Oscar Doyle: Meant to be at Boise State
Oscar Doyle is in his first season as a Bronco. But the Australian punter seems to be where he's supposed to be.
Chris Kutz
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But in the end, it all seemed meant to be.
Oscar Doyle’s parents live in Brisbane, Australia. They had never been to Boise, but when their son transferred to Boise State this past summer after spending the last two years at Weber State, they circled two weeks on their calendar in October to pay a visit.
The Doyle family arrived in Idaho the week of the Notre Dame game. They’re currently at Disneyland in southern California and will be back for Saturday’s much-anticipated game against UNLV at Albertsons Stadium (1:30 pm MT, FS1 and Bronco Radio Network). But this past Saturday, they saw their son - a junior punter who did not play an organized American football game until 410 days ago - throw a touchdown against New Mexico on The Blue in Boise State’s 41-25 victory.
Doyle’s touchdown pass, though, was not supposed to happen.
The punter, who also has the secondary job of holder on field goals and point-after attempts, dropped to a knee around the 17-yard line midway through the fourth quarter. Kicker Colton Boomer was lining up for a 27-yard attempt, hoping to extend Boise State’s 27-17 advantage.
The snap was mishandled by Doyle and Boomer held his right leg from firing through where the ball was supposed to be propped on its end.
“I kind of froze for a second,” said Doyle once he realized Boomer did not attempt the kick. “I was like, ‘Oh no. I’m going to have to do something here.’”
Less than a second later, Doyle went from panicked to prepared. And then acted with what anyone should not do as they seek to create order amidst chaos.
He yelled, “Fire! Fire!”
He was the only one in Albertsons Stadium who could’ve said that on Saturday night and not caused the crowd of 33,000 to flee to the exits.
But he did initiate a fire drill for his eligible receivers. After rolling out to his right - “at first I thought I was going to have to run but they’re all coming at me, so I’ve got no chance of beating them,” said Doyle - he had two options. One, Luke Voorhees, was still trying to break free from his blocking assignment and became easily covered in his route that was to take him towards the pylon in the southwest corner of the field. The other, Troy Grizzle, had a shot. No. 45 on Boise State’s roster ran up the field towards the end zone. His route took him past a New Mexico defender - Brett Karhu, also donning a No. 45 jersey number - and into empty space, where Doyle, the improvised QB, dropped the football into the bucket around the five-yard line and only where Grizzle could catch it.
“I saw Grizz over the top, and I’m like this is the best option - I have to do it,” said Doyle. “I kind of just threw it, and as soon as I let go of it, I was like ‘Okay, that’s a good pass.’ The finger roll and everything.”
Prepared for anything and everything ??#BleedBlue | #BuiltDifferent pic.twitter.com/bQmqpfo2B9
— Boise State Football (@BroncoSportsFB) October 12, 2025
The moment - turning a figurative lemon into touchdown lemonade - was not lost on Doyle. In addition to it being the first game his parents saw him in person as a member of Boise State, it was also the first time his girlfriend’s family saw him in the Blue and Orange. They, too, were in town for Homecoming and Parent and Family Weekend at Boise State.
“It’s still shocking to me that I actually did it, and mum and dad for them to be there and witness that … it was truly godsend that something like that could have happened,” said Doyle. “My mom was ecstatic. She was over the moon. It was a wholesome moment going out to them after the game and giving them all hugs and stuff. It was unreal.”
Despite the ecstasy of the moment of throwing a touchdown pass in a Boise State win, the moment was a far cry from the low Doyle had when trying to break into the American college football system.
Punters from Australia are a common specialty breed in college football in the United States. In 2023, there were 61 of the 133 FBS teams who had an Australian punter. In the Mountain West this season, seven of the 12 teams have an Australian punter on their roster, including the two teams playing on The Blue on Saturday.
Doyle grew up in Brisbane, which is the capital of Queensland and Australia’s third-largest city with a population around 2.6 million.
Doyle played Australian football since he could walk. His dad, mom and whole family are football fanatics. He began to play at a high level, competing for the Brisbane Lions Academy from 13 to 18 years old. The main team, the Brisbane Lions, are a blue-collar team as well as reigning back-to-back league champions in the Australian Football League.
But as his time at the academy was winding down, he wanted to do something different. Doyle grew up a Seattle Seahawks fan. He has some extended family who lived in Seattle, and so his ties to the area drew him to the only NFL franchise in the Pacific Northwest. He grew up watching the likes of Earl Thomas, Richard Sherman, Russell Wilson and Marshawn Lynch.
Then one day, Prokick Australia, an organization that has become well-known for developing Australians as punters for American football, popped up on his Instagram. It piqued his interest, and he started looking into it a little more.
“I was a bit hesitant at the start, but then my dad actually just signed me up one day, and he said, ‘I'm taking you there if you want to do this,’” said Doyle. “I had a trial with them, and never looked back. I kept going with it and going with it. It’s been a journey for sure.”
