LOS ANGELES — In September 1978, Paul McDonald was but a junior USC quarterback with a few starts under his belt, and so John Robinson took a timeout and slung an arm around him on the sidelines.

His Trojans, McDonald remembered nearly 50 years later, were locked in a battle with top-ranked Alabama. It was the biggest spot of his life. USC needed a first down. And so gregarious head coach Robinson conferred with his quarterback, taking his shoulders and turning him. Not toward the field. Toward the stands.

I mean, McDonald remembered Robinson saying, isn’t this great, Paul?

“He really, I think,” McDonald reflected, “just loved the journey.”

On Monday, legendary head-coach Robinson died at 89 years old, a man who loved the journey and had a unique knack to get those around him to love it, too. Best known for claiming a national championship in that 1978 season at USC and a later stint serving as the all-time-winningest coach in Los Angeles Rams history, he was widely-beloved by a legion of players and coaches alike, emotional outpourings from Trojan greats flooding in Monday night on social media and press releases.

“He was the greatest,” Hall of Fame safety Ronnie Lott, who played for Robinson from 1978-1980 at USC, wrote simply on Twitter.

“If it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to live the Dream I’ve been living,” wrote former USC receiver Keyshawn Johnson, who played for Robinson at a second stint in the 1990s at USC.

“Words are inadequate for a person that has impacted your life in such a way; you can’t even describe it,” former USC Heisman winner Marcus Allen said in a statement through USC. “The impact John had on his players, particularly myself, is so deep and profound. Knowing him was life-changing.”

Robinson died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, of complications from pneumonia, USC said. He is survived by wife Beverly, daughters Terry Medina and Lynne Sierra and sons David and Chris, stepchildren Jennifer Bohle and Jeffrey Ezell, and 10 grandchildren.

Born in Chicago and growing up in the Bay Area, where he attended prep school with John Madden, Robinson played tight end for Oregon before moving into a lengthy coaching career. After a stint as USC’s offensive coordinator under John McKay, and a subsequent year working under Madden for the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, Robinson was hired at USC on the heels of McKay’s tenure to author his own era in Southern California.

In his third year of his tenure, Robinson got a transfer running back from East Los Angeles College named Lynn Cain. He wanted Cain to play fullback. Cain, who weighed about 205 pounds, did not. So Robinson told him about his experience first taking over USC’s program, leading the Trojans to an 11-1 record in his first season in 1976. He’d decided not to change the pre-existing scheme anywhere — defense, offense, special teams — and would simply learn and tweak.

Robinson sacrificed his own philosophy, Cain realized, for the good of USC’s program. So Cain did the same.

“He was willing to get in there, and get dirty with you,” Cain said. “And that paid dividends for me, in changing my outlook on being — on taking that position.”

They claimed a national championship in 1978, and went undefeated the year after. Practices were “wars,” as Cain described. Robinson, McDonald said, would occasionally simply kick players out of practice if he felt they were lagging. They’d go into the auditorium, unprompted, and host player-led team meetings to regroup, McDonald remembered.

“He knew how to bring out the best in people,” McDonald said of Robinson.

At the same time, he was wholly encouraging of his players’ individuality, former USC defensive coordinator Keith Burns said. He cared about “not just the football side of you,” as Cain emphasized. And McDonald’s teams at USC were a dichotomy: practices were wars, yes, but also plenty fun, with McDonald getting into the mix himself to demonstrate blocking or the proper angle with which to tackle a running back. Over the span of two stints — first from 1976-82, then re-hired from 1993-97 — he won the third-most games of any coach in USC’s long history, his teams built on power ground games from Heisman winners like Allen and Charles White, McDonald a lover of toughness.

“You were going to be able to run the football,” Burns said. “And defensively, you were going to have to stop the run. And he prided himself on that, his teams on that. He built us on that.”

All was not perfect. Robinson’s Trojans were handed a one-year bowl suspension from the then-Pac-10 in 1980, after 34 players nearly received credit for a course they didn’t attend. They were banned from bowl games and from appearing on television in 1983 and 1984 for a ticket-selling scheme that paid cash to players. Robinson’s second stint in Troy ended in disappointment, with two straight six-wins seasons and a subsequent firing over an answering machine.

Still, he loved USC through and through, Burns said.

And pieces of his Trojan legacy followed Robinson at every stop along the way. He later became one of the greatest coaches in Rams history after his initial stint at USC, grappling with the San Francisco 49ers for years of NFC West control in the 1980s, and often tabbed his former players for roster spots — take White, or Cain. He also coached at UNLV for six seasons following his tenure with the Rams, also serving a year in 2002-03 as the school’s athletic director; he hosted a fundraiser that year, Burns remembered, and both Allen and Lott showed up despite never having gone to UNLV.

Even his later return to the collegiate ranks, winning a national championship in 2019 with LSU as a senior consultant under former USC coach Ed Orgeron, came with a Trojan connection.

“He just had such a loyalty — to USC, number one, and to his former players,” Burns said, “that he was always trying to make everybody better.”