RUSTON, La.

Eddie Robinson used to say that he coached each of his players like he wanted them to marry his daughter. On Wednesday, one of those players, Super Bowl MVP quarterback Doug Williams, announced that the history-making former head football coach of Grambling State University had passed away at the age of 88.

“For the Grambling family, this is a very emotional time,” said Williams, who succeeded Robinson as head coach at Grambling. “I’m thinking about Eddie Robinson the man, not in today-time, but in the day and what he meant to me and to so many people.”

Robinson’s career spanned 57 years, 11 presidents, several wars and the civil rights movement. During that span, he sent more than 200 players to the National Football League and won 408 games.

His older records were what people remembered: In 57 years, Robinson set the standard for victories, going 408-165-15. John Gagliardi of St. John’s, Minn., has since passed Robinson and has 443 wins.

“The real record I have set for over 50 years is the fact that I have had one job and one wife,” Robinson once said.

He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, which was diagnosed shortly after he was forced to retire following the 1997 season, in which he won only three games. His health had been declining for years and he had been in and out of a nursing home during the last year.

Robinson said he tried to coach each player as if he wanted him to marry his daughter.

He began coaching at Grambling State in 1941, when it was still the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, and single-handedly brought the school from obscurity to international popularity.

Grambling first gained national attention in 1949, when Paul “Tank” Younger signed with the Los Angeles Rams and became the first player from an all-Black college to enter the NFL. Suddenly, professional scouts learned how to find the little school 65 miles east of Shreveport near the Arkansas border.