[martyup]

Coming from a non-statistician viewpoint and someone who watched every bowl game from last season (thanks to my DVR), it seems like a lot of teams get killed on kickoff returns by illegal blocking penalties.  I saw far too many great returns called back due to stupid penalties.  Fortunately, Stanford does a very good job of avoiding such field position crushing mistakes.  However, some teams with extremely high salaried coaches can't seem to stop their boys from making those ill advised blocks.  The damage is nearly incalculable (at least by me) of having a kickoff or punt return that brings the ball to near midfield, only to have a penalty bring it back to inside your own 15.

[martyup]

Coming from a non-statistician viewpoint and someone who watched every bowl game from last season (thanks to my DVR), it seems like a lot of teams get killed on kickoff returns by illegal blocking penalties.  I saw far too many great returns called back due to stupid penalties.  Fortunately, Stanford does a very good job of avoiding such field position crushing mistakes.  However, some teams with extremely high salaried coaches can't seem to stop their boys from making those ill advised blocks.  The damage is nearly incalculable (at least by me) of having a kickoff or punt return that brings the ball to near midfield, only to have a penalty bring it back to inside your own 15.