John Robinson (American football coach)


John Alexander Robinson is a former American football player and coach best known for his two stints as head coach of the University of Southern California football team and for his tenure as head coach of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams. Robinson's USC teams won four Rose Bowls and captured a share of the national championship in the 1978 season. Robinson is one of the few college football head coaches to have non-consecutive tenure at the same school. In 2009, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He is currently a consultant to the head football coach at Louisiana State University.

Early life and playing career

Robinson was born in Chicago, moved to Provo, Utah at six, and moved to Daly City, California at nine, where he attended catholic parochial school with future Pro Football Hall of Famer John Madden, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, graduating in 1950, and Junípero Serra High School graduating in 1954. He attended the University of Oregon, where he played end on Oregon's 1958 Rose Bowl team.

Coaching career

Early career

He began his coaching career at the University of Oregon, his alma mater, where he served as an assistant coach under Len Casanova and Jerry Frei from 1960 to 1971. He served as USC's offensive coordinator in 1972 under John McKay, who had been an assistant coach at Oregon when Robinson played there, then served a stint as the Oakland Raiders' running backs coach in 1975, rejoining Madden, who was by then Oakland's head coach. Robinson coached at USC from 1976 to 1982 and again from 1993 to 1997.

Los Angeles Rams

Robinson is considered one of the more successful coaches in Rams history, twice leading the team to the NFC title game. Both of those contests ended in defeat against eventual Super Bowl champions, the 1985 Chicago Bears and the 1989 San Francisco 49ers. Robinson's tenure as Rams coach was made more difficult by the fact that the Rams played in the same division as the 49ers, the dominant team of the 1980s, but he was also the coach who drafted running back Eric Dickerson. His 79 victories are the most in Rams franchise history.

Later career

Robinson was hired to coach football at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1999. After a 2–0 start, the second win coming at Baylor where the Rebels won despite entering the game's final play down by three points and not possessing the ball, Robinson's first UNLV team finished only 3–8. The Rebels rebounded to win eight games in 2000. In 2002, Robinson was chosen as the university's athletic director, but he stepped down from that position a year later to concentrate on the coaching position. In 2003, he was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. Despite being relieved of duty as athletic director, he resigned after going 2–9 in his final season in 2004.
In 2010, Robinson returned to coaching as defensive coordinator at San Marcos High School in San Marcos, California. He had never before coached at the high school level.
In July of 2019, Robinson joined the Louisiana State University football program as Senior Consultant to Head Coach Ed Orgeron.

Outside of coaching

Robinson began a three decade long association with Sports USA Radio Network in 1998, and as of January 2018 serves as a color analyst for the network. He is a Board Member for the Lott IMPACT Trophy, which is named after Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive back Ronnie Lott, and is awarded annually to college football's Defensive IMPACT Player of the Year.
His son David Robinson is a defensive coordinator for the Fullerton College Hornets football program; he had played on the FC CCCAA 1983 national title team. David worked for his father as an assistant coach, including six bowl appearances, most notably the 1996 Rose Bowl and 1995 Cotton Bowl.

Head coaching record

College

NFL