During this time Roberts served as head football coach at Bethany College in Bethany, West Virginia, in 1914, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1915, and Platteville Normal College—now the University of Wisconsin–Platteville—in 1917, compiling a career college football head coaching record of 11–10.
In 1911 Roberts was named to the all-time Lawrence College football team by the local newspaper, the Appleton Evening Crescent.
[7] In 1915 Roberts was named an Assistant Professor of Physical Training at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for the 1915–16 school year.
Among his players were Earl Blaik, who went on to a College Football Hall of Fame coaching career, Marvin Pierce, father of Barbra Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, and John E. Hull, who became a four-star general and Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
[9] Down 14–0 against Denison, Roberts tried to encourage his team at halftime by offering to buy each player a box of bonbons if they won the game.
Blaik later wrote about this enticement saying that "...in a Spartan game like football the worst possible inducement to a malingering player is, literally or figuratively, any form of sweetness.
[12] After his coaching career, Roberts was employed by several companies in the paper and automobile industries in Wisconsin including Tuttle Press Co. in Appleton, Northern Paper Mills of Green Bay, Wisconsin, A. O. Smith of Milwaukee, and Nash Motors of Milwaukee.
[14] He died at the age of 57, on July 28, 1946, of a heart attack while visiting a friend in Sunset Beach, California.