Robinson: The Man Wake Wouldn’t Let Get Away
One night in mid-December, when it was already dark before 6, I was leaving the Miller Center after watching basketball practice when I noticed someone coming in from outside through the outer set of double doors. Having been raised right, I was holding an inner door open when I recognized it to be none other than Matt Robinson, who had one game remaining in his sixth and final season. I don’t know of any football player I’d rather bump into. Matt and I share a nickname, Country, and I had gotten to know and like him quite a bit in his half-dozen years at Wake. He said he had one more paper to turn in for his advanced degree (I believe he said business) and that he would probably be pulling an all-nighter. He looked a bit worn down, so I wished him luck.
It was a different Matt Robinson standing outside the Manchester Athletics Center Tuesday when I showed up for spring football practice. For one thing, he was 25 pounds lighter than his playing weight of 245, and looked great. And he had a huge smile on his face. Said his knees—including the one that had to be surgically repaired to mend a broken kneecap—felt much better. Knowing he had his heart set on a career in coaching, I asked him if he had any leads. He said he wasn’t looking, that he liked his new job. That’s when I found he had been added to the Wake Forest staff as recruiting assistant.
The job opened after Brad White, a graduate assistant the past two seasons, accepted a full-time job as assistant to head coach Matt Griffin at Murray State. White, a linebacker at Wake from 2002-04, will coach the safeties at MSU. When White left, James Adams was promoted from recruiting assistant to graduate assistant. He’ll work with the offense this season and Napoleon Sykes, the offensive graduate assistant last season, will slide over to defense.
Wake lost one of the sharpest people the program has ever produced in White, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him back at some point over his career. And head coach Jim Grobe has three good ones, Sykes, Adams and Robinson, in the early stages of their coaching careers. All played at Wake under Grobe, and all should be at least as good at coaching as they were playing.