More Sooner sightings on the college football award watch lists this week, and it’s only Tuesday. So far the total of Sooners making lists is up to eighteen. On Monday came the announcement of the Butkus and the Lombardi Awards.

Corey Nelson

The Lombardi Award is given out every year to the Nation’s best lineman or linebacker. The Sooners past have had 3 Lombardi winners: Tommie Harris (2003), Tony Casillas (1985) and Lee Roy Selman (1975). For 2012, Ben Habern, Gabe Ikard and Corey Nelson. For both Habern and Ikard, they have been on multiple watch lists over the past week, this is Nelson’s first nomination.

Another one of my favorite awards, the Butkus Award watch list was also announced on Monday, which is given to the Nation’s best linebacker. Tom Wort was on the list with 51 other nominees. This is Wort’s second watch list for 2012, making it on the Nugurski watch list last week. Former Sooner greats who have won the Butkus include Brian “The Boz” Bosworth (1985 & 1986), Rocky Calmus (2001) and Teddy Lehman (2003). All of whom are in my top list of my favorite Sooner players.

On Tuesday, the Biletnikoff watch list came out and included Kenny Stills. The award is given out to the most outstanding receiver in football. The award can be given out to any player who catches a pass. This marks the second watch list for Stills this preseason.

Wednesday will bring the announcement of the Davey O’Brien, which I’d be shocked if Landry is not on it.

On Wednesday, kicker Michael Hunnicut was added to the Lou Groza watch lists for the most outstanding placekicker in college football. The Bronko Nagurski and the Outland Trophy watch lists were announced on Thursday and it adds more Sooners to the preseason awards showcases.

Nagurski watch list player, Tom Wort

The Outland Trophy is given out to the Nations best interior lineman. The Sooners on the list include guards Gabe Ikard and Ben  Habern. The Big XII have a total of seven players listed.

The Bronko Nagurski, one of my favorite awards, is given out to the best all around defensive player in the country. Sooners on the list are: CB Demontre Hurst, S Tony Jefferson and LB Tom Wort. The Big XII is representing the list with 13 players.

The Sooners have 5 previous Outland Trophy winners, with the last one being Jammal Brown in 2004. The last Nagurski winner at Oklahoma was Derrick Strait in 2003. Before Strait, the first winner of the prestigious award at OU was the great Roy Williams in 2001.

Friday brings the announcement of the Jim Thorpe award watch list. The Thorpe award goes to the best defensive back in the Nation.

For all those that are football deprived, the Sooners kicked off Spring Ball Monday. And as always Stoops held his press conference to give his two-cents on the way things will go down.

Stoops’ Presser Tidbits:

Casey Walker, Aaron Colvin, Tom Wort and Ben Habern are out of Spring practices to continue to heal from on-going injuries. Dom Whaley has made progress and is healing well, he will be out all of Spring ball as well. Jaz Reynolds has been cleared for a couple weeks and is back to full strength.

When the running game improves, will not be using the Belldozer package as much. Is very confident and has faith in Blake Bell’s ability to throw the ball. (What about Landry’s?)

Lane Johnson will be moving to left tackle, and Darryl Williams will be moving over to the right. He is really impressed over kicker Michael Hunicutt’s improvement over the off-season. He is also very impressed with R.J. Washington and is ready for him to take on a leadership role with the Sooners defense.

Stoops’ is hoping the Sooners and the Big XII night games are allocated more evenly, the prime time schedule wore him out. (Me too)

Joking about Mike, “I’m feeling a little insecure, his picture was in the paper the other day, and mine wasn’t.”

Stoops is a fan of the possibility that the BCS will turn to a four-team playoff system. “As long as everyone knows the rules going in.”

As always, Stoops was candid and seems to be excited to be back at it. He did mention (jokingly) that if coaching didn’t work out, he would take up golf. He had a great time playing in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

The Spring schedule is as follows:

The Sooners will take the field later on Monday afternoon. Spring is in the air, and so is football.

