Saturday marked two things for the Oklahoma Sooners football program. The Iowa State Cyclones haven’t beat the Sooners in Ames since 1960. John F. Kennedy wasn’t even President of the United States yet when the Clones beat them last in Ames, so there’s that fact. This trend wasn’t broken on Saturday with the Sooners  35-20 win. The Sooners are now 70-5-2 against the Cyclones and Stoops is 8-0.

Head coach Bob Stoops also added another notch to his belt with his 145th win as the Sooners shot-caller. His win on Saturday brought him to be tied with legendary Sooners coach, Bud Wilkinson. Stoops is 12 wins away from surpassing Barry Switzer at the top spot for all-time winning record as a coach in program history.

The Sooners had a rough start on Saturday against the Cyclones. The Cyclones are the only team so far this season that held held the Sooners to 0 points in the 1st quarter. Once they got their rhythm going, there was no looking back. They got a running game established and all the receivers were finally clicking. A great improvement over last weeks loss to Notre Dame.

Landry Jones ended up with 405 yards and 4 touchdowns despite starting badly, with 2 interceptions. With Damien Williams’ play time being limited due to an ankle injury, the Sooners went to Brennan Clay as the go-to running back. Clay had a breakout game with 157 yards and a touchdown. He was also much better on third-down conversions.

OU’s biggest issue on Saturday was penalties. They were penalized 7 times for 71 yards. They ran 85 plays with a total of 593 yards compared to ISU’s 64 plays and 290 yards.

Ames hasn’t been an easy place for ranked teams over the last couple of years. Just ask the Oklahoma State Cowboys how that went last season. The Sooners are now sitting at 6-2 in and will be hosting the Baylor Bears next Saturday in Norman.

A couple of quick Sooner hits in case you missed the news. The players and assistant coaches had their press conference yesterday and a their was a couple of highlights, actually not bad news!

Demontre Hurst

RB Brennan Clay announced that he was not transferring, so that is a plus. Demontre Hurst also announced he will not be going pro and will be coming back to the Sooners next season. As far as Landry Jones news, Landry did however submit film to the NFL, this doesn’t mean he will actually be headed that way though. It is standard procedure submit papers/film to NFL when even considering it as an option, to see what your draft forecast would look like, or if anyone is even interested. Landry did say his final decision wouldn’t be made until after the Insight Bowl.

Speaking of the Insight Bowl, the Sooner equipment bus is headed to Tempe, AZ today. The team will leave for the bowl on December 25th. Hopefully a change of locale will be good for the team.

In other positive news for the Sooners going into the Insight Bowl, Frank Alexander has been practicing with the team and seems to be getting better and better each day, he should be ready to go on the 30th. As for the Hawkeyes, they received some not so good news. Their last eligible RB, Marcus Coker has been suspended for the game. According to some (our lovely Buckeye writer, Krista) he has been suspended for something to do with a female and consent. Ill let you fill in the rest.

In not so good news, yesterday Kenny Stills and Tony Jefferson were robbed. Their home was broken into, which they found out about after they returned home from practice. Both of them called out the thieves yesterday on twitter.

Last football game of the season is a little over a week away, are you ready? For once, I think I can finally say that I am.

Hey guess what, you know that feeling in the pit of your stomach that won’t go away when you feel like something else is going on and can’t put a finger on what it is. I have that right now. Why? Things just keep getting worse and worse when reading about news from Stoops and what is going on with the football team right now.

Head coach Bob Stoops held his weekly press conference this morning and dropped more bombs on Sooner Nation and the state of this football program for the rest of the year, and the 2012 season. For starters, Ronnell Lewis will NOT be playing in the Insight Bowl due to an academic issue. He also said that he believes that Ronnell’s football days at Oklahoma are over. To add to the drama, TE Austin Haywood will not be back on the team. Oh, TE Max Stevenson had just up and decided he doesn’t want to play football anymore. So that leaves us with no one at TE for 2012, that should be fun.

He did put a stomp on the rumor that Brennan Clay would be transferring, which at this point is major relief. We started out 2011 with way to many RB’s, we are now down to bare-bones personnel. As far as Landry going pro, Stoops commented that he will most likely make a decision after the bowl game and that the Blake Bell package will not have any affect on Landry’s final decision.

On the offensive play-calling, Stoops said he was disappointed in not running the ball more, but he isn’t the play caller. And as for him trying to monitor the plays that are being called during the game….”You can’t get into a guy’s mind (Heupel)”. He also said he would not interfere with any of the play-calling.

“I’m happy with my staff, but we’ll see.” Stoops said. Room for his brother Mike, perhaps? He also went on to say that the transfers had a lot to do with playing time and other issues that no one knows about.

Stoops did say that there was some great JUCO transfers that will most likely commit in December…

If Stoops’ presser was to make people feel better about the state of football in Norman, he didn’t do a very good job. I usually am one to take things in stride but my gut is telling me something else is going on. Breathing in and out of a paper bag is helping, though.

Players and assistant coaches are scheduled to talk tomorrow, this should be fun.

Walk-on Running Back Dom Whaley, who suffered through a season-ending injury against Kansas State, got some good news after the game Saturday night. Head coach Bob Stoops told him he would be put on scholarship starting in December.

Whaley is the Sooners leading rusher, with 9 touchdowns and 627 yards. He has been averaging 5.5 yards per carry so far this season. At the start of the year, no one expected Whaley to even be a contender to be in the running back rotation much; and the number one carrier at that.

Stoops told Dom the good news after the game on Saturday night to give him the reassurance he was still a major part of this team.

This (injury) won’t change that, I didn’t want him to be worried about it.

Very classy move by the Sooner coaching staff.

With Whaley out for the year, the No. 1 guy will most likely be Roy Finch. Brandon Williams and Brennan Clay will also receive some snaps, but Finch should be declared the starter.

Whaley had surgery Sunday morning, having a pin put into his ankle, but not expected to be back 100 percent until next season.

This is well deserved by Whaley. What a great surprise edition he has been to the Sooners running game.

Boomer Sooner, Dom. And Congrats.

The Sooners have announced the rosters for this Saturday’s Annual Spring Game. Which Team do you want to see the most?

Red Team

Quarterbacks

Drew Allen, Cayden Cochran, Ben Sherrad, Kendal Thompson

Running Backs

Brennan Clay, Roy Finch, Brandon Williams

Fullbacks

David Driskell, David Welchert

Receivers

Ryan Caro, Sheldon McClain, Dejuan Miller, Jaz Reynolds, Kenny Stills

Tight Ends

Austin Haywood

Offensive Tackles

Jake Reed, Donald Stephenson, Tyrus Thompson

Guards/Centers

Tyler Evans, Ben Habern, Drew Serruto, Adam Shead

Defensive Tackles

Eric Humphrey, Torrea Peterson, Casey Walker

Defensive Ends

David King, Chuka Ndulue, R.J. Washington

Linebackers

Jaydan Bird, Austin Box, Aaron Franklin,Donald Franklin, Erik Lee, Travis Lewis,Corey Nelson

Defensive Backs

Jesse Bell, Beau Davis, Quentin Hayes, James Haynes, Demontre Hurst, Tony Jefferson, Gabe Lynn, Zach Montana, Sam Proctor, Dillon Schooley, Elijah Sigler , Julian Winters

Kickers/Punters

Patrick O’Hara, Jimmy Stevens

Deep Snapper

Kelton Miller

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