Better Know A Buckeye: Terrelle Pryor
late September 2007: Down to 6
For the first time, however, published reports on Pryor began taking a stab at the exact order of his top 6. Rivals, who published the aforementioned article breaking the news on his top 6, speculated that he was favoring Ohio State, WVU and Florida over Tennessee, Texas, and Penn State. This ordering was also implicit in the corollary Scout article on his top 6. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review made things more explicit by citing Terrelle as saying that he’s only considering Ohio State, WVU, Florida, Penn State, Tennessee and Texas… and in that order. Whatever the veracity, the reports confirm much of the behind-the-scenes speculation about the recruitment of Terrelle Pryor: Ohio State was the team to beat, WVU was firmly in second place with the strength of Rodriguez’s recruiting, Florida has the championship appeal, Penn State just wasn’t that interesting to Terrelle, and the spectre of being “the second Vince Young” may not have been desirable to Terrelle as he more wanted to be “the first Terrelle Pryor”.
So should this speculation matter to predicting Terrelle’s recruitment? Not really. In the same PTR article, Terrelle didn’t deny the fact that he told Rivals that Ohio State, WVU and Florida stick out more than Penn State, Tennessee and Texas, but he downplayed its significance. He said that the “order” given was just a part of the recruitment, and part of the process by which he will ultimately make a decision. Put in other words, the “order” was a heuristic to help him ultimately make the decision of where he wants to go to school. At the time, he still wanted to meet Mack Brown and still wanted to meet David Cutcliffe, who had influenced one of his QB idols, Peyton Manning.
That said, Terrelle may have been a hard person to read, and as noted earlier, perhaps Ohio State was more of a leader for his services than he was letting on to the recruiting services.
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
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”.