Yesterday during Coach Stoops weekly press conference, the media touched on several subjects from Baylor, to Penn State and of course, the BCS.

The media asked him if he was ready to lobby for the Sooners as being the potential best 1-loss team to play in the National Championship game in January. Coach Stoops said he wasn’t interested in stating his case to the voters and wants to focus on winning the next 3 games. This is looking way ahead, and the Sooners still have to win out. The major roadblock would be Oklahoma State on December 3rd. And we all saw what happened last time this season the Sooners were looking ahead. Texas Tech happened.

Stoops was reminded of the 2008 season when the Sooners lost to Texas and then rallied to beat Texas Tech  to force a 3 way tie in the Big XII; he pitched his case to media a little bit then. Tech had pulled off one of the greatest wins in college football history to beat Texas and propel themselves to the No. 2 team in the country. Then came to Norman the next week to only be stomped by the Sooners, 65-21.

Stoops who says he avoids looking at the polls unless someone tells him or he sees it somewhere. He said that he was prompted by Barry Switzer in 2008 to watch the BCS ranking show. Switzer told him, I think this is one that you want to watch.

The biggest argument people are throwing around right now is that Oklahoma’s loss to Texas Tech this season was too awful  for them to be considered for a title game. Of course, this talk is mostly coming from Alabama fans, who would like to see an LSU/Bama rematch. If Bama had a shot to win their conference, I would just say let them at it. But they can’t, so they shouldn’t.

Stoops at presser about voters:

Everybody has their own opinion, Let’s face it. Everybody has their own opinion, agenda, whatever it might be. Sometimes it’s, ‘Well, let’s look at who’s hot at the time.’ Or someone else, ‘Oh, but they lost to this team.’

At the end of the day, everyone has a different take on it. It’s fair to say why they have a different take. Anyone that has a loss, you can turn it around any way you want and make it look the way you want, to write your story or make your comment.

In other Sooner news, QB Landry Jones, got a surprise yesterday morning from his teammates, or so everyone thinks. He woke up Tuesday morning and walked outside to a surprise and tweeted this:

Here is the picture he sent out as an SOS for someone to help.

Landry Jones' truck on cinder blocks - picture courtesy of Landry Jones @landryjones12

The culprit is said to be LB Tom Wort, who was just trying to give Jones a hard time. Cue everyone saying that the Sooners aren’t going into the game focused for Saturday.

Hopefully someone gave the guy a ride to practice.

The Sooners are travelling up to Manhattan, Kansas this weekend to take on the Kansas State Wildcats, in hopes to regain a little momentum after the disappointing loss to Texas Tech last Saturday night.

Kansas State Head Coach, Bill Snyder with the Wildcat mascot

Kansas State comes into the game unbeaten and ranked No. 11 in the current BCS standings. Oklahoma has not had 2 losses in a row during the regular Big XII season play for 13 years, so the stakes are high for both teams.

If the Wildcats win, it will be the first time since the notorious 2003 championship game; where even though Oklahoma lost, they still got to play for the National Championship.

Head Wildcat coach, Bill Snyder is fully aware of the magnitude of the game, and knows his players are, too:

They all understand the significance of the ballgame and the tremendous team that we are playing, but how you prepare does not or should not really change.

Even though Kansas State is undefeated, the Wildcats offense is still one of the lowest-rated in the Big XII, averaging 354 yards per game and more than half of that has been rushing yards. Their quarterback, Collin Klein, is the top rusher on the team with 670 yards so far. His 14 rushing touchdowns lead the Big XII, and is at 59 percent passing with 8 touchdowns and 3 interceptions. Last week against Kansas he had 4 touchdowns for 92 yards and only throwing for 195 yards and was 12 of 19. Needless to say, Klein is their offensive threat. Contain Klein, control the game.

