Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

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October 4, 2022
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Gone to Texas: BYU alumnus travels to Austin

Patrick Oborn was a walk-on wide receiver at BYU in the early ’90s. He wore blue and cheered for the Cougars then, just as he does now as an alumnus.

“The fan base is really strong and BYU fans travel really well,” Oborn said. “You’ll see a lot of BYU fans all the way down in Austin just like you saw at Ole Miss last weekend.”

Oborn has traveled to see the Cougars play Oklahoma at Dallas Cowboys Stadium, San Diego State and Wyoming. In addition, he has seen the team play multiple times at Utah because of how close it is to him.


“I’ve never been to Austin before, but I’ve been to a lot of other cities in Texas so I’m looking forward to it,” Oborn said.
Oborn’s brother-in-law was an offensive guard for BYU in 1997 and Oborn and his family attended the Cotton Bowl that he played in against Kansas State.

“We got the credit cards out and we bought the tickets for everyone and we all went to Dallas and saw BYU beat Kansas State,” Oborn said.

BYU won, even though Kansas State had the ball on the three-yard line with 30 seconds left. An interception in the end zone saved the Cougars.

He said that at other stadiums, BYU fans will get a lot of abuse for being “goodie-two-shoes,” but the fans come out anyway. Oborn said fans often take competitive heckling too far by insulting the Utah fans’ religion. However, he is not expecting any problems in Austin this weekend.

He will be traveling to Austin from Utah and meeting his parents, sister and brother-in-law there, who will all be traveling from Southern California. They are all BYU alumni and his sister played volleyball there.

“It’s really our family reunion honestly,” Oborn said. “We looked at the schedule and decided to meet up at the BYU-Texas game. We’ve never been to Austin.”

He said his wife got a babysitter for the kids and he is looking forward to spending time with his relatives in a city he has never been to before.

Oborn played on the team for two years and thoroughly enjoyed his experience as a BYU athlete.

“I decided on BYU because they are always on TV and always have really good quarterbacks,” Oborn said. “My football team in high school was always run, run, run and pass on the third and long, so going to a school with a good quarterback was important to me.”

Before beginning his third season on the team, Oborn made the decision to focus on academics rather than football.

“My dad always said they could recruit fast receivers from Texas, you’re really smart and you should be focusing on being a student,” Oborn said. “I started doing engineering and things that were really hard, and there are not a lot of engineers that also play football, so I went that route.”

Engineering was much more difficult than he had expected and the students that attended BYU were also much smarter than he thought they would be because most of his high school friends were going to schools such as Berkeley and UCLA. But his experience at BYU is something that he looks proudly upon and he enjoyed being a part of the student body. Now, Oborn enjoys supporting the team and being a part of the alumni fan base.

“I still kind of feel like they are my team,” he said. “It kind of becomes a part of who you are after that long.”

He acknowledges that both Texas and BYU are rebuilding this season and that this weekend will be a good match up.

“I wasn’t impressed with our performance last weekend,” Oborn said. “It was our first game, but we’ve got to execute a lot better to have a chance against Texas this week and Utah next week. We’ve got to mature and mature quick.”
He believes that the Cougars will have to play their best in order to have a chance against the Longhorns.

“We all love BYU football, so it’s one thing we can all agree on in terms of finding an activity that we all want to do,” Oborn said. “We love football, and if there’s any place you want to watch football, it’s in Texas.”

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Gone to Texas: BYU alumnus travels to Austin