No lessons in Broyles' saga

By Clay Horning
The Norman Transcript

February 08, 2007 01:19 am

— Don’t go looking for any great lessons in the saga from which Ryan Broyles and a good bit of the state finally emerged from Wednesday. Don’t go looking for them because they’re not there.
An early signing day, an otherwise fantastic idea, might well have saved Norman High’s offensive, defensive and special teams highlight reel from several sleepless nights the past few weeks, but it might also have landed him at Oklahoma State, a place Broyles, after going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, decided was not the place for him.
“Last night, I finally came to it about two o’clock,” he said. “I just slept on it. I just slept on it and woke up to see if I felt good about it.”
He did.
Trying to explain it all after going through a mock signing for picture takers several hours after faxing his national letter of intent to play football at the University of Oklahoma, Broyles explained there were no silver, crimson or orange bullets that hit their mark and told him where to go.
It was just a decision he made.
It was just a decision he made at 2 a.m., a full calendar year after Oklahoma State offered him a scholarship for the first time and a little more than three weeks after the Sooners offered him a scholarship for the first time.
“I changed here and there, but Oklahoma is where I want to go,” he said. “Being close to home, that really wasn’t a factor in the beginning …”
Only, apparently, in the end.
Of the storm that seemed to follow him ever since he told the world he was going to OU after first verbally committing to OSU, only to then tell the world how he had thought it over again and was indeed headed to Stillwater — “My head has cleared,” he told GoPokes.com Feb. 1, “and I realize that Oklahoma State is where I really wanted to go and where I need to be … I am 100 percent committed to Oklahoma State” — only to choose to stay home at the 11th hour, Broyles did not find it hilarious, offensive or anything beyond mildly interesting.
“I was surprised that people knew more about me than I thought they did,” he said.
At one point, asked what he might tell others faced with the same decision, he offered the wisdom of early decision-making. Of course, about 5 minutes earlier, he said he “just wanted to make the right decision, so I guess I needed all the time right up to signing day.”
And by “all the time,” he meant all the time.
Over the last week, Broyles said he hadn’t slept much at all, maybe three hours a night. His high school coach, Butch Peters, was talking to him every day and what Peters noticed was Broyles becoming progressively more worn out by the process.
Broyles’ inquisitive nature may have been part of the ordeal.
“Ryan likes a challenge,” said his father, Ed Moore. “He always asks questions. That’s just the kind of guy he is. Even when he was 7 years old, he was always asking ‘Why?’”
And Broyles’ willingness to take every call, as many as he could, may have confused matters. Even Wednesday morning, his mind made up, he took calls from OSU assistant Gunter Brewer, OU assistants Cale Gundy and Kevin Sumlin and then Bob Stoops himself before putting pen to paper at 8:40 a.m.
“At one point,” Moore explained, the process wearing on his wife, Ryan’s mother, Stephanie, “she said, ‘My child is being treated like a piece of meat.’”
It may not be an indictment of the system nearly as much as it simply is the system, one fueled by a cottage media (and perpetuated by the rest of the media) there to service the same bunch of superfans that can’t wait for the next Athlon, Street and Smith or Lindy’s season preview, even though all the information in such rags is excavated between the end of the season and the end of spring ball, months before preseason practice even begins.
It doesn’t have to make sense.
And still, don’t go looking for lessons.
There are no lessons. It’s just a decision.
And the next four years of his life. Maybe the most important four years of his life.
So if Ryan Broyles took everybody for a wild ride, don’t blame him. Look in the mirror.
He’s entitled.
It’s just a decision.
A big one.
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com