Published: September 20, 2008 10:11 pm      

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Mizzou coach has Tonawanda connection

COMMENTARY

You know how it goes with cousins from out of town. A little awkward that summer day when you see each other for the first time in months. Or years. But before long, it’s like the last visit never ended.

That’s how it was in the ’60s with Jay Robbins and Gary Pinkel. Robbins spent most of his childhood in Tonawanda’s Green Acres neighborhood, before moving to western Pennsylvania in eighth grade. Pinkel was born and raised in Akron, Ohio, but both his parents were from Buffalo’s West side, which led to summer vacations at Crystal Beach and Lake Chautauqua, and sleepovers at Robbins’ home.

“Those were great times,” Pinkel said this week by phone from his office at the University of Missouri, where he’s in his eighth year as head football coach. “I have very fond memories of playing with Jay, and my cousin from my dad’s side, Jeff Pinkel.”

“We were pretty close because we were relatively the same in a sense,” said Robbins, who is two years younger than Pinkel. “We both played football.”

“And we were both competitive,” Pinkel said. “That’s why we enjoyed sports so much, whether it was football, ping-pong or 1-on-1 basketball.”

They fell out of touch over the last two decades, but it’s likely that if Robbins and Pinkel spent some time together these days, they’d quickly reconnect. They still share similar football philosophies.

At Missouri, Pinkel might have the country’s very best offense. The fifth-ranked Tigers are averaging more than 54 points through four games, a figure that actually went down after Saturday’s 42-21 win over visiting UB.

While Pinkel’s Heisman-contending quarterback Chase Daniel completed 20 straight passes on his way to a career-high 439 yards, Robbins sat in the stands at Sparky Adams Field, quietly coaching the Kenmore East football players he teaches every day, as well as the visiting Grand Island Vikings.

“I’d throw it deep here,” he suggested, softly, on more than one occasion. “Good call,” he’d mutter after a long pass.

Robbins was an all-star receiver at Pittsburgh’s Montour High in 1971. But after Lee Corso recruited him to Louisville, he got switched back to quarterback, his original position.

He sat out as a freshman, standing on the sidelines during a big win over a Kent State squad that featured his cousin at tight end and legendary linebacker Jack Lambert. In Louisville’s ’73 spring game, Robbins was one of the starting quarterbacks.

But Corso went on to coach at Indiana the next season, and Robbins wound up being demoted to fifth on the depth chart, behind two freshmen and a converted center. He later transferred to Division-III Stony Brook, where he played safety and achieved All-America status as a senior.

After an unsuccessful tryout with the Bills, Robbins’ dream of being a professional football player ended. But he didn’t figure out what he wanted to do in life for at least a decade, not until the general manager at a restaurant he was toiling at in the mid-’80s introduced Robbins to UB basketball coach Dan Bazzani.

A few people, including Pinkel’s father and Kenmore East basketball coach Marv Matteson, had suggested Robbins pursue coaching. Bazzani offered him a chance to volunteer with the Bulls.

“As soon as I set foot on the floor at Alumni Arena, it was like the weight of the world was off my shoulders,” Robbins said. “I knew what I wanted to do.”

But he quickly realized he didn’t want to work in the college environment.

“The college game is all about recruiting,” he said. “You’ve got to spend a lot of time on the road, and I didn’t want to do that. It was more important for me to be at home with my kids. I always think about that Joe Gibbs quote: ‘I woke up one day and realized my son was 23 years old.’ I didn’t want that to happen to me. So that’s when I started setting my sights on high school.”

Robbins has been Kenmore East’s varsity boys basketball coach since 2001. He’s also the head golf coach, a physical education teacher, and was the JV baseball coach when Matteson was the varsity skipper.

The last time Robbins spent any meaningful time with his cousin was a few years before he got into coaching, when Pinkel was Washington’s offensive coordinator, the gig that earned him his first head coaching position at Toledo.

“I spent a week with him out in Seattle. It was a good time,” Robbins said. “It’s one of those relationships where you’re so tight when you’re young, and you’re still pretty much the same type of person, that you kind of pick up where you left off.”

Since then, Robbins has seen Pinkel at a family funeral and written a couple letters that didn’t get responses. He doesn’t display bitterness over the quiescent relationship with his cousin. He understands the demands of being what amounts to CEO of a major college football program.

Pinkel mentioned Robbins early in the conversation about his trips to Buffalo. When told that relationship was going to be the focus of this story, Pinkel chose to send a message through the media, as coaches often do.

“Please tell him I said hello,” Pinkel said. “And remind him I used to kick his butt. ...

“But make sure he knows I said that tongue-in-cheek.”

Reporter Jonah Bronstein played JV basketball for Jay Robbins at Kenmore East.