a bustling resort for the wealthy in the winter season but almost desolate until the hotels opened around New Year���s. The Penn State team stayed in a plush old hotel, the Ponce DeLeon, which had been closed since the summer and didn���t officially open until the annual New Year���s Eve party, but the staff was there to get the hotel ready. When not practicing, most of the players would hang out at a downtown drug store, but Robinson found a little restaurant ���about five or six blocks across the railroad tracks, near the black church.��� A teammate, Bob Hart, persuaded Robinson to go to the drug store one day, and a waitress refused to serve him. ���Just like I thought would happen,��� Robinson recalled. Robinson avenged the racial insult in the Gator Bowl game against favored Georgia Tech, although he has never thought of it as revenge. The Lions were leading, 14-9, midway through the third quarter when from his defensive end position he literally leaped over two blockers, grabbed the Tech quarterback by the neck and slammed him to the ground, causing a fumble that Robinson recovered at the Tech 35-yard line. Quarterback Galen Hall threw a touchdown pass to Junior Powell on the first play, and the Lions went on to win, 30-15. Larry Merchant, then a Philadelphia sportswriter, immortalized Robinson���s acrobatic feat as ���possibly the play of the century.��� That was Robinson���s junior season as a two-way end, a role that required him to be, essentially, a tight end on offense and a linebacker on defense. ���We played an Oklahoma-style 5-4 defense, and I was a standup defensive end, rushing like a linebacker,��� he recalled. The next year, The Associated Press, Football Writers Association of America, Time magazine and the National Enterprise Association selected him a firstteam All-America end, and in 1977 he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. But it was his career as a linebacker with the Green Bay Packers ��� he was selected to the Pro Bowl three times and started in Super Bowls I and II ��� that put him in Canton. In 1996 New York Times columnist Dave Anderson called Robinson one of ���The Hall of Fame���s Forgotten 11.��� He���ll never be forgotten now ��� not his accomplishments in college and pro football nor his role in the fight for racial justice.

• Cover