Jim Souhan: J Robinson's life spent changing lives

Today, J Robinson, the legendary Gophers wrestling coach with the unadorned first initial, will receive a little punctuation.

The Gophers will celebrate his 25 years on the job not with a period but a comma, because even at 64, Robinson says he has no interest in slowing down.

Not after two national coach of the year awards and three national titles. Not after 55 surgeries, including 34 on his knees, after a life spent rending his and others' joints. Not with his athletes still teasingly offering high-fives, knowing he can no longer raise his damaged right arm.

Today, Robinson's fourth-ranked Gophers will face No. 2 Iowa, and he will face the school that he helped win seven national titles as an assistant. He will be reminded of successes that no longer seem as important as the people who made them possible.

"Once you've had enough success, you need a reason to get up in the morning," he said Thursday, in his office on campus. "The thing that gets me up is these young people who come here with these dreams of being great, and they need help getting there.

"Did I want to get out of bed at 5:45 a.m. today? No way. Without them, I wouldn't."

Robinson might feel a little uncomfortable hearing so much praise today.

He's more accustomed to angering the politically correct, battling the university administration and taking the path less passable.

"Conflict is good," he said, during an afternoon filled with his favorite quotations and philosophies. "Conflict is how you grow."

With the pugnaciousness of an Army Ranger, champion wrestler and coach, Robinson has proved that true. He's so competitive he has been known to lose 40 pounds in short order to win a $10 bet. He keeps six bills -- his winnings -- taped to his office wall.

Robinson's idea of protesting during the Vietnam war was complaining that he didn't get enough combat time.

"That was where the action was, for our generation," he said. "That was, for us, the Wild West of the 1850s. That's why you wanted to go there."

When Robinson received a waiver to return to the States to wrestle, and his unit was recalled, Robinson insisted on being sent back to the front.

"I tell soldiers today that they are doing something that other people want to do but won't," Robinson said. "They should be proud of that."

He quit the wrestling team at Oklahoma State during his senior year because he didn't get along with his coach, then, after getting back into the sport while in the Army, he embarked on a career that would make him a Hall of Fame coach.

"It's really not about me, though," he said. "It's about these kids who put in the work and made something of themselves and this program."

Robinson is sitting amid trophies, posters, messages from admirers and placards bearing his favorite quotations.

"I love quotations," he said.

He offered a dozen of them during the course of a conversation that hopscotched from his childhood in San Diego to his college days at Oklahoma State, to fire zones in Vietnam and the often hypocritical halls of academia.

"It has been an interesting journey," he said.

He wanted to play football in high school but was ineligible during his first quarter as a freshman.

"It's embarrassing to admit, but I just wasn't giving a good enough effort in my classes," he said.

By the time he regained his eligibility, wrestling was his choice.

Robinson attended Oklahoma State but didn't emerge as a world-class wrestler until he joined the Army. He now jokes that he's been on so many national championship teams as a wrestler, assistant coach and coach that "I have more rings, hypothetically, than I have fingers." He also has more national titles at Minnesota than he has hands.

He arrived at Minnesota in 1986, to take over a struggling program. He did not attempt to charm his way to success.

During his first season, his team got whipped by Michigan during one meet, and Robinson was so angry with his team's lack of intensity that he made his wrestlers practice, in a road gym, after the meet.

The next night, his team lost a close match at Michigan State, blowing a late lead. Again, Robinson made his wrestlers practice after a road meet.

Afterward, Robinson led his boys toward the two cars that would take them to their hotel.

"I walk toward one car," Robinson said. "The other 11 guys all went to the other car. I mean, there are 11 guys crammed in this car. They're stacked across the back seat like Lincoln Logs, with their bags and everything, and I'm alone in the other car.

"The beauty of it is that those guys who were on that first team, they didn't share in the national championships, but they shared in the dream."

Robinson still dresses in the same locker room as his wrestlers, still joins in the incessant needling that persists in those bastions of political incorrectness. He still contends for national titles with the program he built from the mat up.

Today, though, he has a new contract, his first multiyear deal at the school, and he says he's never gotten along better with athletic director Joel Maturi.

"Going through this with different administrations, I find it interesting that we're on a college campus, where there's supposed to be diversity of thought, and yet if your thought isn't what their thought is, then there's no diversity of thought allowed," he said. "You know there are so many people who won't do the right thing because they're afraid they'll lose their jobs. That's all they have.

"I always figured if they fired me, I could go live in a tent. So I didn't worry about it."

His parents taught him one principle that has ruled his remarkable life.

"I look at life as the quest for excellence," he said. "Excellence gets rid of all that other stuff. It gets rid of gender, race, sexual orientation, all of it. Because if you want to be the best, you're going to get the best person.

"Mom and Dad always told me that you want to do your job so well that you make yourself indispensable."

So he'll keep rising at 5:45 a.m., speaking his mind, and developing the most accomplished athletes on campus.

"I don't think that there is anything greater in the world," he said, "than helping someone change their life."

He doesn't want to change his own.

Jim Souhan can be heard Sundays from 10a.m. to noon and weekdays at 2:40 p.m. on 1500ESPN. His Twitter name is Souhanstrib. • jsouhan@startribune.com