Terrelle Pryor took forever to announce his college of choice. But if one thing is clear about his decision Wednesday afternoon, it’s that he’s not stupid.
Some college football fans out there may have thought Pryor was a bit of an idiot for taking so much time to say what most already assumed was a certainty – that he would choose Ohio State.
But, hey, the kid had business to take care of. How can a young prodigy worry about football in the future when he’s got a state basketball title to win in the present? He can only focus on so much at one time.
With his final season of high school basketball completed, and the grid iron apparently back on his mind, Pryor sat down at his press conference Wednesday and officially donned the black cap with the red block O.
After such a long wait for OSU fans, Terrelle Pryor is officially a Buckeye.
And judging by the final four teams he was looking into by National Signing Day last month, he made the absolute best choice for his budding football career. While OSU eventually won the battle for arguably the best player in this year’s recruiting class, Penn State, Michigan and Oregon were all in the running.
The latter three were all bad picks for Pryor. Let’s count the ways.
Oregon had a high amount of success last season, that is, until their all-world quarterback Dennis Dixon went down with a season-ending injury.
After Dixon got hurt, Oregon couldn’t buy a win – at least until their bowl game.
If Pryor chose Oregon, he may have wound up disappointed, and would’ve been carrying way more of an offensive load than he will at OSU. Oregon hasn’t been consistently solid since the days of Joey Harrington. And we all know how Harrington has turned out as an NFL quarterback, as well. Pryor may have dodged a bullet there.
Penn State was the second of the three schools Pryor turned down. And it’s probably a good thing for his back that he did, because he could very well have severely injured it in trying to carry the Nittany Lions back to a BCS bowl game.
While there is a ton of tradition at PSU, the program won’t be able to really take off again until Joe Paterno hangs it up and finally lets someone else take over.
It’s a team in need of a new direction, and Pryor would’ve been thrown to the wolves from day one as the starting quarterback. Despite his considerable talent, being tossed into the fire right away could hurt him more than it would help.
And then there was Michigan. UM is in a state of major transition right now, and the new football coach, Rich Rodriguez, has to make some changes on both sides of the ball.
Rodriguez already lost Ryne Mallett, who likely would’ve brought some depth to the quarterback position. And it was Rodriguez who recruited Pryor very, very heavily to follow him to Michigan and run the spread offense.
But Pryor didn’t want to set up shot in Ann Arbor. It was a decision that could add years onto his career, because he definitely would’ve been the starting QB, and would’ve had to endure the gritty Big 10 schedule head-on from the get-go, losing some games in the process.
Whether you like OSU or not, Pryor made the best choice for his football career. He picked a team in the Buckeyes that already has an established senior quarterback in Todd Boekman and 20 starters returning on both sides of the ball. And his new coach, Jim Tressel, will ease him into his team’s NFL-esque offensive scheme.
And with the addition of Pryor to an already deep recruiting class, Ohio State will be a favorite to win the Big 10 for the next several years to come. So Pryor gets to take his time in a new offensive system while playing for a winning team, while simultaneously building up what could be a very high NFL draft stock. Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.
But that seems to be how Pryor planned it all along. After all, he isn’t stupid.
