Louis Gilbert

Louis Gilbert

Gilbert cropped from 1927 Michigan team photograph
Date of birth	(1906-09-15)September 15, 1906
Place of birth	Long Beach, California
Date of death	May 9, 1987(1987-05-09) (aged 80)
Place of death	St. Petersburg, Florida
Career information
Position(s)	Halfback
Weight	159 lb (72 kg)
College	Michigan
Career history
As player
1925–1927	Michigan
Career highlights and awards
Awards	1927 All-Big Ten (1st team — INS, Billy Evans, Walter Eckersall)

Louis Matthew Gilbert (September 15, 1906 – May 9, 1987) was an American football player. He played at the halfback position for the Michigan Wolverines football teams from 1925 to 1927. He was selected as a first-team All-Big Ten Conference player in 1927 and was selected by Fielding H. Yost in 1941 as the greatest punter of all time.

Gilbert was born in Long Beach, California in 1906, but moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan as a boy. His father, Rufus Gilbert (1885–1962), coached football and baseball at Kalamazoo College in the mid-1900s, served as the school's first physical director from 1908 to 1909 and played minor league baseball for several years. The family lived in Peoria, Illinois, for several years during Gilbert's childhood, as his father pitched for the Peoria Distillers, and coached the football team at the Bradley Institute in Peoria. In 1917, when Gilbert was 10 years old, his father had been a player-manager for a minor league baseball club in Terre Haute, Indiana; he then became a coach at Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute. Gilbert attended high school in Kalamazoo.

Gilbert enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1924. He played football for the Michigan Wolverines football team as a starter at the halfback position from 1925 to 1927. He played largely in the shadow of all-time Michigan football legends Benny Friedman and Bennie Oosterbaan during the 1925 and 1926 seasons, but blossomed into a nationally known football star in 1927.