Robert David (Davey) O’Brien, an All-American football player at Texas Christian University, was born in Dallas, Texas on June 22, 1917.  As a youth he quarterbacked a sandlot football team self-named the Gaston Avenue Bulldogs, and spent several summers at the Kanakuk Boys’ Kamp near Branson, Missouri.  He was a 118-pound, All-State selection who led Woodrow Wilson High School to the state playoffs in 1932.  O’Brien enrolled at TCU in 1935 and sat on the bench behind Sammy Baugh.  In 1938, O’Brien’s first season as starting quarterback, TCU fell to a mediocre 4-4-3 record, but O’Brien was named to the All-Southwest Conference first team.  The five-foot-seven, now 150-pound O’Brien had 1,457 passing yards, a Southwest Conference record that stood for ten years, and only four interceptions in 194 passing attempts.  He led the Horned Frogs to their first undefeated season, including a 15-7 victory over Carnegie Tech in the Sugar Bowl, and the national championship.  O’Brien was named to thirteen All-America teams and became the only college football player to win the Heisman, Maxwell, and Walter Camp trophies in the same year.  When he went to New York to accept the Heisman Trophy, Fort Worth boosters hired a stagecoach to carry him to the Downtown Athletic Club.

	Davey O'Brien as a firearms instructor for the FBI at Quantico, Virginia.

After graduating from TCU, O’Brien signed a $10,000 contract with the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League.  In his rookie season with the Eagles, he passed for 1,324 yards in eleven games, breaking Baugh’s NFL record and was named first-team quarterback on the National Football Leagues’ All-Star Team.  The Eagles gave him a $2,000 raise, but he retired after the 1940 season to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  After completing his training, he was assigned to the bureau’s field office in Springfield, Missouri.  O’Brien was a firearms instructor at Quantico, Virginia, and spent the last five years of his FBI career in Dallas.  He retired in 1950 and went to work for Haroldson L. Hunt in land development and later entered the oil business working for Dresser-Atlas Industries of Dallas.

In 1971 O’Brien was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery to remove a kidney and part of his right lung.  He lost his courageous battle with cancer on November 18, 1977.  Davey O’Brien was named to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1955 and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1956.
back to top