Jimmy Robinson gets a call every year on Oct. 10.
It's from his son, Jim Robinson Jr., and they talk about what happened 50 years today.
"It's a great memory for a number of reasons," Jimmy Robinson said this week in a phone interview. "Number one was that being the day that Giants Stadium opened."
The golden anniversary call will come from Paris, where his son is a fashion designer with Saint Laurent. It is especially memorable for the Robinson family because Jimmy, a former wide receiver who turned to the coaching profession for many years afterwards, went down in history as scoring the Giants' first touchdown in the inaugural game against the rival Dallas Cowboys on Oct.10, 1976.
"The only negative to that is that we were already behind like 17 to nothing at the time," said Robinson, now able to laugh it off from his home in Smyrna, Georgia, just northwest of Atlanta.
Five years before he was inducted into the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame, Robinson signed with the Giants in 1976. They were a "nomadic" team at the time, Robinson recalled, as the Giants bounced around from the Yale Bowl and Shea Stadium until their new stadium was ready.
The Giants played their first four games of the 1976 season on the road at Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles (then the home of the Rams) and St. Louis (then the home of the Cardinals).
In that time, Giants head coach Bill Arnsparger informed Robinson that he would start the home opener in Week 5.
"It was a huge thrill and a dream come true to be introduced in Giants Stadium in front of 70,000 people on the day the stadium opened," said Robinson, who was born in Jamaica Hospital in Queens. "To finally have a home was a big, big deal. … I was always a big Giants fan growing up just because of the New York connection."
Fast-forwarding to 2:58 left on the clock in the third quarter, Robinson scored for the first time. He took a pass from Craig Morton on a "little underneath route" and broke one tackle, then another as two Dallas defenders collided. He juked one more and finished off the 30-yard catch-and-run before hitting the turf in the red, white and blue end zone.
"One of the memorable things about it is when I crossed the goal line and I got up to spike the ball, I spiked it back toward the field and it went back all the way over the goalpost," Robinson said. "It was like the best spike you've ever seen."
Robinson made lifelong friends on that team, including Brad Van Pelt and Jim Stienke. That season, the Giants had also signed Pro Football Hall of Fame fullback Larry Csonka after he spent a year in the World Football League.
"When I came off the field, (Csonka) was coming on I guess to maybe block for the extra point and he gave me a hug," Robinson said. "It was a pretty cool moment."
The Giants lost the game, 24-14, to the Cowboys as Roger Staubach completed 13 of 15 passes with a touchdown to Drew Pearson in the second quarter. The Giants didn't win their next game at Giants Stadium – or the one after that – but they broke through on Nov.14, 1976 by defeating Washington, 12-9.
It was the first of 162 victories at Giants Stadium, including two NFC Championship Games in the coming decades.
Robinson was there for the 41-0 victory over the Vikings on Jan. 14, 2001, which sent the Giants to Super Bowl XXXV. This time, he was the wide receivers coach.
"We moved around a lot of places in the league coaching, and (my wife Karen) always says that Giants Stadium was her favorite place," said Robinson, who has three daughters -- Katie, Jamie and Jessica – in addition to Jim Jr. "I don't know how to describe it when I was coaching there, but it was a little bit historic. She just felt like the energy in Giants Stadium was second to none."
