FEATURED: Davey Day
9/2/2018 3:06:00 PM | Football
This feature article originally appeared in the TCU Gameday Program, which is free to all fans at each TCU football home game. Each week, GoFrogs.com will publish the features from the previous edition of the TCU Gameday Program.
By Jay Hinton, TCU Athletics Communications
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Quarterback Davey O'Brien etched his name in TCU lore by leading the Horned Frogs to the 1938 national championship — their second in four seasons.
Also that year, O'Brien, a Dallas native, won the Heisman Trophy — the first and only recipient in TCU history and first in the Southwest Conference — and the Maxwell Award and Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, becoming the first player in college football history to win all three accolades in the same season.
TCU honored O'Brien and his accolades with Davey Day in Saturday's season opener against Southern at Amon G. Carter Stadium.
The TCU football team wore a sticker on its helmet honoring O'Brien, in addition to a field marking for him, and Davey O'Brien Jr., his son, was TCU's honorary captain. During its pregame show, the TCU band formed a No. 8 on the field.
During his collegiate career, O'Brien did it all for the Horned Frogs: running, passing, place-kicking, returning punts and kicks and intercepting passes.
For his career, he held national records for number of punt returns in a season (58, 1937); total punt and kickoff returns in a season (72, 1937); and total punt returns in a career (116). He led the nation in passing in back-to-back seasons (1937, 1938), and he led the nation in total offense in 1938.
He also held many other passing and total offense records that were slowly broken throughout the years. In 1938, O'Brien threw for 1,497 yards and 19 touchdowns in leading the Horned Frogs to an 11-0 finish (including seven straight wins over teams in the top 10), a Southwest Conference Championship and the national title with the 15-7 victory over Carnegie Tech in the 1939 Sugar Bowl.
In 1939, he was the fourth-overall selection of the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL draft. In his rookie season with the Eagles, he led the league in passing with 1,324 yards. In 1940, he led the league in attempts and completions.
O'Brien retired from the NFL after just two seasons. For his career, he completed 223 of 478 passes for 2,614 yards and 11 touchdowns.
In 1955, he was elected into the College Football Hall of Fame. A year later, he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, and in 1967 he entered the TCU Hall of Fame.
O'Brien died Nov. 18, 1977, from complications due to cancer.
