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This is someone I met back in 2002 at a Sunday morning service at a Church of Christ up in Gainesville. Coach Robinson was there singing and with his family. He was a mountain of a man when I met him that day. I have been friends with members of his family for almost 25 years now. Seeing him battle when he could just give up is who I have known him to be. He’s a good human being that tries to do right by people, but his diagnosis is pure hell to deal with.

https://www.dallasnews.com/high-school-sports/football/2025/10/08/mike-robinson-desoto-football-head-coach-health-issues-battle/
 

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Mike Robinson was about to die.

At least, that is what doctors thought the first day he was in the hospital in late June.

Robinson, the former head football coach at DeSoto, had been battling multiple system atrophy, a rare, progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects the central and autonomic nervous systems. Then things took a turn for the worse, as he was diagnosed with sepsis, a severe response to an infection that can lead to tissue damage, organ failure and even death.

“It was emotionally terrifying. They only gave him a 25% chance of making it,” said Lynene Robinson-Miles, Robinson’s sister and medical caretaker. “When they went in the next day to do the surgery, they didn’t give us any odds at all.”

Robinson still remembers the doctor’s message after he arrived at the emergency room and had to be stabilized because his blood sugar was dangerously low and his heart was giving out.

“The doctor came out and told my family he has sepsis pretty bad,” Robinson said. “His stomach is busted open, his intestines are busted open and he’s about a third of the way full of toxins. He is not going to make it through the night.”

But Robinson survived. Even after his kidneys and liver shut down. Even after being on life support. And even after spending seven days in a medically induced coma.

“I know people use miracle lightly, but this was a true miracle,” Robinson-Miles said. “To see him at the brink of death and only being kept alive by machines and to see his progress from there to now has been simply amazing. He is a living, walking miracle.”

 

The 59-year-old Robinson, who has been the head football coach at Wilmer-Hutchins, Hillcrest, North Mesquite and DeSoto, spent most of July in the hospital and then underwent a couple of weeks of rehab before being released Aug. 8. 

He is now undergoing physical therapy, which could last for at least a couple of more years, but he was well enough to make it to DeSoto’s home game against Waxahachie on Sept. 26 and watched from the press box as his former team beat the state’s ninth-ranked Class 6A team 40-17.

 

“The DeSoto people were great,” Robinson said. “They saw me, they loved on me, the superintendent loved on me. A lot of people didn’t know what I was going through.”

He received that love even though he was the head football coach at DeSoto for only one year, in 2018. He took the job at a tumultuous time in DeSoto ISD, as Todd Peterman’s job had been in jeopardy even after leading DeSoto to a 16-0 record and state championship in 2016.

 

The team went 9-3 with Robinson as the head coach before he resigned and moved into a role in the athletics department for marketing, promotion and college recruitment coordination.

Now, he is a shell of his former self from a physical standpoint. A man who used to weigh around 300 pounds has lost more than 100. He has to use a walker and wheelchair to get around, and he struggles with memory loss.

“I feel helpless. I don’t know what my purpose is,” he said. “Small things I cannot do anymore. I can’t drive, I can’t lift things. I have my sister, and then my aunt stays for a week every two weeks to give my sister a break. I just can’t do anything.”

But he has the Texas high school football community supporting him.

“We have talked since he has been out, and I’m just keeping him in my prayers,” Crowley ISD executive director of athletics Gregory Williams said. “There are a lot of coaches that are concerned about him.”

Williams is a friend who worked with Robinson at Lancaster when both were assistant coaches there. There is a reason why Robinson was 21 games over .500 in his 18 years as a head coach, with a record of 108-87, according to the website Texas High School Football History.

“Great mind. He was very intuitive about things,” Williams said. “He had great ideas and was great with kids. Kids loved him. Just a consummate professional. He took care of his classroom, he took care of things in sports.”

Robinson has struggled with an array of health issues over the last couple of years, including getting diagnosed with two neurological disorders — copper and selenium deficiencies. There is no cure for multiple system atrophy, which can cause the internal organs to deteriorate, and the average survival time after the onset of symptoms is six to 12 years, according to WebMD. 

Robinson was homebound at one point and had to relearn how to walk. He has exhausted his health benefits, and the estimated cost of his hospital stay, surgery and rehabilitation will be about $150,000. A GoFundMe page has been started for him.

The physical battle isn’t over, 

“His body is going to take a couple of years,” Robinson-Miles said. “He had lost a lot of muscle mass and had been sick for so long before he went to the hospital. He is going to continue to have a breakdown in his body and of his mind that is going to be an ongoing issue we have to take care of.”

But doctors were so amazed by how he survived his time in the hospital that Robinson was given a parade when he left. There were balloons, signs and a bell was rung amid an ovation.

“He went from the medical floor back out through the ER that he came in. That’s not the way they expected him to go out,” Robinson-Miles said. “This is the ultimate comeback story. He has more lives to touch in different ways off the field.”

 

 

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