Broyles suspended after arrest

Unusual way of fillin' up

Freshman WR Ryan Broyles of Norman is suspended indefinitely after his arrest this morning at a closed convenience store, where police said he was using pump codes to steal gasoline. He is expeced to be charged with a misdemeanor count of larceny. See the full story in the OU Daily on-line edition:

http://hub.ou.edu/articles/article.php?item_id=944876239&hub=2cc2fd057e25216e0669281e85a9e5c8

Sooners getting props

The Sooners are getting more national attention this year, including some surprising predictions that Oklahoma will be playing for the national championship (again).

In addition to Allen Patrick making the regional cover of SI (left), on Saturday ESPN's Gameday crew predicted a BCS championship contest for the Sooners.

Lou Holtz has picked Oklahoma over USC for the national championship.

Kirk Herbstreit has put OU in the game, but favors USC in the contet.

Mark May (are we kidding here?) predicts another LSU vs. OU matchup, but picks Les Miles' team to win. I certainly hope he's not right about that, because I definitely do not want to see any drunken Tiger fans in New Orleans in January (whether OU is there or not). It's not a fun experience for any opponent fans.

Big Red Rally

OU Prez David Boren gave fair warning to the Irish on Thursday at the Big Red Rally in Norman. The Sooners will butt them out of the way and capture more national championships than ND's eight before the Stoops era ends.

Sort of makes that 2011 matchup against the Irish an important point on the Sooner horizon.

Those remarks were a departure from Boren's usual rally cry to put more conference championship stenciling on the Memorial Stadium press box. Well, he said that too -- about the championships, but it was clearly directed toward the national variety.

ESPN's Maisel puts OU in title game

ESPN's Ivan Maisel has predicted Oklahoma will play USC in the BCS Championship game in New Orleans at the end of this season. See:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/preview07/news/story?id=2974110

Let's just hope the other team isn't LSU. I'd hate to suffer through another week of "Tiger Bait" screams from drunk LSU students jamming up Bourbon Street on New Years. Hopefully the cat fight that is the SEC will prevent that from happening. On the other hand, USC has class fans. It would be nice to get a re-match with them for the national championship.

Stoops has named the team captains. The honor went to Joe Jon Finley, Allen Patrick, Lewis Baker, Marcus Walker and Jacob Gutierrez. Finley, a tight end, and Patrick, a running back, will represent the offense. Baker, a linebacker, and Walker, a cornerback, will represent the defense, while Gutierrez, a running back, represents the special teams. All five are seniors.

Baghdad Bob Stoops Press Conference

Our friends south of the Red River have this hilarious account of a typical Bob Stoops press conference. Check it out:

http://www.barkingcarnival.com/scipio-tex/any-given-stoops-press-conference

New Season, New QB

From the soggy scrimmage...

Saturday's scrimmage sealed the deal for Sam Bradford. Coach Stoops today announced the redshirt freshman from Oklahoma City will be the starting QB.

We sat through the rain-drenched scrimmage (who knew that a tropical storm would come to Norman), thinking perhaps it would be the "separation Saturday" the sports pundits had labeled it. But, frankly, there wasn't much difference in play from Bradford, Keith Nichol and Joey Halzle.

Nichol and Halzle made more mistakes, that's true. Both probably knew they were playing catchup, so they took more chances. But none of the QBs were good throwing the football in admittedly difficult conditions.

The difference was Bradford didn't make mistakes. At least not many. And when he did -- such as when he under threw some balls -- his teammate made him look good, as in receivers coming back to the ball and making plays. This may be a season of the supporting cast making the starting QB look good.

We can live with that.

At least now Bradford will get the majority of snaps with the first team offense. He'll get better. Those timing pattern passes will get crisper. We're just glad the first test is against North Texas.