The Pima County Sports Hall of Fame includes 15 referees and umpires, back judges and scorekeepers, an eclectic group that has worked Super Bowls, Rose Bowls, George Foreman fights, Carl Lewis’ Olympic gold medal events, College World Series championship games, the 1949 Salad Bowl — Arizona vs. Drake — and boys and girls state championship basketball games.
Most are quickly identified by one word: Bud, Boyd, Bobby, Dean, Dan, Gordy and Fogie.
But few are on a first-name basis the way Cleo Robinson is.
“Cleo? Oh, man, he’s the best,” says longtime Pac-12 basketball referee Bob Scofield. “We worked high school basketball and football together a long time ago. Great guy.”
Cleo will increase to Sweet 16 the number of referees in the PCSHF during Sunday’s induction ceremony at the DoubleTree Hotel. But it is his singular story that sets him apart.
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He was born into poverty, the 10th of 12 children of a farm laborer in Crockett, Texas, in the late 1940s. Leslie Robinson Jr., moved his large family to a rural area north of Marana — Rillito — supporting the family by picking and chopping cotton.
“We had no running water,” Cleo remembers. “It was extreme poverty.”
When his brothers, Paul, a future NFL running back, and Jerry, president of the San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce, played on state championship football, basketball and track teams at Marana High School, they would often visit their coach’s homes. Not to talk sports; to use the shower.
“My dad would be really proud of us,” Cleo says now. “Not because of what we did in sports, but because we graduated from college and made successful lives for ourselves.”
Cleo was an all-state linebacker and a hurdles champion at Marana High who enrolled at NAU with hopes he could earn a football scholarship. Something went wrong and there was no scholarship available in Flagstaff until, of all things, his brother, Paul, a standout football player at Eastern Arizona College, made a late decision to accept a UA scholarship instead of one at NAU.
Cleo was given his brother’s scholarship.
Five years later, degree in hand, Cleo Robinson was hired by the state as a juvenile probation officer. A few years later he began officiating high school football and basketball games. He also was hired by the Big Sky Conference to work men’s basketball games. In the mid-1980s, the Pac-10 supervisor of officials flew to Tucson to scout Robinson at the UA’s spring football game. How’d it go? Over the next 26 years, Robinson became one of the league’s most prominent football officials. He worked 19 bowl games, three BCS bowls, and for the past five years has worked with fellow PCSHF member Jim Fogltance as a Pac-12 instant replay official.
He’ll work Saturday’s Stanford-Colorado game and hope to catch an early flight so that he can attend Sunday’s induction ceremony.
“It’s such an honor,” he says. “When I looked at the list of those to be inducted, I just shook my head. (Three-time Super Bowl receiver) Vance Johnson ? I’m in the same class with him? And so on, up and down the list.”
Robinson has retired from his job as a probation officer but still officiates high school basketball. He is so fit he looks like he could still run the low hurdles in 13.2 seconds, as he did 50 years ago at Marana High.
But it’s not track or football he remembers when he goes home. It’s far more than that.
“So many times I drive past the Rillito area, stop and say, ‘Thank God. … Thank God we were able to get out of there.’”
Perhaps that enables Robinson to look back at the tough nights at Autzen Stadium or the Los Angeles Coliseum or Sun Devil Stadium and laugh about it.
He worked an especially important late-season USC-Washington State game at Pullman’s Martin Stadium in the 1990s — before the film-review era — and ruled that the Cougars quarterback was stopped short of a first down late in a close game.
WSU coach Mike Price loudly disagreed.
“I’m going to make sure you never work another game in Pullman,” he shouted at Robinson, who was bundled up to avoid freezing on an icy night.
“Can you put that in writing?” replied the warm-blooded Robinson.
The most notable game Robinson worked was probably the 2005 USC at Notre Dame classic in South Bend, Indiana. It was the game in which No. 1 USC trailed the No. 9 Irish 31-27 with seven seconds remaining, no timeouts, at the 1-yard line.
Quarterback Matt Leinart appeared to be stopped for no gain, but fell into the end zone, winning the game, with the help of a push from tailback Reggie Bush.
It was the “Bush Push” game.
A few days later, Sports Illustrated published a photo of the drama at the goal line. Cleo Robinson was in focus, eyeballing the play at the line of scrimmage.
“My wife called Sports Illustrated and bought that picture,” Cleo remembers. “They charged her $250 — but it’s framed and hanging on the wall in my house.”
On Sunday, he’ll have a Hall of Fame certificate to hang next to it.
