Isaac Pearson: From Coal Mine Mechanic To Future Longhorn Punter

Isaac Pearson took a strange route to become a division one punter.

Australian born Isaac Pearson went from playing Madden and working as a coal mine mechanic to being a punter for the Texas Longhorns. Longhorns reporter Chris Dukes tells Kaitlin O'Toole about Pearson's story. 

Read below for full video transcript: 

Kaitlin O'Toole: Texas Longhorns new commit Isaac Pearson was a coal mechanic playing Madden when he watched a punt in the game that changed his goals for the future. Joining me now from Longhorn Country is Chris Dukes. Chris, I love this story. Pearson goes from a coal miner playing a video game to googling how he can do it, to actually committing to Texas as a punter. Talk about making things happen. Can you take us through this story, please?

Chris Dukes: Yeah. Kind of like you said. I mean, he was literally playing John Madden football as many of us do and happened to see that the Steelers punter was from Australia. And, you know, a couple Google searches later, he's working out with the people over at Pro Kick Australia. I think they produced four Ray Guy award winners, you know, several division one scholarships. Several of the punters in the NFL have gone from Australian Rules football to playing in the United States. Worked his way up through the ranks, learned under current Longhorns punter Ryan Bujcevski for a little while, and has kind of just made it his own. You know, it definitely tells you that your life can change any day of the week.

Kaitlin O'Toole: Absolutely, no matter what you're doing right? I read in that story you wrote, which is a great article, that he Googled coolest college football team to play for and Texas Longhorns pulled up, which I just I love it. Thank you so much, Chris, for your insight on this. I really appreciate it.

Chris Dukes: Yeah, sure. And, you know, one of my favorite things about that was after he said, I found the Texas Longhorns and I couldn't think of anything more American than that. I just thought that was a great quote.