Legendary USC football coach John Robinson died Monday at the age 89 due to complications from pneumonia. Robinson is easily on the Mount Rushmore of USC football head coaches (in other words, the top four). He joins program patriarch Howard Jones, Pete Carroll, and John McKay as the best of the best USC has ever had.
What was John Robinson’s legacy at USC? How would one arrive at a specific, detailed answer which sufficiently explains Robinson’s contribution to the rich story of Trojan football? “Winning big” is a correct answer, but it’s a general one. “Winning the Rose Bowl” is a better answer, but still a relatively simple response. Those are definitely parts of Robinson’s Trojan track record, and they both rate as huge achievements to be sure. However, when we get at Robinson’s most profound and important legacy at USC in a larger sense, it’s not just the winning and the Rose Bowl victories.
It’s not just the 1978 national championship. It’s not just that three of Robinson’s first four teams at USC — 1976 through 1979 — finished in the top two of the polls after the bowls.
It’s something more.
Here’s the best answer: Robinson carried forth the excellence of USC from the John McKay era.
Stop and think about all the times when an iconic, elite, best-of-the-best coach leaves a college team or an NFL team. How many times is “the guy after the guy” completely in over his head or, at the very least, unable to come remotely close to the standard set by the icon he replaced?
Who remembers who coached at Oklahoma after Barry Switzer? Who remembers who coached at Florida after Steve Spurrier or Urban Meyer? Who remembers who coached at Alabama right after Bear Bryant died? Who coached the Green Bay Packers after Vince Lombardi?
It is one of the most thankless tasks in sports: coaching a team right after a legend leaves the stage. Most of the time, this succession plan goes poorly. It might be that the coach isn’t good, but even good coaches sometimes stumble just because replacing a legend creates impossible expectations and a culture in which it is hard to measure up in the eyes of a fan base.
John Robinson replaced John McKay, arguably the greatest USC football coach ever (greater than Howard Jones and Pete Carroll), and thrived.
Jones’s replacements in the 1940s and Carroll’s successors in the early 2010s fell flat on their face. Robinson was able to follow McKay and maintain USC as a powerhouse. That sets Robinson apart in college football history and in the larger history of the coaching profession. Being “the guy after the guy” and still being great? That’s an amazing legacy John Robinson leaves behind at USC. It’s a legacy which will never fade away. If anything, it’s easier to appreciate this, given how hard it has been for the Trojans to replicate Pete Carroll’s successes in the Lincoln Riley era, a decade and a half after Pete’s last game at USC.
Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, Ducks Wire, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.