I'm extremely pleased to be able to say I once got to meet, and talk at length with, Eddie Robinson. It was some 20 years ago, when I was working for the St. Petersburg Times, and he was making an appearance to promote his namesake game at Giants Stadium, the Eddie Robinson Classic. It struck me at the time, as a young reporter, lifelong sports fan and eager student of black history, that it was amazing that an actual game at an NFL stadium would be named for a black coach. It hadn't struck me at that point that not everybody thought it was that remarkable - that it was nothing more than what a legendary coach of any color, at any school and any level of college football, was entitled to.

That's what I've come to understand as the years have passed, and understand now that he has died at age 88. Yes, it was important that he compiled the record and the legacy that he did at Grambling. It was important that he once, and for a long time, held the alltime record for coaching victories, and very important that he passed a record held by Bear Bryant, in the same way it was important that Hank Aaron broke an iconic record held by Babe Ruth.

But what I've seen and heard so far today is that he is being recognized not as a great black coach, but as a great coach, period, and one who is being honored for his impact on the game and society overall, not just on the lives of black people. He reached that position not by taking on society in a confrontational way - and considering the times in which he came into the coaching, the 1940s, he was perfectly entitled to do that - but by promoting this message: this is the land of opportunity, and that means you young black men from the deep South have a right to that opportunity just as much as anybody, and with me, here at Grambling, you will get it, and you will learn how to take advantage of it.

One thing that Doug Williams, his former quarterback and his successor as Grambling coach, said on one of his TV interviews today was that Eddie Robinson was nothing if not a patriot; he loved America and didn't hesitate to tell you. During a time that America regularly denied other Americans opportunities, he reminded everyone that it was going to provide him and others everything this country's ideals promised.

That's all anyone can ask of a coach and an educator. When they talk about great coaches, period - and there's been plenty of reason to talk about them lately, with Billy Donovan and Pat Summitt, and new Hall of Famers Phil Jackson and Roy Williams, and the legacy of John Wooden - Eddie Robinson belongs in that conversation, always has and always will. With no qualifiers.

More on what he said to me all those years ago when I was in St. Pete in my column for tomorrow.

An addendum: as it turns out, contrary to a column I wrote last year, I had met Buck O'Neil, back in 1991 when he was at a Negro leagues reunion at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I know this because I have a picture of him with me, that I found a month after that column. I'm sure that then, three years before Ken Burns' Baseball documentary came out, I couldn't distinguish him from the waves of Negro leaguers of whom I was just learning at the time. I also have pictures of Double Duty Radcliffe, Piper Davis and Toni Stone (a woman playing in the leagues), all of whom I also had been unaware back then. Shows what kind of memory I had, or what kind of photo organization.

That's another reason I'm glad my memory of the meeting with Eddie Robinson is so clear.