I’ve been trying for a long time to come up with a decent tagline for cfbstats.com without much success. Coming up with a pithy phrase to describe a college football stats website is not easy, at least for me. Every tagline I came up with sounded very bland.

Luckily, Bond J Bond — the creator of the Texas Tech blog disco tech! — came up with the tagline for me in one of his posts. He referred to cfbstats.com as “the ultimate site for stats junkies.” As soon as I saw that description I knew that it would be perfect for this website. Bond was kind enough to give me permission to use his description with just a small change. Thank you Mr. Bond.

Please take time to check out the disco tech! site, whether you’re a Red Raider fan, a Big 12 fan, or just a college football fan.

This is the final individual leader board for touchback percentage on kickoffs. To qualify for this list, the player must have a minimum of 36 kickoffs. I hope to add this as a regular national and conference leader board for next season.

Now that the 2007 season is complete, it’s time to take a look at the final numbers to determine the impact this season of the new kickoff rule, which moved the start of the kickoff from the 35-yard line back to the 30-yard line.

Here are the kickoff numbers for the 2005-2006 seasons and the 2007 season.

The percentage of touchbacks decreased from 29.12% in 2006-2006 to 11.79% in 2007, which is close to a 60% drop. There were 2.97 touchbacks per game in 2005-2006 and 1.31 touchbacks per game in 2007. The average ending yard line of kickoffs moved from the 6.58 yard line in 2005-2006 out to the 10.26 yard line in 2007.

Here are the kickoff return numbers for the 2005-2006 seasons and the 2007 season.

The average length of returns increased in 2007 by less than one yard, from 20.42 to 21.31. The average ending yard line of kickoff returns moved from the 27.58 yard line in 2005-2006 out to the 31.26 yard line, a change of 3.68 yards. The percentage of touchdowns per return increased by 28%, from 0.81% to 1.04%.

As expected, the new rule caused a decrease in the number of touchbacks and an increase in the number of kickoff returns. However, before the season many coaches and pundits predicted the extra five yards of return space would significantly increase both the length of kickoff returns and kickoff returned for touchdown. It seems that they were partially correct — kickoff returns for touchdowns increased by 28%, but the length of the average kickoff return increased by less than one yard.

The final statistics for the 2007-2008 season are now available. The statistics are subject to change as data corrections are made.