Aggie Heart Award winner Ryan O'Bryant talks goal of playing pro football

Key notes from Ryan O'Bryant interview

• Glad to be back in Aggieland, really blessed to be back and see a different side of the University. I've always been thankful and enjoying life, in high school my nickname was Lucky Charms so people called my Lucky all the time. Enjoy working in the athletic department and getting to see all of our traditions.
   
• Darby Rich has been really great, helping me with workouts, also coach Henry has been a huge influence allowing me to train alongside his team and help with pointers over the last three years. Both of those men have been really instrumental in allowing me to continue my dream.
   
• I put together a video, like a pro day workout for NFL scouts and I asked coach Rich to help me and also coach Henry. I ran in a couple meets in the last couple years. I’m just trying to get exposed because last year I was in a developmental league in Michigan called the Rivals professional football league. It went really well, I had five or six games I played and condensed that into a highlight tape. A cool thing I experienced was that three teams were interested after the highlight reel and to get that at this point in my life it’s one of the huge triumphs.
   
• It’s been burning and grown stronger every single year. I moved out to the Bay area to get my masters in sport management which allowed me to get on as an assistant recruiting intern at Berkley. One thing I tell kids is if you have a dream make sure you're taking care of the back-end as well. I was blessed to get my masters and keep my other dream alive. I took advantage of the opportunity in Michigan for the developmental league. I grew up in Greenspoint, TX, and so you have to have that vision. I try to stress that to the athletes I see on campus, you have to take advantages of the opportunities given.
   
• I grew up a basketball player and realized some point in high school that football was my ticket was my way to go further. My mom actually called the area colleges because I wasn’t getting recruited and the only school that called us back was Texas A&M. They gave me an opportunity to be a preferred walk on. One thing that was instilled in me as a young kid is that you’re good enough and don’t let anybody steal what’s inside of you. When Sherman came in, those perceptions that everyone had of you just went away. I got to make a huge play on Michael Crabtree my junior year.
   
• The game before that we played Texas, Major Applewhite he walked up to me and said “you terrorized us on special teams you did a great job”. That encouraged me and I thought I could go on and keep playing. I played some arena football in Amarillo which didn’t go that well but right after that I heard the Texans were working out at Rice stadium. So I went down there and saw Andre Johnson and all of those boys and I got to train with them during OTAs for a few months. It just built my confidence.
   
• When I was at Cal-Berkeley he gave me the opportunity to participate in pro-day but the strength and conditioning coach didn’t want me to so they just posed a vote and no one raised their hand for me to work out which was really embarrassing. I was probably 99.9% to giving it up. Like I said earlier, getting that validation from those NFL teams after the developmental league, man, it’s a miracle. You gotta keep fighting cause you never know what it's going to lead to. I met my wife in California, you just don't know what will happen.
   
• The greatest moment was looking up in the stands and seeing 90,000 people and I would just thank God because all these people are here to watch us play, I’ll always take that with me. When we played Texas here, how this place rocked, the rivalry is second to none. I have a website, ryanobryant.com, I have all my videos and just let you guys know to keep fighting. There’s going to be some good years coming, just seeing how hard the coaches are on the players, that’s the difference right there. I've always thought about coaching, I love the admin side of it.