Our Honor Defend

December 30 2007 – January 18 2008: the Army All-American Bowl and its fallout

Terrelle Pryor showed up to San Antonio on December 30 following a hoops tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina, where his hoops team was routed by South Atlanta and lost a revenge game to Beaver Falls (losers of the conference championship game).  Much to the chagrin of Buckeye fans, and to the delight of Wolverine fans, he showed up wearing a Michigan sweatshirt.  Terrelle immediately downplayed the significance of the sweatshirt to interviewers, saying that the only reason he wore the sweatshirt was because he thought it was cool.  Indeed, with just recently playing a tournament in North Carolina, the sweatshirt was probably one of the few, accessible, items of clothing he had that he could pack.  Kids like to wear team gear for the hell of it, and it’s usually not a valid predictor of where a recruit ends up going (see: Rico McCoy).  The same reason why the December 2006 photo of Terrelle in an Ohio State sweatshirt shouldn’t excite Buckeye fans is the same reason why Michigan fans shouldn’t read too much into it.  Nevertheless, Michigan fans were excited, his friends (and Ohio State commits) were not.  If I remember correctly, the other Buckeyes there to greet him (Adams, Stoneburner, Shugarts, Posey, Buchanan, Sabino and Thomas… Brewster flew in later because he was injured and wasn’t needed for some of the festivities) made him take off the sweatshirt in order to proceed to registration.

That wasn’t the only tidbit to excite Michigan fans, though.  Jonas Gray, a Michigan local and Notre Dame commit, was interviewed and asked where he thought Terrelle would end up.

If I had to guess where Terrelle goes, I would say he ends up at Ohio State. I could still see him at Michigan, but he’s going to watch the Ryan Mallett situation closely. I know Mallett is going to decide after the bowl game and if he decides to transfer, Terrelle Pryor is going to Michigan. I have a real good feel for that.

It’s worth noting that Gray and Pryor have only a casual acquaintanceship and that you probably would be better suited flipping a coin to predict where Pryor would end up than relying on a Notre Dame verbal’s “good feel for that”.  The Detroit News thought against it and ran with Gray’s comments, presumably eliciting a positive response from their audience.

As we all know, however, the good Pryor-related news wasn’t limited to just Michigan fans.  The same Jonas Gray basically retracted his earlier statement about Terrelle Pryor probably going to Michigan.  After watching Terrelle Pryor pal around with the other Buckeye verbals, he began to think that Pryor was probably already committed to Ohio State.

Further, Terrelle Pryor was supposed to be roomed with Michael Brewster before Brewster suffered an injury that permitted him to fly in later.  He was eventually roomed with Jonathan Baldwin, from Aliquippa and conference foe of Pryor, in what was a regionally convenient relationship¹.  However, when Brewster eventually showed up, he moved in with Terrelle.  In fact, bringing Michael Brewster in was apparently Pryor’s idea.

Then of course, there was the infamous helmet sticker.  I remember watching the game with my dad while visiting for winter break and watching the game with him and immediately catching the sticker on TV before any one of the TV announcers got wind of it.  Sure enough, that was a Buckeye leaf pride sticker placed on the back of his helmet.  What was not known immediately, though, is if placing the sticker was a prank pulled by one of his friends as some kind of playful retaliation for showing up in a Michigan sweatshirt.

The fact is Terrelle asked for the sticker.  Wade, recruiting expert at BuckeyePlanet, pieced together the chain of events whereby Terrelle had that sticker on his helmet.  Stoneburner was responsible for bringing the stickers with him to San Antonio.  It was Posey’s idea to place one on the back of Patrick Johnson’s helmet, knowing he was going to commit to LSU, who the Buckeyes would face shortly².  When Pryor got wind of the plans, he asked why he couldn’t have one.  The gang of Buckeyes there naturally couldn’t think of a reason and gave him one.  After scoring a touchdown during the game, Pryor drew attention to the Buckeye sticker on his helmet and the rest… well it’s just history.

The consequence of Pryor’s involvement (and MVP winning performance) in the Army All-American Game is the amount of press attention he garnered from it.  Pryor had been hounded by the recruiting services and local Pittsburgh media for most of the year.  Ohio press, specifically the Dispatch and Plain Dealer, showed some interest in him when it was relevant to Ohio State.  Rodriguez’ hire at Michigan and subsequent renewed interest from Pryor in the Wolverines caused Detroit-area press to follow Pryor’s recruitment with a keen interest.  However, winning the MVP award for the Army All-American Bowl on a national stage caused an almost frenzy from news journalists across the country.  The problem is that so much of the news they published varied considerably and made Terrelle Pryor’s recruitment incredibly difficult to sift through.

Sports Illustrated published an article saying that Pryor didn’t want to visit Oregon. However, The Oregonian said Oregon was still in his list.  What do these seemingly conflicted reports have in common? Not one of them cited Terrelle Pryor as having made explicit what his thoughts are on Oregon.  The Pittsburgh Sports Report cited a source “close to the situation” that Pryor wanted to officially visit Pitt, a school he hadn’t had any interest in for the past 8 months by that time.  The Pitt Post-Gazette, a much more believable source, published a rebuttal from Pryor saying that he never said that.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a report saying that LSU might have been in it if they had recruited Pryor earlier.  The problem being that such a statement from Pryor was so incredibly vague that it wasn’t worth publishing.  The AJC ran with it anyways.  It’s consequence? Les Miles and LSU’s staff put on a last minute blitz trying to sway Pryor to Baton Rouge under (basically) a mistaken assumption that there was real interest in the first place.  The Detroit Free-Press runs with this tidbit saying that he has a visit to LSU “planned” for January 25, which runs counter to the conditional use of “might be” in the title of the article.  As a result, the Lafayette, LA newspaper The Daily Advertiser runs with the story that Terrelle Pryor has scheduled his visit to LSU.  What do all of these articles have in common? Not one of them directly cites Terrelle Pryor.  Heck, not one of them even cites his football coach.

Notwithstanding the litany of bogus reports surrounding Terrelle, the only real visit he had scheduled for this time was a January 18 visit to Ann Arbor.

1. Most every player at the game asked to be roomed with Pryor, if what I understand is correct. [↩]
2. sigh… [↩]

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