If you are one of those people who are really interested in football recruiting and mapping the future of the OU and OSU football programs, you already knew about this page. You probably even participated in our live chat surrounding the coverage, and you probably had been following the coverage leading up to the big day on Wednesday. So you read all the all the stories and watched all the videos before you went to sleep on Wednesday night.

But if you prefer not to follow each potential recruit through the non-binding commitments in the Fall and Winter, and you just want to know who signed on the dotted line and what positions they play, this page is for you right now. You should take the time this week and review our Signing Day 2012 coverage.

It’s put together nicely by web editor Lindsay Houts, sports editor Mike Sherman and Assistant Sports Editor Ryan Sharp.

• You can visit the OU Signing Day page to see a bio and specifics about every player the Sooners signed.
• You can visit the OSU Signing Day page to see a bio and specifics about every player the Cowboys signed.
• You can go through all the stories and see all the updated signing lists.
• You can watch all the videos we produced last week during the heavy coverage our sports staff produced.

I know that it captured the interest if an intense group of NewsOK users. Last Wednesday marked our second-highest day of traffic in terms of page views in 2012.

Most-viewed article

Ryan Aber’s recruiting piece on Tuesday about OU’s focus on wide receiver prospect Dorial Green-Beckham led the way. That surprised me, actually. I know recruiting news is big, but I fully expected one of our OU coaching turnover stories to lead the pack. But the Mike Stoops story was edged by a wide receiver story. It just goes to show that OU football off-season news is sometime more interesting that in-season.

Most-viewed blog post

Breaking news about Mike Stoops did lead the way for our most-viewed blog post this week. Reporter Travis Haney shared the news that was breaking on several outlets on Wednesday. As he reported: “The announcement is coming – and coming soon. Just doesn’t sound as if it’ll be today.” And now … here it is Friday, and we’re still waiting for that announcement (strike that — the announcement just came)

Most-viewed photo

We get a break from OU football with our most-viewed image from the week. What that means is … this was the image our readers clicked on more than any other this week. It was a reader-provided photo of an accident on I-35 and 122nd last Friday.

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Most-viewed video

Tuesday’s video about the return of OU quarterback Landry Jones was our most-viewed video of the week. Jenni Carlson and Travis Haney discussed OU football way back when the quarterback was the big story (not the defensive coordinator). That makes for a dominant week of OU football on NewsOK in the second week of January.

One of those items didn’t surprise me. The other floored me.

Sportswriter of the year

First, I learned that Berry was named Oklahoma Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. That news did not surprise me. It’s the fourth time Berry has won the honor from the group.

There are a lot of really talented reporters and writers covering sports in Oklahoma — all around the state for a variety of news sources — but they’re all playing for second place when it comes to this award. It would be pretty easy for him to be named the winner of this award every year.

A playoff proponent

Second, I learned that Berry supports an 11-team college football playoff system that would only include the conference champions. His point is that making only conferece champions eligible would take all the guesswork out of the system. I was very surprised by this opinion, but pleased nonetheless.

I have vivid memories of working in The Oklahoman sports department in 1999, when Berry served as  assistant sports editor, and discussing the college football playoff possibilities. I supported a 16-team playoff, using 11 conference champions and five at-large bids. I remember arguing over a lot of the system with Berry, but my memory was that he believed it was far too bloated. In the end, I worked with Jenni Carlson on a piece she wrote on Dec. 28, 1999 supporting a 16-team playoff. We even designed a full page showcasing the system we came up with.

I confronted Berry about my memory, and he still says 16 is too bloated because it still includes five at large bids. I see his point and will wholly support the 11-team system with the same logic I had in 1999 — the regular season would remain critical and that teams might even schedule better non-conference games, because the conference championship (not an undefeated season) will get them into the playoff.

But my point is this …  in 12 years, Berry moved his opinion from a two-team playoff system all the way to an 11-team system (the way I remember it). And I only moved my opinion from a16-team system to an 11-team system.

After 12-plus years, I claim victory.

Can’t thank you enough for the newsok  app.  Living in South Carolina, it brings me in touch with what’s happening in news and sports (mostly sports for me) back home.  I was hoping you could pass it along to the necessary powers to maybe add a button for The Barons news.  I’m a hockey fan and would like to read any articles written by the sports staff.  Thanks for the time.

The customer was referring to the NewsOK iPhone app. We’ve had it for about a year and a half, and it’s definitely an experience meant for our NewsOK enthusiasts. It’s a steady stream of news headlines separated by many different topics.

Here’s just a bit of background on that topic. The constant stream of headlines on the NewsOK app is a departure from our app for The Oklahoman — those are meant for edition-based prioritized headlines that a reader of The Oklahoman might enjoy.

Two different apps. Two different experiences.

Regardless of all that, this reader really likes the NewsOK app, and that’s good. And I appreciated his feedback about the Barons headlines. That was a simple oversight. It’s there now.

Continue to enjoy the NewsOK app … or the mobile website … or The Oklahoman app … or NewsOK.com … or The Oklahoman Print Replica. It doesn’t really matter to us. We just want to find the best way to deliver news and information to you.

The Oklahoman and NewsOK have been honored for the third consecutive year by the Associated Press Sports Editors as one of the top 10 sports web sites. Here’s a link to my post about last year’s award.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. It’s just another award, right? Well, no, not really. As is the case with many things in life, the company you keep says a lot about you. And in the case of the APSE Web contest awards, we’re proud to be in the company of Boston Globe,  Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and others.

