29 Days President Robert C. Robbins
Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2018 5:51 am
President Robbins is the 22nd president of the U of A. He was hired on 1 June 2017 after serving as the CEO of Texas Medical Center in Houston for 5 years. Prior to that Dr Robbins was a cardiac surgeon who was a professor and chairman of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford. Pretty good for a guy who got his degree at Millsaps College and medical degree at University of Mississippi. He sits on a bunch of boards and has a wall full of honors, but we care about Pres/Prof/Dr Robbins (call me Bobby) because he helped hire Kevin Sumlin.
Robbins is one of us. A pathological, unapologetic, football fan. Here is some of what he told Michael Lev at the Star:
29 is the Wildcat record for tackles for a loss in a season shared by Scooby Wright, 2014, and Tom Nelson, 1968.“If there’s a ball and a score, I’m a fan,” Robbins says. “But of course, growing up in the South, there’s really two seasons: There’s football and spring football.”
Robbins was a pretty good quarterback for South Jones High School, throwing 40-plus touchdown passes over his final two seasons. He planned to walk on at Ole Miss, but a knee injury suffered while water skiing sent him in a different direction.
Was there anything about Sumlin that you admired from afar?
A: “He won; he’s a winner. When you go into Tuscaloosa and knock off Alabama and Nick Saban (in 2012), that gets people’s attention. I had known about him, of course, from Houston. He won there. He won at A&M. And he’s going to win at the University of Arizona.”
Why do you think that?
A: “He’s a great coach, No. 1. He’s a great leader. And I think he’s got some talent. Most people would say we’re really young, especially on the defensive side of the ball. But as he keeps saying in his stump speeches, the great thing about freshmen is they become sophomores. They’ve got a year under their belt.”
"A high-ranking executive that I won’t name asked me the same question: ‘You grew up in the SEC; how do you feel about being the president at a basketball school?’ I said, ‘Stop it. We’re both.’ It’s like Deion Sanders. You play football or baseball? ‘Both.’
“We’re both. Coach (Dick) Tomey had Desert Swarm. They were pretty good in those days. (Mike) Stoops did all right. RichRod (Rich Rodriguez) won the South Division.
“There’s no reason we can’t be really, really good at both.”