Neither man was subservient and both recognized injustice when it told them to sit in the back of the bus and not to sleep in this fine hotel. Both dreamt of an America that lived up to the dream Martin Luther King would give voice to in his famous 1968 speech on the mall in Washington.

But it takes a lot of people doing different things to bring about change.

Some take the revolutionary approach. Others take the Ghandi route. Still others quietly go about their jobs with dignity and consummate skill, demonstrating year by year that talent doesn’t care what color your skin is or what gender you are.

Robinson was one of those who did his job just as well as he possibly could, setting an example for excellence that finally could not be ignored or dismissed. Along with all those victories came more than 200 NFL players, including Doug Williams, the first African-American quarterback to win a Super Bowl. When you turn out as many fine athletes and good men as Robinson does, you’re doing something right.

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He didn’t get to enjoy the benefits of the changes that would eventually come — still too slowly. But he played a vital role in making them possible simply by doing his job better than anyone in college football had ever done it.

Like Moses, he led his people to the Promised Land, only to be denied entry himself. He accepted that as the job he’d been given. Few have ever done any job better.