Laura Robinson stood waiting for an important phone call. Her husband, Greg, was at football practice at his new job at North Carolina State and Laura was working at home in the kitchen. She was waiting to hear from a local principal to see if she received a substitute teaching job.

Laura had worked the past four years in California as a grade school teacher to help support their young family, but her teaching license was not reciprocal in North Carolina to teach full time. The call came – good news, of course – but as Laura looked up, her teaching career came to an abrupt halt.

‘All of a sudden, my child crawled out into the kitchen,’ Laura said. ‘I was so amazed by that, I said, ‘I’ll have to call you back.”

One-year-old Dominic had escaped from his crib for the first time and decided his mother’s career path that very moment.

‘I talked with Greg, and we had both wanted me to be a stay-at-home mom,’ Laura said. ‘We knew the hours he would put in. We decided that somehow we would make that work.’

This is the life of a coach’s wife. To be at home with the kids while their husbands work seven days a week. To fix the toilet when it breaks, solve the garage door opener when it malfunctions and to feed a gaggle of hungry football players when the husband brings home some work.

Twenty-five years later, Laura hasn’t taken another full-time teaching job. Her husband just finished his first year as head coach of Syracuse’s 1-10 football team, and Dominic worked as a graduate assistant, roaming the sideline with his father. But Laura has never grown bitter; supportive and strong is how many describe her.

When Greg Robinson accepted the job at Syracuse in January, Laura was the first person he thanked at his introductory press conference. Out of all the Dick Vermeils, Pete Carrolls and Mack Browns, Greg cited her first as the reason for his first head coaching job.

‘I should always start with my wife, Laura,’ Robinson said. ‘She’s been a wonderful wife and a wonderful mother. She’s been so supportive of me; she’s helped me in so many ways. To be the kind of mother she’s been and to really raise those children, it’s been amazing what I’ve been able to get done because of her support.’

Laura Robinson grew up Laura Breakey in Salem, Ore., an agricultural valley an hour from the Pacific Ocean. Her father, Donald, taught biology at nearby Willamette University, and they used to attend Bearcat basketball and football games. Donald introduced his kids to the outdoors, and they went camping frequently. Part of the reason Laura was interested in Greg’s Syracuse job at first, she said, was because the smells and terrain reminded her of home.

She studied education at the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif., where she met Greg during a philosophy class freshman year. Laura said she recognized him as a football player, but she didn’t know who he was until the next fall when they started dating.

After Greg’s senior season in 1975, he became a graduate assistant with the team during his final semester. In December of 1976 they married, and the following year, Greg became an assistant at Cal State Fullerton. Dominic, the first of three children, was born in 1979 before family stops at NC State and UCLA.

Shortly after the marriage, Laura’s father gave her a book titled ‘Everything You Need to Know About Football.’ The book was blank and, as Laura says, she ‘hasn’t added any chapters.’

‘Obviously, I know a little more than I did 30 years ago, but I’m not gonna talk to you about a certain kind of play,’ she said. ‘I don’t spend 10 hours a day in a film room, and I don’t know about what the coaches do, so I won’t pretend to.’

Like her husband, Laura jumped from job to job. She started as a teacher and took a second-grade teaching job in Santa Ana when Greg started at Cal State Fullerton.

She tutored for a year, did child care in her home (‘Not many brain cells left after that,’ she joked) and worked as a substitute teacher until the third Robinson child, Leslie, was born. Along the way, Greg always worked long days. Sometimes Dominic would tag along.

‘There were a lot of times when I’d be working training camps and it would be long hours and the second I started bitchin’ and moanin’, I’d realize any kid would trade places with me in a second,’ Dominic said. ‘Being on the sideline with my dad at the Super Bowl was surreal. It’s hard not to take it for granted, but I always tried to appreciate it, and it’s not hard to do that.’

After a 3-7 season at UCLA, Robinson opted to take a job with the New York Jets in 1989 as a defensive line coach. Dominic pleaded with his Dad to keep the family in California, offering him his bike and his bank account, which amounted to about $120. It was the second time in Greg’s career the Robinsons would move across the country because of his job, but it also introduced them to SU.

