No college football player has ever had a better season than Danny Woodhead experienced during the 2006-2007 season.

Bolstered by outstanding blocking, he became college football’s first 2,700-yard rusher in 2006 by gaining 2,756 yards.  He also led all divisions last year in all-purpose yards with 3,158 and scoring with 228 points on 38 touchdowns. 

He was named the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference’s Offensive Player of the Week seven of the 11 weeks and received National Offensive Player of the Week from D2Football.com four times and Football Gazette five times.

Naturally, he was a consensus All-American and was also the recipient of the Harlon Hill Trophy that is awarded annually to the outstanding player in NCAA Division II

He also became the first college player to rush for more than 200 yards 17 times in his career.  He currently has a total of 19 games with over 200 yards rushing.

His average of 8.0 yards per carry in 2006 is a school record.  His unprecedented junior season certainly was not a fluke, as he’d already had two outstanding seasons with the Eagles.

As a true freshman in 2004, he rushed 284 times for 1,840 yards (6.5-yard average) and 25 touchdowns, besides catching 16 passes for 163 yards and two more TDs.

Those figures led Division II in rushing, scoring and all-purpose yards, and he was a consensus All-American.  His 184.0 yards per game rushing was an NCAA II record for a freshman, breaking the mark set by Johnny Bailey of Texas A&M-Kingsville in 1986.  Woodhead also tied Bailey’s record for most games rushing for 200 or more yards by a freshman when he ran for 306, 267, 260, 232 and 218 yards.

His numbers in 2005 were comparable, when he finished second in NCAA II in rushing and all-purpose yards and fifth in scoring.  He carried 278 times for 1,769 yards (6.4-yard average) and scored 21 TDs that season.  He also caught a team-high 30 passes for 367 yards, giving him 2,153 all-purpose yards.  He rushed for more than 200 yards four more times in 2005, gaining 304, 217, 210 and 202 yards. 

Then came last year, when he was better than ever.  He broke his CSC single-game rushing record by gaining 324 yards against Wayne State and had other games of 301, 274, 273, 252, 245, 215 and 205 yards.   He scored at least two touchdowns in every game and averaged 242.3 yards in all-purpose yards during the 13-game season.

Now in his senior season at CSC, Woodhead has accumulated 7,441 yards on the ground, giving him a career average of 190.8 yards per game.  He has rushed for more than 200 yards in 19 of his 39 appearances and scored in 37 consecutive games, both of which are NCAA all-division records.

After a 208 yard performance against Western New Mexico this year, he became college football’s all-time leading rusher, breaking the record previously held by  R.J. Bowers, who played for Grove City College, a Division III school in Illinois, 1997-2000.

With a current season total of 1,076 yards, Woodhead is also just the sixth NCAA II player to rush for more than 1,000 yards in four seasons.

He has also tallied 8,792 all purpose yards, which places him 6^th on the NCAA all-time list.  He has five games remaining to see if he can amass 720 more total yards to claim the top spot.  Brian Westbrook (Villanova, 97,98,00,01)  currently holds the record with 9,512 total yards of offense.

Woodhead also ranks second in Division II in career scoring with 606 points on 101 touchdowns.  Germaine Race (Pittsburgh State, KS, 2003-2006) is the all-time leader with 109 TDs and two 2-point conversions for 658 points.  Danny is only the second player in collegiate history to score more than 100 touchdowns.

Through 39 games, Woodhead’s 606 points equates to 15.5 points a game, the highest ever in NCAA II.  Only Dan Pugh of Mount Union College, a Division III school in Ohio, with 248 points in 2002 and Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State with 234 in 1988, have ever scored more points in a season than Woodhead scored last year. 

Sanders is the only college player to accumulate more all-purpose yards than the 3,159 that Woodhead gained last year.  Sanders managed 3,250 as a senior at Oklahoma State in 1988, when he won the Heisman Trophy.  Woodhead currently ranks 10th in DII in career all-purpose yards with 7,349.  The DII leader is Brian Shay of Emporia State with 9,301 yards, including 1,207 on kickoff returns, 1995-98. 

So far, Woodhead has fewer than 100 yards on kickoff returns.  He was on the field several times to return kicks last fall, but none of the opponents kicked to him. 

Woodhead is effective because of his rare combination of speed, strength, vision, balance and competitiveness.  He has been electronically timed at 4.41 seconds in the 40-yard dash (Atlanta Falcons timing) and he won the 55-meter dash at the RMAC Indoor Meet in 2006.  

His speed enables him to break the long scoring runs, but his cutting ability that allows him “to turn nothing into something” is often just as impressive.  Fifteen of his rushing touchdowns have been on runs of more than 60 yards and he’s scored 13 more times on runs of at least 25 yards.  He also has a 33.5-inch vertical jump. 

Because of his outstanding accomplishments in high school, he became the first CSC football player to receive “a full-ride” scholarship.  He undoubtedly had received more high school honors than any previous Chadron State recruit. 

As a senior at North Platte High, he was the Nebraska Gatorade Player of the Year, offensive captain of the Omaha World-Herald’s and Lincoln Journal Star’s all-class, all-state teams and Huskerland Prep Report’s Player of the Year.  The World-Herald and Journal Star also selected him as their 2003-04 High School Male Athlete of the Year.  Both newspapers accorded him the State College Male Athlete of the Year this spring. 

Woodhead rushed for 2,037 yards and scored 31 touchdowns as a prep senior.  For his career, he rushed for 4,891 yards and 76 touchdowns, both Class A state records, and had 6,527 all-purpose yards.  He also was the state’s leading basketball scorer his senior season, averaging about 26 points a game.  Woodhead graduated with a GPA of at least 3.9.  Also does well academically at CSC, with a 3.72 cumulative GPA as a math education major.