Looks like a clean sweep for Sooners with Lewis and Broyles

Originally Published: Jan 5, 2011 11:11 PM CDTWhen OU LB Travis Lewis announced this morning that he&rsquo;s returning for his senior, it was as if a gun went off

Thursday, May 26th 2011, 1:31 pm

By: News 9

Originally Published: Jan 5, 2011 11:11 PM CDT

When OU LB Travis Lewis announced this morning that he’s returning for his senior, it was as if a gun went off to start the 100-meter dash. The Lewis story got its five minutes but then it was off to OU’s bigger question: would record-setting Ryan Broyles follow suit or decide to enter the NFL draft? Here are facts about the status of Broyles. He has planned to make his announcement “at the end of the week,” according to a close friend of Ryan. He “only has twelve hours left to get his degree and he and his family really want that to happen,” a family friend told me. A former player tells me, “he was hoping he’d get a 1 when the NFL gave its early evaluations but when he got a 2 (projected second round) he was disappointed, but not totally bummed out. I think he’ll just stay in school. He loves it here anyway.” A longtime friend of Broyles told me Broyles is well-aware of the “completion. He knows that Greene, Blackmon and Julio Jones are rated above him, and he knows he can get bigger and faster if he stays.” A fiend of both of ours repeated to me today what he’s told me for months: “Ryan has told me he’d really not even considered the NFL until he kept hearing his name mentioned in the middle of the season. He says he wants to set records that will last forever at OU. I definitely think he’ll stay.” After mockingtonthedraft.com reported (if you can call it that as the story did not cite a single source) Broyles was staying, word from OU came saying that Broyles said hes "not spoken to anyone so that report is apparently unfounded.” OU coaches and a few insiders have always told me they expected Lewis and Broyles to return. Looks like they were right. And looks like they have two critical pieces to the run at a national title in place. Lewis and Broyles can make plays. And when it’s all said and done, you can just check the OU record books.