By TODD TRAUB
Leader sports editor
Why is Steve Roberts following me around?
Of course may-be Roberts, soon to be Cabot’s new athletic director, is wondering the same thing about me.
On Monday, the Cabot School Board confirmed Roberts, most recently football coach at Arkansas State, as the school’s new athletic director. Roberts, 46, will replace Johnny White officially on July 1.
White is retiring after 35 years with the school district.
I have known Roberts since his first year as head coach at Southern Arkansas University in 1994. Elevated from assistant that year, Roberts led SAU to a 1-7-1 record — not a sign of things to come.
In just a couple more seasons Roberts had the Muleriders atop the Gulf South Conference and in their first NCAA Division II playoff. SAU would contend with Arkansas Tech for the conference championship again the following year, falling short in a close season finale at Russellville.
Then in 2000, Roberts headed off to Northwestern (La.) State, of the old NCAA Division I-AA classification and I went on to cover Division I-A Arkansas State.
While Roberts was posting two winning seasons with the Northwestern State Demons, I was watching Joe Hollis’ woeful Arkansas State Indians struggle to 1-10 and 2-9 finishes.
The second season ended with Hollis being handed his dismissal notice as he left the sideline following a Thanksgiving Day loss to Division I-AA Nicholls State.
Throw in the fact Hollis, still alive and kicking in Georgia by the way, was suffering from prostate cancer at the time and it was one of the most dismal days in sports I have ever witnessed firsthand.
Clearly what Arkansas State needed after that was a vaccination of enthusiasm, a can full of can-do.
Athletic director Paul Griffin, who only stuck around Arkansas State for six months, delivered. His legacy will be the hiring of Roberts, whose first team promptly went 6-7 while losing its quarterback in the season opener at Virginia Tech and playing 13 games in just under 13 weeks.
That was 2002. In 2005 Arkansas State (6-5) won the lion’s share of the Sun Belt championship and went to the New Orleans Bowl, its first Division I-A bowl game, and turned in a gritty effort in a loss to Southern Miss.
The Indians, later renamed the Red Wolves, won six games a couple more times, but ultimately Roberts became the victim of the expectations he raised, and after consecutive 4-8 seasons he resigned after meeting with university officials last fall.
Roberts will bring to Cabot the enthusiasm he showed when he bounded onto the stage during his introduction at Arkansas State in December 2001.
And he will bring the lack of quit he showed when he lost his debut game at Virginia Tech 63-7.
This is the guy who urged his first teams, downtrodden for so long, to whoop it up when good things happened, even if it meant a celebration penalty.
As the former head of a program that competes in football’s highest classification, Roberts, who will earn $88,043 a year, knows something about hiring, firing, scheduling, delegating, budgeting and travel arrangements, and he will be called on to do all those things at Cabot. Well, hopefully not the firing.
He knows what a successful football program needs to keep up its success — and Cabot has one under Arkansas State alum Mike Malham, who just completed his 30th year by leading Cabot into the state playoffs.
Roberts arrives at a time when Cabot is already on sound footing.
The loan for its artificial playing surface should be paid off in June, the new on-campus building featuring a basketball arena is scheduled for completion in the fall, the football facilities are top notch and most programs are state contenders.
It all means Roberts shouldn’t be forced to make any immediate, major shakeups and can settle in first.
Roberts, a graduate of Pulaski Robinson High School, is a devout individual with a daughter who is an incoming high school junior, so he should be at home in the community as he returns to central Arkansas.
Hopefully he’ll move into one of those modern subdivisions that have sidewalks and everything and hopefully he won’t have to make too many left turns on the way to work, because those are hard to pull off in Cabot.
But based on what I know about the guy, I think the school district took the right turn when it brought Roberts in.