Those are the sites we’re lumped in with, because our audience continues to grow at such a rapid pace. If you look at the size of the markets we’re compared to (and the sites that weren’t in the Top 10), it’s clear that sports editor Mike Sherman, his team of reporters and editors, and the web editing team on NewsOK have something to be very proud of.

So we already have a story on the website. And we’ll have a story in the newspaper tomorrow. And we’ll pat each other on the back.

Then, all the reporters and editors will go back to writing, blogging, tweeting, posting, editing, tagging, summarizing, decision-making and all the other things they all do that make us a Top 10 sports site.

See the photo gallery from the Bedlam game.

I wasn’t at my house for the live coverage of the BCS announcement last night. I missed the live show and immediate opinions from the experts. That’s OK. I think I know what they all said.

But I did get immediate word of the BCS poll results, thanks to NewsOK’s text alerts and email updates. I saw it quickly. Then I saw all the updates on Twitter and Facebook. I read the stories and blogs on my iPhone. I was informed and up to date. I even vocally shared my disappointment with the system to anyone within ear shot (yeah, OSU should be angry).

But browsing today, I had a chance to see everything I missed while I was out, including this video from the OSU football facilities with the team.

Excellent work from the NewsOK sports and video teams. They were both all over this story.

Ryan Broyles suffered a season-ending injury to his knee. His disappointment was captured on live television as the news was broken to him and his teammates. His chance to play in a final Bedlam game was gone. His chance to play in another big bowl game was gone. His NFL aspirations were put in jeopardy (though a full recovery and an NFL future is still very likely for him).

Early this week, NewsOK launched its Get Well, Ryan Broyles page to allow users to share their positive thoughts to Broyles. We built a simple page, created a photo gallery of Ryan throughout his football career, dating from Norman High School to his final OU game. Than we embedded a Facebook commenting wall and launched the page.

It’s been a nice test of how Facebook commenting can help build a community on our site.  Some of the posts are long. Some are short. But they’ve all generally been the type of comments we’ve been hoping for with this page. It’s a wall of positive energy.

And you can thank the sports department here for always thinking of ways to connect with our growing audience.

Let me know what you think of the page.

But our newest web editor was front and center last Thursday evening as she was honored at the 30/30 Next Gen Awards at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum. The event, hosted by ion Oklahoma online, honored 30 successful Oklahomans under the age of 30.

Lindsay has been in our state just a bit more than three years, and already seems to know everybody. I’ve been in the state more than 30 years, but I don’t get to say that ‘I have a friend that works there … ‘ or ‘I volunteered there …‘ for just about every conversation in my vicinity. But I was also never honored in any 30-under-30 award ceremony.

It’s real talent to make a strong impact in a foreign state in a short time period. This is a well-deserved honor for Lindsay.

I point it out today only to share what the readers of his blog were saying in the comments section:

Thanks again for taking the time…this is a great feature for ou fans

Lightning streaks across the sky during a weather delay before a college football game between the Oklahoma State University Cowboys and the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricane at H.A. Chapman Stadium in Tulsa, Okla., Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011. Photo by Nate Billings, The Oklahoman

From my vantage point in my living room on Saturday night, I could see the story of the early-morning OSU-Tulsa football game unfold.

• I saw weather-blogging star Bryan Painter begin live-blogging as the thunderstorms spawned two tornadoes in northern Oklahoma. He posted how this storm would likely affect the fans that were gathering for the game in Tulsa.
• I saw tweets from reporters Gina Mizell, John Helsley and Jason Kersey as the game was delayed. Following those three reporters on Twitter was the best way to find out the up-to-the-minute information about when the game would start.
• I was on NewsOK.com’s mobile Gameday coverage, where I could see the post-game stats from the OU-Florida State game, which ended after 10 p.m. On the OSU’s mobile gameday page, I saw the story of the storm, the Twitter stream and a blog update from the OSU blog about the only man that stayed in the stands during the storms.

I’m no stranger to midnight. I’ll watch a ball game into the wee hours, so I’m not afraid of late starts. But after 11 p.m., when I learned that it would take more than 45 minutes to be prepared for kick-off, I was certain that decision-makers would not be starting this game.

I was wrong.

After midnight, I lost interest in the game — and it hadn’t even started yet.

The cheerleaders weren’t interested. OSU coach Mike Gundy wasn’t interested. And I bet half the players weren’t even interested.

And I’m pretty sure our reporters, photographers and videographers weren’t interested in staying in Tulsa until after 4 a.m.

But they did. They didn’t even complain. And neither did the sports editors who stayed up even later (or woke up from a short nap) to edit stories as the sun rose and post information on our website so all the fans who lost interest because of exhaustion (like me) could be completely informed.

It was easy to appreciate the fans who stayed through the game.

And it was easy to feel for the players who were forced to wait all day, and then all night, to finally play when they should be resting.

But I won’t forget the journalists who worked tirelessly to make sure you knew what happened when the rest of us had the good sense to get some rest. After all, those reporters didn’t lounge around during the delay — they were working on stories about the delay that we could post online and in the newspaper. Then, after those stories were finished, they had to cover a football game.

And they still looked sharp at 4:30 a.m. for the video camera.

Then again, I’m never surprised at our team. Every breaking news effort or wild sports story proves the same conclusion — journalists are wired to want to tell the story, even if they don’t want to be awake.

But I still can’t believe they kicked off at 12:15 a.m.