Robert William Kahler (February 13, 1917 – April 16, 2013) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

player and coach. He played defensive back and halfback in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) for the Green Bay Packers from 1942 to 1944. Kahler played college football at the

University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was known as the Univers ...

. He retired from playing in 1944. After military service in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Kahler returned to Nebraska as an assistant football and track coach. In 1947–48, he was the head football and track coach at Nebraska City High School. In 1948, he moved to State Normal School and Teacher's College in

Wayne, Nebraska Wayne is a city in Wayne County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 5,660 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Wayne County and the home of Wayne State College. History Wayne was founded in 1881 when the Chicago, St. Paul, Minn ...

—now

Wayne State College Wayne State College is a public college in Wayne, Nebraska. It is part of the Nebraska State College System and enrolls 4,202 students. The college opened as a public normal school in 1910 after the state purchased the private Nebraska Normal Co ...

—as head football coach and led his team to a share of the

Nebraska College Conference The Nebraska College Conference (NCC), known as the Nebraska Intercollegiate Conference from 1916 to 1926 and later as the Nebraska College Athletic Conference (NCAC), was an intercollegiate athletic conference that existed from 1916 to 1976. The l ...

championship. The following year, he moved to

Northern Illinois University Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public research university in DeKalb, Illinois. It was founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895, by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as part of an expansion of the state's system ...

, where he served as head coach for one season in 1955.

Head coaching record

College football

References

External links

* * 1917 births 2013 deaths American football defensive backs American football halfbacks American soccer coaches Green Bay Packers players Nebraska Cornhuskers football coaches Nebraska Cornhuskers football players Northern Illinois Huskies football coaches Northern Illinois Huskies men's soccer coaches Northern Illinois Huskies wrestling coaches Wayne State Wildcats football coaches College men's track and field athletes in the United States College track and field coaches in the United States High school football coaches in Nebraska United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II People from Grand Island, Nebraska Coaches of American football from Nebraska Players of American football from Nebraska {{defensiveback-1910s-stub