‘It was a no-brainer’: Oscar Bird becomes Ole Miss’ next Australian punter

Ole Miss football under Lane Kiffin has utilized an Australian pipeline to field punters. Oscar Bird is the next in line.

Ole Miss punter Oscar Bird (Photo credit: Oscar Bird/Instagram)

Ole Miss football under Lane Kiffin has utilized an Australian pipeline to field punters. 

Oscar Bird is the next in line. 

Bird is a 23-year-old freshman and the replacement for fellow Australia native Fraser Masin. Bird played professionally in the Australian Football League. He signed in the 2024-25 class, enrolled early and went through spring drills.

“I grew up playing Australian football, which isn’t rugby,” Bird said this week, the last of fall camp for the Rebels. “It’s a different sport altogether. Australian football would be a field probably almost three times the size of an American football field. It’s circular, an oval shape, and it’s a lot of running, tackling, everyone on the field. The way to move the ball is to punt the ball. So, we grow up, instead of throwing it, I’ll kick a ball. That’s what I was doing since I was 5 or 6-years-old. I grew up with that dream to play that professionally, and I got to a point where I was in an equivalent of a minor league in Australia. The door was closing pretty quickly to make that jump to professional league, and I had just run into a guy I knew who’d just come back from four years of playing for a number of different colleges.

Bird: “My awareness of college football was pretty limited at that point.”

“The team I played for in Sydney, Australia, had Michael Dickson. He’d gone through that same Australian football program. He went and played at Texas and he’s now on the Seattle Seahawks in the NFL. So, had a little bit of awareness, but not a whole lot. The opportunity through Pro-Kick Australia was to do a certain amount of training with them to get up to college-level speed. It’s sort of offering to travel the world to play almost professional football in a way with the crowds and things like that and get an education. I was 22 when I decided to start training to do that. It was a no-brainer. It was an opportunity to come on an adventure and I’m here now. It’s been a pretty exciting journey so far.”

Ole Miss is on its third Australian punter. 

The Rebels started with Will Gleason, followed by Masin and now Bird. Masin, from Brisbane, averaged 44.4 net yards per punt last season, a modern-era school record and the most in the SEC.

Pro-Kick Australia is a program that helps Australian athletes transition to American football by training them to punt.

“The recruiting process for me happened slightly different to how other guys in Australia will have it,” Bird said. “I was lucky enough within three months of picking up punting to get an opportunity to come over and visit a number of different schools over here. Ole Miss was one of them. So, within three months I was sort of having a look at all of these places and I hadn’t heard of Oxford, Mississippi, before. I was lucky enough to go through Alabama and Florida as well. 

“Oxford just felt like the most homely college town that I’d been to. There was a special connection there, and I got to meet Fraser for the first time. That’s the great thing about Australians having been here before. He was so generous with his time, and even when I got here in January he was still preparing for Pro Day. Just getting to learn off him and obviously the special team system has been going through an Australian punter the last three years. That transition was really helpful.”

Bird, from Sydney, is one of two new specialists for Ole Miss. 

The Rebels also brought in placekicker Lucas Carneiro, a transfer from Western Kentucky. Carneiro was named preseason All-SEC.

Bird said the transition to Oxford has been pretty seamless, even if there are some significant differences, such as the food. There are a lot more fried options. He’s tried gumbo and grits for the first time. Ole Miss, as a team, had crab legs and, according to Bird, ‘big turkey legs sort of the size of people’s arms’ recently. 

Bird is embracing it all.

“I’ve loved it. It’s been great,” Bird said. “Obviously Australia’s on the other side of the world, but there’s a lot of similarities. We speak the same language, eat similar foods, things like that. So, I think the differences have been really exciting and it hasn’t been a challenge. Seeing different cultures and the way people do things here a little bit differently. The change has been really fun. That’s what I came here for — to play football and have a life experience like that.”

Bird is ready for the physical nature of his new sport, too.

He spent the last four seasons with the Perth Football Club in the Western Australian Football League. He didn’t do a ton of tackling, but certainly enough that if he has to stop a would-be return this season he could.

Ole Miss opens against Georgia State on August 30.

“That’s the funny part,” Bird said. “Obviously the idea is to not have to be in that position and we’re keeping the ball down on their end, but that was a fun part that I miss about Australian football — the physical contact and we didn’t wear pads. I was showing some teammates yesterday some of the highlights of big plays. I think, ideally, I’m getting it down the field, but I’m ready to tackle if need be.”

Category: General Sports