O'Brien's Dedication to Sport and Business Leads Tartans
A senior business major with a finance concentration hailing from New Jersey, Kevin O'Brien is a long snapper for the Tartans football team. In his four years, he has developed into a reliable teammate, student, club leader, and intern.
Starting as a linebacker, O'Brien first stepped on the football field as a freshman in high school. His head coach encouraged him to switch to the long snapper position, believing it would help him out in college.
"That's just kind of the path I went, and I've been enjoying it," said O'Brien.
Snaps are backward passes of a football to get the ball to a punter or a holder for a kick during extra points and field goal attempts. The maneuver requires precise accuracy to allow the holder and kicker time to set up and finish their play.
"You have one job and it's to snap the ball…there's a very low margin of error," said O'Brien. Because of that, he's learned how to perform under pressure and help his team in the ever-so-important battle for field position and points. O'Brien's final season started with possibly one of the rarest stat lines for a long snapper in football history – a fumble recovery on a punt return in three straight games. And all three of those recoveries led to points for the Tartans.
Long snappers specialize in making snaps up to 15 yards and spend limited time on the field with their teammates. O'Brien says watching his teammates during practices and games inspires an incredible work ethic in him.
"You really have to build that sweat equity on your own to show your teammates, 'Like, hey, I'm in this with you,'" O'Brien said. He finds ways to psyche himself up during practice to prepare his mental state for games. It influences the way he studies his play, understanding his goals and how to achieve them himself, which is necessary to his role.
"In a position that might not receive a lot of stats or attention, Kevin has found a way with his exceptional performance to not only make game-changing plays but raise the level of our overall special teams play," said head coach Ryan Larsen. "He has a unique ability to cover down field on punts that forces our opponents to change their blocking schemes and account for him when protecting their returner. This year we are most excited to see Kevin's leadership come to the forefront in the specialist group with many younger players."
Football, like most sports, is team-reliant, and O'Brien wouldn't have it any other way.
"I love the guys that I play with," said O'Brien. "I'm not doing as much with the other teammates but still love getting to interact with them outside of practice and games. It's just a really special community we have."
"I am definitely more closely bonded with the punters and kickers because we're all together during practice and we really try to develop a culture," added O'Brien. Along with time spent together at practice, the specialists make time for a positions dinner every Friday before a game to develop a community and good chemistry for the season.
O'Brien states his favorite memory was from a positions brunch where the specialists each brought a dish.
"It was really enjoyable to have a bonding moment outside of football where we could work together around the kitchen and then break bread together," he said. "It also made the meal a little more personal as we welcomed each other into our homes and cooked for one another."
Off the field, O'Brien is co-president with Praytay Didwania of Scottie Ventures, an undergrad venture capitalist (VC) club that encourages and promotes VC at Carnegie Mellon.
Every fall they sponsor a new analyst class where they learn the fundamentals of VC through weekly education sessions, a speaker series and an internal competition where they pose as venture capitalists and evaluate a real start-up.
During spring semesters, Scottie Ventures partners with local VC firms to give club members real-life experience working as venture capitalists, where they can use what they learned from the educational series in a real-world environment. They also send a team to the national VC competition to compete against other universities to most accurately evaluate start-ups. O'Brien joined the club his sophomore year, stating that it helped solidify his decision to add a financial concentration in his degree.
O'Brien said Carnegie Mellon has prepared him for a future in business. Classes such as one with Professor Kate Barraclough helped him understand financial models that prepared him for his internship, and Carnegie Mellon taught him how to work with peers and to be a student of life.
"Carnegie Mellon does a good job of outlining what business majors need to be successful," added O'Brien.
This summer he interned at Raymond James Financial Service in New York where he worked in the consumer group for the investment banking division.
"It's kind of shocking how similar I found it to football," O'Brien said of the experience.
He worked under veterans of the firm who started in his position and the cyclical style of jobs in the division really reminded him of being on a team. O'Brien will return to Raymond James after graduation but right now his focus is the season and his team.