Better Know A Buckeye: Terrelle Pryor
Prelude – Sophomore year, Pitt verbal
Back then, Terrelle Pryor thought his future lay in basketball, so much so that football didn’t appear to be on the radar. Unlike college football, college basketball recruiting begins well before a kid’s junior year, and it’s not uncommon for colleges to start recruiting (and securing commitments from) kids in their freshman or sophomore years (or, if you’re USC, in middle school). Already, Pryor’s AAU prowess was enough to garner attention from programs like North Carolina State, West Virginia, Penn State, Michigan, Xavier, Virginia Tech and Villanova.
On January 28, 2006, however, Terrelle Pryor reached an early decision, deciding to issue a verbal to Pitt even though it wasn’t clear that the Panthers had offered him a scholarship. Pryor cited that the Panthers were a team he grew up wanting to play for1. The Panthers were the hometown team, with a coaching staff Terrelle could relate to and afforded Terrelle the opportunity to be close to his father, who is confined to a wheelchair with a degenerative muscular disorder that’s affected his legs. At the time, Terrelle was slated to join a few of his AAU buddies in playing for the Panthers.
However, just as soon as Pitt fans began salivating about the local product playing for the local team, Pryor withdrew his verbal on April 27, 2006. The reasons for the decommitment weren’t explicit at the time, and could just be a combination of a variety of factors… and all of them painfully obvious. Pryor had just picked up his first offer for football, a verbal offer from Penn State. Pryor was, at the time, a promising two-way player on the Jayhawk football team, lining up at QB and defensive end in his sophomore season. Further, more basketball teams were picking up interest in Pryor, including Kansas State’s Bob Huggins. While no casus belli was given for the decommitment, it became clear that the Pitt verbal was premature. Indeed, Pryor’s hoops coach at the time told Scout.com that Pryor was a 16yr old that behaved more like a 12yr old than a 20yr old. Rather than talk about where he wanted to play college basketball, Pryor was more interested in playing basketball.
Obviously, the college hoops dilemma dogged Pryor throughout most of his recruitment, until his February 1, 2008 decision to stick exclusively to the gridiron. While more college hoops programs began to express serious interest in him (like Clemson, for example) after his decommitment from Pitt, his sophomore year of high school represents the last point in time where Pryor thought college hoops would be his focus sport at the next level2. With that, I fast forward to September 2006, where his college football recruitment begins in earnest.
- ed note: It was probably more true that UNC was his dream team, but he decided against playing for the Tar Heels because North Carolina was too hot. [↩]
- A few caveats, of course, since Pryor expressed on December 26, 2007 that he would prefer to play in the NBA than in the NFL, if given the opportunity [↩]
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holy shiiiiittttttt
thanks for getting me fired at the illiteracy factory
Dude. This is 27 pages single-spaced at .7 inch margins, when taking out the images.
Dude.
You’re not expecting anyone to read this, are you? This must be the longest post in the history of college football blogging. When was the last time you went out anyways?
Wow. I now have plans for the evening.
I’d give you two thumbs up, if I weren’t wasting my time giving my computer screen hand gestures. Great work, man.
I love the SpaceBalls reference on page 18…….
Hmm, I don’t know when the last time I got out was, but 27 pages single-spaced? That’s a little exorbitant even for me.
Great article. I think you know more about Terrelle than he does. Thanks for all the hard work – this had to take a while to finish.
Wow. Amazing work. Now I’ll have something to do at my summer job tomorrow for a couple hours.
Vico, you can now open the sweet nectar of Gods, Pabst Blue Ribbon, in a jubilant celebration.
You have now reached “legend” status, my friend.
Speaking of pp 18, is Strawberry Mansion not the coolest school name ever?
Whew! I’m exhausted! I squandered an hour of my employer’s time, and still had to finish it at home. So many cool links to follow. Naturally, after getting my fix, I can only ask … nah, nevermind. Take a few days off, then we’ll all hit you up for the next, and last, BKAB.
I think I’ve read about this somewhere else (if not, I can’t believe I’m the only one with the idea), but on the subject of the signing day postponement that got everybody so freaked out/made Terrelle look like an attention whore: it seems reasonable to assume that TP knew where he was going but didn’t want to deal with hostile crowds at PSU during the state basketball tourney and simply waited till after it was over to announce.
That was a monster of a piece, nice work.
My cat’s name is Terrelle.
Fantastic piece. Incredibly researched and supported. I learned many new things. Kudos.
That was a great post and this has been a great series, now i can’t wait for the last one.
Oh, I forgot to include this: http://www.pittsburghsportsinsider.com/?p=1095
Take a look at what Joe Paterno (allegedly) told Terrelle Pryor early into his recruitment.
senior year stats: http://jeannettejayhawksfootball.blogspot.com/2008/08/rollover-stats-terrelle-pryor.html
and lastly: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07241/812755-365.stm
- pay careful attention to the stories of him stealing the ball of the tee, and hurdling a would-be tackler at the 5 yard line and landing 3 yards in the end zone.
Dude, you made it onto The Big Lead and SI’s Campus Clicks.
Dude.
Bandwidth gets chewed through, but no one’s contributed to the Give Us Money Campaign. That gets a dismayed “Dude”.