Small but mighty, Davey O’Brien led Horned Frogs to football glory

Small but mighty, Davey O'Brien led Horned Frogs to football glory

Published on August 24, 2026

When a new TCU quarterback trots onto the field this Saturday, he will be chasing a standard set decades ago.

Davey O'Brien remains the only Horned Frog to win the Heisman Trophy, a distinction that has made him one of the most important figures in Fort Worth sports lore.

As TCU enters another season with Big 12 championship aspirations, O'Brien's legacy serves as a reminder of the lofty possibilities at the venerable Amon G. Carter Stadium.

Gridiron glory

Robert David O'Brien was born in Dallas on June 22, 1917. As a kid, he quarterbacked a sandlot football team called the Gaston Avenue Bulldogs and spent several summers at a boys' camp in Missouri.

He was a 118-pound All-State selection at Woodrow Wilson High School, which he led to the state playoffs in 1932. He enrolled at TCU in 1935, studied geology and rode the bench behind the legendary Slingin' Sammy Baugh until 1937, when Baugh went on to the National Football League.

In 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. In 1938, he led the Horned Frogs to their first undefeated season, including a 15-7 victory over Carnegie Tech in the Sugar Bowl and a national championship. That year, O'Brien and the Fightin' Frogs outscored their opponents 269-60 and held nine of their 10 regular-season opponents to seven points or fewer, including three shutouts.

In 1938, the 5-foot-7, 150-pound O'Brien - often called "Little Davey" - had 1,457 passing yards, a Southwest Conference record that stood for 10 years. He threw only four interceptions in 194 passing attempts.

O'Brien was named to 13 All-American 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 City to accept the Heisman Trophy, Fort Worth boosters, led by newspaper magnate Amon Carter, hired a stagecoach to carry him to the Downtown Athletic Club.

On to the big league

After graduating from TCU, O'Brien signed a $10,000 contract with the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL. In his rookie season with the Eagles, he passed for 1,324 yards in 11 games, breaking Baugh's NFL record, and was named quarterback on the All-Pro team.

The Eagles gave him a $2,000 raise, but he retired after the 1940 season to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was assigned to the bureau's field office in Springfield, Missouri, after completing training. Later he was a firearms instructor at Quantico, Virginia, and spent the last five years of his FBI career in Dallas.

He retired from law enforcement in 1950 and went to work in land development and the oil business.

In 1971, O'Brien was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery to remove a kidney and part of his right lung. He died of cancer on Nov. 18, 1977.

Legacy lives through annual awards

A month later, the Fort Worth Club presented the first Davey O'Brien Award, to honor the best college football player in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and New Mexico. In 1981, officials of the newly established Davey O'Brien Educational and Charitable Trust decided to change the award to honor the best college football quarterback in the nation and to offer the Davey O'Brien High School Scholarship Award annually to a leading Texas high school athlete.

The O'Brien Hall of Fame opened in 1986 in the downtown Fort Worth Club, housing personal memorabilia and gridiron artifacts. A life-sized bronze statue depicting Little Davey stands outside the Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena on the TCU campus.

Even more impressive than O'Brien's on-field talent was the leadership he exerted, the competitive spirit and sportsmanship he displayed, his dedication to excellence and his ability to inspire others to excel.

Photo: TCU finished 11-0 and was named consensus national champion in 1938, led by Heisman Trophy winner Davey O'Brien.

Photo: O'Brien won the Heisman Trophy and the Maxwell Award in 1938, the first TCU quarterback to win either.

Photo: O'Brien was a quarterback in the National Football League with the Philadelphia Eagles for two seasons.

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