‘When we were with the Jets, (Greg) followed Syracuse football,’ Laura said. ‘When you look at what’s gone on with this school, it’s very appealing to someone who loves the game of football because it’s got that good football vibe to it.’

During the next 15 years, Robinson leapfrogged around the NFL as a defensive coordinator with the Jets, Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs, the latter of which came to a difficult end.

The Chiefs finished 13-3 in 2003, but came up short in a 38-31 slugfest against the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC divisional playoffs. To this day, Greg and Laura insist it was his best year of coaching but public pressure grew immensely and two days later, Greg offered his resignation to Chiefs head coach Dick Vermeil.

After Dick and his wife Carol, close friends with the Robinsons, talked it over, Vermeil parted ways with his assistant in an emotional press conference. Laura, who still talks with Carol frequently, said it was a difficult moment for Greg and her family, but that it’s part of coaching.

‘I think part of the problem was that things became a distraction,’ she said. ‘We became very close to Dick and Carol when we were there. That was hard.’

Carol Vermeil said times like that are some of the most challenging to deal with as a coach’s wife.

‘You just have to hang in there and support your husband,’ Vermeil said. ‘Laura is very capable and very level-headed, but when her husband gets criticized, she’s getting criticized, too.’

Greg was too valuable as a defensive mind, though, and quickly latched on as co-defensive coordinator with Texas in 2004. For Laura, the return to college was a reminder of how refreshing football can be.

‘My big deal is I like to get to know the players as people,’ Laura said. ‘It’s hard because I don’t see them every day and there are so many of them that you can’t invite them over to dinner all the time.’

When the Syracuse job opened at the end of the 2004 season, Laura and Greg knew immediately they would accept if the opportunity came along. After a strong recommendation from Southern California head coach Pete Carroll to SU’s new Athletic Airector Daryl Gross, Robinson had a three-day interview in Los Angeles that landed him his first head coaching job.

Once in Syracuse, Greg began working on rebuilding a BCS contender. Laura had to pick the Robinsons’ new home. She eventually settled on a secluded neighborhood in Fayetteville. Robinson’s secretary, Kitty Pasqua, lives about half a mile away, and a couple of assistants are not far.

There are more than a dozen cookbooks in the Robinson kitchen and several paintings in their living room representing Robinson’s stops on his way to Syracuse: Montauk, Laguna, Calif. and one for the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver. On the mantel there is a photo of Dominic and his father after a playoff game in 1998 on their way to the Broncos’ first Super Bowl win.

‘They knew coming in it was going to be a tough year or two or three years,’ said Juli Boeheim, wife of SU basketball coach Jim Boeheim, in reference to SU football’s 1-10 season. ‘I’m sure good things will come.’

Since the Robinsons have come to Syracuse, Boeheim has attended fund-raisers with Laura and tried to help her get acclimated to the Syracuse area. Boeheim said some of her closest friends are wives of other coaches.

‘Everybody has their stresses in jobs, and we’re all kind of in the same boat when you talk about stress and the workload,’ Boeheim said. ‘From day one, the people are what make (Syracuse). Every place has its negative issues and the snow is it here but the people make up for it.’

Sally Brown, the wife of Texas head coach Mack Brown, is happy for the Robinsons and their new job, but she misses her old friend.

‘When Greg came to us, everyone said, ‘You’re gonna like Greg but you’re gonna love Laura,” Brown said. ‘She makes a great effort to get to know the players. Syracuse is lucky to have her.’

Laura still doesn’t have a full-time job, but she is finding ways to keep busy. She’s becoming involved with the new Children’s Hospital in Syracuse and plans to work more with the Salvation Army. She attended all the SU football games this season, and is always a phone call away for Gross and Chancellor Nancy Cantor for fund-raisers and functions.

‘We’re part of this package that Nancy and Daryl are putting together,’ Laura said. ‘We want people to see Syracuse football as part of the city community, not just the university community.’

Published on December 8, 2005 at 12:00 pm