Ozploitation: The powerful pull of rugby punting

Nebraska is joining the rugby-style ranks. The only thing surprising is it didn't happen sooner.

Photo by M. Cooper on Unsplash

You’d have to be a real connoisseur of punting to recall that this year’s national championship game was a rugby-style duel¹ between Ohio State’s Joe McGuire and Notre Dame’s James Rendell. You’d probably have to be Australian to know that both punters are the sons of Australian rules football celebrities.

But beyond the details, it’s certainly not rare to watch a game with two rugby punters and if you are, those punters are probably Australian. In 2023, per the New York Times, 61 of 133 FBS teams had Australian punters on their rosters. Last year in the Big Ten, nine teams used an Australian punter and Indiana had one from New Zealand.

I barely even noticed in the conference I watch professionally, perhaps a sign of the style’s ubiquity.

So, the surprising news last week wasn’t really that Nebraska is moving to the rugby punt under new special teams coordinator Mike Ekeler, it’s that the Huskers haven’t tried it yet. Since ranking 33rd in BCftoys’ punting efficiency metric² in 2018, Nebraska hasn’t finished better than 64th and has finished 115th or worse in three of the past five seasons.

That seems like plenty of incentive to at least try the thing half of college football has found value in doing, and, having really looked at it for the first time, the evidence for rugby punting is quite compelling.

The style works at the college level thanks to the rule that allows coverage units to release from the line of scrimmage at the snap rather than at the kick, as is the case in the NFL. If you have a punter raised on an entirely different sport where kicking on the run is required, he can roll out, buying the coverage team time to get down the field. Who cares about hang time, or beautiful spirals,³ when you can get the same thing (better coverage) with kickers also adept⁴ at putting backspin or topspin on the ball?⁵

That’s the basic description, but here are some brochure-style bullet points:

• In 2013, Tom Hornsey of Memphis became the first Australian to win Ray Guy Award. Fellow Aussies have won 7 of 11 since.

• In 2024, four of the top five teams in BCftoys’ punting efficiency had rugby punters.

• Also last season, six of the top 10 in yards per punt and yards per punt return allowed were using rugby style.

Not a bad elevator pitch. Of course, traditional punting is still a viable option. USC’s Eddie Czaplicki won the Guy Award in 2024 the good, old-fashioned, American way, and if a team has a guy like that, great. If not, rugby style can be a bit more forgiving.

Put it this way, there were 60-some blokes walking around Australia who had never played American football before, but with some specialized training⁶ they were ready to be FBS punters in 2023. It’s wild.

Wild enough that, in February, a North Carolina man filed a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA claiming the Australian influx was limiting opportunities for American punters. Yes, he’s the father of a prospective punter, but he made some fair points in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

"One time I was talking to one of the punting guys and he said, 'A few years ago we invited a bunch of the Australian guys to come to one of our punting and kicking competitions.'

"And they got off the bus and he said, 'If you could have seen the disparity: We had a bunch of 14- and 15-year-old kids and then these fully bearded 25-year olds getting off the bus and they're competing against each other.'

"And it was like borderline absurd.

"It was like somebody in college going back to their junior high school and saying, 'OK, now I want to be on the high school basketball team so let me go and compete against 15-year-old kids.'

"It's just not historically what our educational system was set up for. College athletics was set up for the 18 to 23 demographic."

Rugby punting effectively exploits the college rule, but it’s been going on for more than a decade now and there never seems to be much movement towards changing the rule so the enticement to explore the style—or maybe just fear of being left behind—grows a little each year.

Now Nebraska is entering the mix, and it meant a tough choice for one player. Rhule was at his most heartfelt last week when discussing Jack McCallister, Washington’s starting punter last year who arrived at Nebraska in January but reentered the transfer portal last week.

“This is an amazing young man who committed to us and had the team mentality to stay with Washington through their bowl game,” Rhule said. “As we made a coaching change—and I know everyone always loves coaching changes, the fix is always to bring somebody new in—there’s always collateral damage.”

McCallister was no longer the punter Nebraska needed.

“I hate the way it happened for us timing-wise,” Rhule said, adding he hopes his children will respond to adversity the way McCallister did in his meeting with the coaches.

That’s how strong the pull is towards rugby punting in 2025.

The Huskers have already been identifying prospects and will plan to bring a punter in over the summer. I don’t know if just any former Australian-rules or rugby players⁷ will do, though it feels that way in college football right now.

That’s part of the incentive structure, too.

1. It was a very short duel. McGuire punted once for 51 yards, Rendell twice for an average of 48.5. Still, that’s damn good punting.

2. “possession value generated per non-garbage punt”

3. One of the terms in Australian rules football for a spiral punt is “torpedo.” Everyone agrees it’s the way to get the most distance, but it’s also considered less accurate, which is also a factor in any rugby-or-traditional debate.

4. Not to mention running with the ball.

5. A football is still a prolate spheroid, so this isn’t exactly as reliable as spinning a basketball back to yourself but it’s still a nice tool to have.

6. That training likely happened at Prokick Australia, the current giant in this overseas punting trade. There’s a lot that’s interesting about Prokick. Too much to get into here, but you should go watch co-founder Nathan Chapman hit this torpedo from 65 meters out. That’s 71 yards to you and me (probably).

7. WARNING: This is going to be the longest footnote to date on Counter Read. I was sort of shocked at how little was out there on rugby punting in college football. A few trend stories, some profiles, Prokick touting its success, but nothing that offered a comprehensive look at the trend. Seems like a bigger deal than that. For 150 years we did things one way in America’s most popular sport, and over the last decade it looks like there’s a de facto tribe of athletes on an island far, far away who just do it better via specific quirk of their upbringing. I want to know everything. Who had the idea first? What’s the thinking behind a 27-year-old pro in Australia dropping all that to go to, say, Florida State? Will rugby punters become a luxury item, so to speak, in a revenue-share-plus-NIL era given one company effectively controls supply and almost every college team seems to want one? Are there punting purists out there who hate this? Who love it? Should I write a book on rugby punting in college football? It would be part-Born to Run, part-Moneyball, but football. If you think “yes,” please share this back-of-the-napkin, quasi-pitch with all of your book-agent friends.