After a one-on-one trial with Prokick, Doyle stayed in Brisbane to train with a coach and four to five other guys. For the first year, he worked part-time for the small paint manufacturing business his family owned and then trained outside of that. The family business was started by his mom’s dad, and his dad and uncle have taken over the day-to-day business. Many people in his family still work for the company. However, Doyle’s mind was on American football.
After a year, he started moving up the ranks of prospects and had to relocate 18 hours away to Melbourne to continue his ascent. He moved in with his aunt and uncle and gave it all he had as Prokick was actively looking for American colleges for him to attend.
In Melbourne, he would practice from 8 am to noon. After that, he would work out with a strength coach in high-intensity lifts in the afternoon. Then in the evening, he would stock shelves at Woolworths, a popular grocery store chain in his home country. He would work a shift during the week from 6 pm to midnight - and do it all again the next day.
However, it was a stretch of stops and starts in terms of college football opportunities. As soon as he thought he was close to earning a spot overseas, the school interested in him went another direction. Combined with living far away from his family, he started to second guess the choice in his life to attempt to move halfway around the world and play a foreign sport.
“I was so close to giving up because there were times where I'd get called by my coaches at Prokick and they would say, ‘We got this school for you.’ And then a month later, they would say, ‘Oh, sorry. It fell through.’ It happened a good two, three times. And then I was like, ‘Is this worth it?’”
Then it all came to a stop. Doyle told his Prokick coaches in Melbourne he needed to go home for a bit. His parents drove 36 hours roundtrip to pick him up and take him back to Brisbane for a break. Doyle wanted to go back and collect himself to determine what he wanted to do with what’s next.
“I unpacked everything (at home), and I realized after about a week, ‘What am I doing? I'm so close,’” said Doyle.
The next day, he told his dad he’s buying a flight back to Melbourne. About a month-and-half later, he was lying in bed at 3 am and his phone started to go off. It was Skyler Ridley, the special teams coordinator at Weber State.
Doyle’s door to American football was open. Ridley’s call was the first time Doyle actually spoke to a coach on the phone and they offered him an opportunity.
Once he knew where he was going to go - Weber State in Ogden, Utah - he began the month-long process of getting a visa. He had to fly to Sydney to go to the American embassy and do an in-person interview. The problem was this was the same time his family had booked their annual vacation, an international cruise that would require him to have his passport with him over the New Year’s holiday. He was approved for his visa, and the embassy staff told him to send off his passport to get the visa stamp once he returned from the cruise.
The issue? They told Doyle it was going to take two weeks to a month to get his passport back. The spring semester at Weber State was starting sooner than that.
“I was on the phone with Coach Ridley and said, ‘Look, I had some problems with the passport, but I’m going to get it sorted out as soon as possible,” said Doyle. “Then I got lucky because I sent it in and they sent it back within four days. Once I got it back, I booked my flight for the next day.”
Doyle enrolled at Weber State in January 2024. He made his collegiate debut on Aug. 31 at Washington. He went on to play in 12 games last season and was named a semifinalist for FCS Punter of the Year. He finished 11th in the country at the FCS level with 44.4 yards per punt.
But after spring ball with the Wildcats, he longed for something different. He wanted to play at the FBS level. On April 17, 2025, he entered the transfer portal, and within six hours, Boise State special teams coordinator Stacy Collins texted him and told him to reach out.
“I gave him a call, and pretty much, I took a visit (to Boise) that weekend,” said Doyle. “And from there, I never looked back. I loved the place. I loved the facilities, everything they showed me. Boise is a beautiful town.”
Nine days later, on April 26, Doyle gave his verbal commitment to the Broncos on social media. He joined the team over the summer.
Due to Boise State’s offense - which not only averages 33.7 points per game but is also tied for fifth in the nation in fourth-down attempts with 20 - Doyle does not always get the opportunity to show his rugby-style skillset. But when he has, he has performed well. He’s 11th in the country in PFF grades for punting, averages 44.61 yards on his 18 punts, and only has had four punts attempted for a return.
He also has a touchdown pass, which makes him one of only two Broncos to do that in the last two seasons (starting quarterback Maddux Madsen, and his 34 passing touchdowns, is obviously the other Bronco). Doyle is also the first true punter in Boise State’s FBS history to record a touchdown pass in a game and one of five to complete a pass. There are others - Kellen Moore and Joe Southwick - who served as punters in a limited capacity, but Bronco Nation can count the number of actual punters to connect on a pass attempt in the last 29 years on one hand.
Looking back at it all, from the fall of 2023 when he was nearly done with his pursuit of an opportunity in American football to last Saturday, Doyle has found himself living out his dream. While it’s not rare to be an Australian punter in the United States, it is not common for one to experience what Doyle has so far.
It almost all feels meant to be.
