Terrelle Pryor commits to Ohio State.

The New Face of Buckeye Football.



Terrelle Pryor finally ended the saga that was his recruiting process by selecting the Ohio St. Buckeyes over rivals Michigan and Penn St. Needless to say this was a huge land for Jim Tressel. Ohio State now has a building block upon which a team that can compete with the upper echelon of the SEC, PAC 10 and Big 12 can be developed.

As it pertains to the upcoming year, Terrelle Pryor will not have a tremendous impact on the Buckeyes on the field. Todd Boeckman has firmly entrenched himself as the starter at Ohio St. With nearly the entire receiving corps returning from last year, look for Boeckman to continue the surprising success he achieved last year. I'm sure the Buckeye coaching staff will be able to develop a few trick plays in which they can utilize Pryor's talents as a dual-threat quarterback. I look for Tressel to find a way to establish some offensive sets that will allow Pryor to play similar to Juice Williams of Illinois. However, Beyond a few trick plays and special offensive sets, do not look for Pryor to start and dominate at the onset.


At 6'6" 220 Lbs, Terrelle Pryor is a much bigger and more athletic version of Troy Smith. As great as Troy Smith was for OSU, he doesn't have nearly the same skill set as Pryor. That means buckeye fans probably won't be seeing too much of this in the near future:



By reeling in Terrelle Pryor, Jim Tressel was once again able to get the best of rival Michigan. Rich Rodriguez made no secret of his desire to land Pryor to run his spread attack from the get go. Rodriguez pushed hard, but in the end Pryor chose Ohio St. because he felt they gave him the best chance to prepare himself for the NFL. Pryor is absolutely correct in this assumption. If Tressel can turn Troy Smith into a NFL QB, look for Pryor to be gracing the halls of Canton when all is said and done. Sorry Michigan fans, but it looks like your misery will be continuing for at least 7 or 8 more years.

The successful recruitment of Terrelle Pryor to Columbus also paves the way for future athletic QB's to look Ohio St.'s way come signing day. In the past, if you were a dual threat QB coming out of high school, you were almost exclusively destined to play in the SEC, PAC-10 or Big 12. Surely every Big Ten(Eleven) school that even attempted to recruit you, would not even crack your top ten list of schools. Now, in the future, dual threat QB's being recruited by Ohio St. can say "Hey, Terrelle Pryor went there a few years back, they must have something to offer to players like me."

As I have said earlier, whichever school landed Terrelle Pryor would be considered a contender for the National Championship in the near future. Now that it's the Buckeyes, I feel even more confident in making that statement.

The downside to all of this is that I have to listen to all of my friends that like Ohio St. talk endlessly about how great they are and how every other school should just bow before them. Most OSU fans are pretty obnoxious now, can you imagine how bad they will get with one or two championships in the near future? It's a great possibility.