Bob Lutz: Tony Sands’ record-breaking day at KU got a boost from Roger Robben

Roger Robben rushed for one yard on two carries during Kansas’ 53-29 win over Missouri in the season finale for the Jayhawks in 1991. Yet it was probably his best game.

That’s because it was definitely Tony Sands’ best game as KU’s tailback.

Sands, driven by what he had seen two weeks earlier from Nebraska redshirt freshman Calvin Jones, put on a show against the Tigers. He rushed 58 times (still an NCAA record) for 396 yards (then an NCAA record that has been eclipsed three times since).

And his fullback, his blocker, his buddy was Robben, a 1987 Bishop Carroll graduate who this season was a Carroll assistant coach. He died this week after returning home from a run.

“Me and Roger, we had a great relationship,” said Sands, a personal trainer who returned home to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he still resides, after his KU playing days. “As a matter of fact, we lived on the same floor in Jayhawk Towers at the time. With him as the fullback, we were in meetings together a lot. So we got to where we thought alike.”

It was Robben, Sands said, whom he approached on the sideline during KU’s 59-23 loss to Nebraska two weeks earlier. The Jayhawks took a 17-0 first-quarter lead in that game and Nebraska’s Derek Brown, the Big Eight’s leading rusher, had to leave with blurred vision.

Jones, you might say, was a capable replacement. He went wild, rushing for 294 yards on 27 carries as the Huskers dusted KU.

“He came out in the second half and just went crazy,” Sands said of Jones. “I was saying to myself and to Roger, ‘Man, that’s a running back’s dream, that’s the kind of game a running back dreams of having.’ And that’s without knowing I was about to have the greatest day that a running back could have.”

Sands rushed for 215 yards against Missouri during his sophomore season in 1989 and had 123 yards against the Tigers in 1990. Missouri went into the 1991 game with the worst rush defense in the country. And Kansas coach Glen Mason was content to feed the monster.

But if Sands was Godzilla, Robben was Voran. He’s the guy who plowed into Missouri defensive players to create the holes Sands ran through.

Kansas had a string of nine consecutive losing seasons going into the 1991 season, Mason’s fourth as coach. The Jayhawks were 5-5 going into the Missouri game.

“We practiced hard for Missouri, as always,” Sands said. “That was the game that would decide whether we would leave as winners and me and Roger talked about that. We came to KU together (in 1988) and we wanted to leave as winners.”

Robben had been a defensive player for Kansas earlier in his career and led the Big Eight in tackles as a sophomore in 1989. Mason, an offensive-minded coach, thought Robben would be even more valuable as a fullback to help the Jayhawks’ running attack.

“We were in the I-formation 97 percent of the time in those days,” Sands said. “There wasn’t any of this spread stuff; I always had a fullback in front of me. I remember when Barry Sanders was playing for Detroit and how he would always say he wished he had a fullback, too. I tell all the guys that the Big Eight in those days was like the SEC is now. We were the conference.”

Sands said Robben, with his especially-strong upper body, reminded him of former Nebraska and San Francisco 49ers fullback Tom Rathman.

“He had those big shoulders,” Sands said. “I knew if it came down to there being a hole and if Roger and a linebacker were in that hole, I had no doubt that hole was going to be cleared out. Roger sacrificed a heck of a lot by putting everything on the line. It was a smash-mouth thing and we all had our bells rung a number of times. But we never thought about it back in the day.”

Sands said he was notified about Robben’s death by another former KU teammate, former defensive lineman Chris Perez, via a Facebook message.

“I was speechless,” Sands said. “I wanted to find the number for Roger’s dad (Bob) because he was always at our games when we were at KU, every game. I called him Monday and we spoke and I told him I just felt like I had to call him. We talked about some of the times that Roger and I had at KU and how much of a shock this was.”

Sands was married with two children late during his Kansas career. He said Robben was always kind to his wife and playful with his two young children.

“Loved him,” Sands said. “Roger was such a stand-up guy. One of the most stand-up guys you could ask for.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2015 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Tony Sands’ record-breaking day at KU got a boost from Roger Robben."