Gilbert Earns National Award
New Haven, Conn. – SMU’s Garrett Gilbert has been named the National Offensive Player of the Week, the Walter Camp Football Foundation announced Sunday.
Gilbert set an SMU single-game record with 538 passing yards and accounted for six TDs, as the Mustangs rallied from 21 points down to defeat Temple, 59-49. Gilbert completed 37-of-53 passes and connected for four touchdowns. He also rushed for 97 yards and two additional touchdowns. His school-record 635 yards of total offense were the seventh-most in a game in NCAA history. Led by Gilbert, SMU also set a school record with 728 yards of total team offense.
Gilbert is the first SMU player to earn Walter Camp National Player of the Week honors since the award was started in 2004.
This is the 10th year that the Walter Camp Football Foundation has honored one offensive and one defensive player as its national Football Bowl Subdivision player of the week during the regular season. Recipients are selected by a panel of national media members and administered by the Foundation.
Walter Camp, “The Father of American football,” first selected an All-America team in 1889. Camp – a former Yale University athlete and football coach – is also credited with
developing play from scrimmage, set plays, the numerical assessment of goals and tries and the restriction of play to eleven men per side. The Walter Camp Football Foundation (www.waltercamp.org) – a New Haven-based all-volunteer group – was founded in 1967 to perpetuate the ideals of Camp and to continue the tradition of selecting annually an All-America team. The Foundation is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA). The NCFAA was founded in 1997 as a coalition of the major collegiate football awards to protect, preserve and enhance the integrity, influence and prestige of the game’s predominant awards. The NCFAA encourages professionalism and the highest standards for the administration of its member awards and the selection of their candidates and recipients. For more information, visit the association’s website, www.ncfaa.org.
