University of Minnesota Athletics
George Gibson - M Club Hall of Fame
George Gibson
Football, 1926-28
HOF Class of 1993
Oklahoma-born George Gibson came to love Minnesota while spending boyhood summers here harvesting wheat. When it came time for college, the University of Minnesota was a natural choice.
On the gridiron, Gibson was a two-way starting guard who, in 1928, became the team captain – an important post, since the captain and quarterback called the plays.
Gibson played running guard on the single wing offense, and earned All-America honors along with his friend and roommate, Bronko Nagurski.
Although he graduated with a degree in geology, Gibson hired on as player-coach with the Minneapolis Red Jackets, one of the state’s first NFL teams and, a year and a half later, a casualty of the Great Depression.
The Red Jackets merged with the Frankford Yellow Jackets in Philadelphia, and Gibson as their player-coach earned All-Pro honors. But that team went belly-up, too, and Gibson retired to teach geology and coach football at Carleton College, later finding fame and fortune as an oil geologist in Texas.
Gibson’s many contributions to the U of M include the Gibson-Nagurski Football Complex.