Bob Stoops was vocal about what his team needed to do in his press conference earlier this week:

Kansas State will beat the living heck out of us if we don’t make improvement, along with anyone else we’re going to play. If this doesn’t show you that, then you’re pretty unrealistic.

But if we can show some character and make some improvements from this (loss), who knows what can happen?

Sooner quarterback, Landry Jones is facing one of the best defenses in the conference Saturday and comes in with a 64 percent completion rate and 2589 yards with 21 touchdowns. Though the Kansas State defense has given up 671 yards in the last two games, and Oklahoma is one of the more complete offenses they have faced so far this season.

As usual, Coach Stoops has been tight-lipped on who will be returning this week from the injury list. Though it has been said that Tom Wort has been practicing and Jamell Fleming will probably be a go Saturday. The return of Wort will really help the defense given that the Wildcats run the ball quite frequently. We saw how much both are an impact last Saturday, especially with the play of the CB’s without Fleming. RB Dom Whaley should return after suffering from the flu in the last game, which sidelined him. That will definitely add a boost back to the ground game.

The Sooners have to get the focus back in their play and whatever issues are going on, need to be contained. The team had a players only meeting Monday, so let’s see what changes are made Saturday.

We’ve just got to learn from it. Learn from a loss and move on and if we don’t get better from it, then we’ll repeat this process again and we’ll lose to another team. If we learn from it, move on and start playing better football, we’ll be all right. -Landry Jones

The game is set to kickoff at 2:30 CST on ABC.

The Sooners came out  guns-slinging Saturday night, to make up for last weeks sloppy performance. And when I say guns-slinging, I mean just that.

My player of the game, Tony Jefferson

Ball State was on the board first, with a field goal. The Sooners answered back quickly with a touchdown. The defense was on point, with a first half standout performance by Tony Jefferson, who had 3 interceptions. The Sooners scored 28 points in 5 minutes and 29 seconds off of 2 Jefferson interceptions. He almost had his 4th before the end of the half, as he had the pass from Ball State QB deflected off his hands.

Wide Receiver Jaz Reynolds had a great night, with a personal best, 62 yard reception on the Sooners last possession of the first half. The score was 38-6 going into the half.

The Sooners came out the second half with just as much momentum. Scoring an astounding 21 points in a 3.5 minute span. Ball State was unable to make anything happen on offense and their defense was unable to keep up with Oklahoma’s fast paced offense.

In the flurry of all the offensive touchdowns, a tackle forced by Travis Lewis was pounced on by Tom Wort, who ran the ball in for a touchdown. Making the score 59-6 at the end of the third.

Ryan Broyles made Soooner history tonight, as well as Big XII history. He broke the record for most receptions during a career, with an amazing 304.

QB Landry Jones also had a stellar night, throwing for 425 yards with 23 completions and 5 touchdowns. It was the 10th time in Sooner history that a QB threw for over 400 yards. Landry has had this title six times in his career.

Giving head coach Bob Stoops a little props, it was the 16th time during the Stoops era that the Sooners have scored 60+ points in a game.

Needless to say, we saw some action from the second stringers tonight.

Quick Stats from SoonerSports.com

On to the next. Hate Week begins NOW. Bring on the Longhorns.

Coach Bob Stoops and Former Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez at Spring Practice

It was football day in Norman yesterday. Beautiful weather, wonderful scenery and of course the Sooners playing football.

There are still a lot of questions to be answered about who will rightfully own which position come Fall, but there were quite a few stand-outs.

I don’t know if it was the picture perfect Spring weather or not, but the crowd yesterday was somewhat lethargic. That is until a surprise breakout run from a walk-on running back.

Yes a walk on. Dom Whaley wowed the crowd with a 40 yard run yesterday. I know I was asking myself who the heck this kid was. Whaley had 10 carries and a total of 65 yards. More than any of the other running backs I was anxious to see. The RB spot is wide open at this point, though I still feel it will fall into the hands of Roy Finch, who did well behind DeMarco Murray last season.

» Continue reading “Spring Game, the Aftermath”