Redemption for OSU: Pryor plays like a QB

He mentioned his teammates first. In his postgame interview Friday night, he took pains to recognize the big men who blocked in front of him. He thanked them; he praised them. He gave those big men their due.

"It's crazy how well they did," Terrelle Pryor said in the afterglow of the Rose Bowl.

Sharing the praise, Pryor?

Maybe, at last, the manchild has grown up. He can now see success as not just about him, even though most people's eyes and the media attention still tend to focus solely on him.

But such notoriety comes with the territory.

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Dull by design: All part of Tressel's plan

I hate it when my alma mater loses, and my hatred jumps two niches in intensity when the Ohio State Buckeyes lose a game they’re supposed to win (think Purdue).

But, man, does victory need to come wrapped in such ugly packages?

I exhaled in relief Saturday afternoon after walk-on kicker Devin Barclay, a one-time professional soccer player, sent the Buckeyes to the Rose Bowl with his 39-yard field goal in overtime. Barclay’s kick sailed into OSU folklore, the difference-maker in what surely was a Big Ten game that the Buckeyes should have won handily.

They squandered a 24-10 lead, and when Iowa tied the game in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, coach Jim Tressel made no effort to win in regulation; he turned to his no-mistake brand of football to wind down the quarter. He refused to allow Terrell Pryor, the magical talent Tressel recruited to lead the Buckeyes to a national title at some point, to play the gambler.

That title won’t come this season, of course. Tressel’s Buckeyes have one loss too many to get into that conversation, and their 27-24 victory over Iowa didn’t create the impression they were an elite team.

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Best in Ohio? Title belongs to Bearcats

For weeks now, a friend of mine has argued that the title of best college football team in Ohio didn’t belong to the Ohio State Buckeyes anymore.

I disagreed.

I was quick to remind him that the Buckeyes were the gold standard, and for him not to acknowledge that fact would be as pointless as arguing who’s richer: Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. Gates is, of course. But does it really matter when your net worth has 10 zeroes in it? The Buckeyes have been Bill Gates in Ohio college football, and no team has been his Buffett until now. They have their rival – no, they look to have their better in the University of Cincinnati. That’s the point my friend has been making – loudly, too. But it is impossible to say he’s wrong after watching the Buckeyes lose to Purdue and the Bearcats beat South Florida last week. Whatever claim Ohio State might have held to being the state’s best college football team disappeared after a dismal performance against a 1-5 team. The Buckeyes didn’t just lose to a bad football team in Purdue; they were embarrassed by that bad football team. That loss cost coach Jim Tressel and his Buckeyes whatever bragging rights they had left inside a state deep in talent. They might not be able anymore to cherry-pick that talent as they have been able to do for the better part of a half century. That talent has another in-state option, and the 'Cats are it. Out of scraps, UC coach Brian Kelly cobbled a team that finds itself No. 5 in the AP and BCS polls, 14 spots ahead of the Buckeyes. And the way this season has gone, they will be out of the top 25 before the Bearcats lose a game. In a stunning turnaround in fortunes, the 'Cats are the Ohio team that's the talk of college football, not Ohio State; they are the team that’s angling for a National Championship. All the Buckeyes will be playing for is the Big Ten title, and even their prospects of being in contention for it are slim. Does anybody expect a football team with a technique-challenged quarterback, a porous offensive line and no running game to win anything but a trip to a lesser bowl game? The Motor City Bowl might have Ohio State in its sights. No Fiesta Bowl, no Sugar Bowl, no Orange, no Rose Bowl … heck, no EagleBank Bowl either it would seem. Should the Buckeyes beat the odds and win the Big Ten, they have given no indication that they can beat anybody decent in a conference outside the Mid-American or the Big West. They are a full recruiting cycle away from being a quality program. Their close call against Navy and their loss to Purdue prove that point. In contrast, the Bearcats have shown the makings of a Division I program with grand expectations now and a bright future. They have a coach in Kelly who has shown what Tressel hasn’t: a knack for competing against anybody. Kelly’s Bearcats look like a more polished program. They seem better coached, and they have speed and creativity. Best of all, they have a quality quarterback in Tony Pike, although he's nursing an injury. Ask any college coach in the country who would he take today: Pike or Terrelle Pryor? All would say Pike. Ask any college coach in the country what team he would least like to play this weekend: UC or OSU? All would say UC. Grudgingly, so would I.

Pryor's a long way from a big-time QB

"Athletes” like Terrelle Pryor carry a truckload of expectations with them when they commit to a Division I program.

While their athleticism might go unchallenged, it alone doesn’t ensure they will master the nuances of playing the most demanding position in college football.

After his performance Saturday against Purdue, the athletic Pryor proved two things: No. 1, he isn't improving much; and, No. 2, he isn't ready to quarterback the Buckeyes with the precision and the polish the program needs.

Now, the criticism here isn’t altogether based on the fact the No. 7 Buckeyes lost, 26-18, to an ordinary Purdue team. A week earlier, they won, and the criticism was the same. For in that game, Pryor played as badly as any quarterback could play and still come away with win.

But that performance was against Wisconsin, an unbeaten, though untested team with aspirations of winning a Big Ten title.

Purdue, of course, had no such title hopes tucked away in its locker room. The Boilermakers had been leaking losses, and their 1-5 record suggested they would be fortunate to escape with all hands healthy.

Their record did reflect the quality of the team. What their record didn’t illustrate was how having a capable quarterback like Joey Elliott can keep a game close. He was no Tim Tebow or Sam Bradford; Elliott didn’t have to be. All he needed to be was the best quarterback on the field.

And he was.

That’s the damnable part of it. For Elliott didn’t have the much-hyped credentials of quarterbacks like Pryor, USC freshman Matt Barkley or Notre Dame junior Jimmy Clausen.

Hype can be a player’s undoing. It can lead to inflated expectations that no athlete can live up to, and maybe that’s the problem with Terrelle Pryor: He’s a prisoner of this hype.

In two seasons, he’s developed little. He’s a mechanical passer who locks in on a receiver. He has the touch of a blacksmith, chucking dink-and-dunk passes with helter-skelter accuracy all over the landscape. His pocket presence and awkward footwork resemble a passer who’s in the lineup for his second or third game.

At some point – and that point looks as if it has arrived -- coach Jim Tressel must reevaluate what he has in the underwhelming Pryor, a sophomore. It could be that Tressel entrusted his offense to Pryor too soon. Maybe, just maybe, Pryor’s athleticism works best for Ohio State at a wide receiver and not at quarterback.

For Tressel, a conclusion like the latter might be unthinkable. Dare he bench Pryor? How can he? Ohio State coaches chased Pryor with a dogged determination not used on very many football recruits. It made sense that Tressel go all out to land Pryor, the darling of elite programs from coast to coast.

Could the coach really risk seeing Pryor sign with Michigan?

Two years later, Tressel and the Buckeyes might be better for it had they let Pryor go to Michigan or somewhere else. He has done nothing to show people that he’s capable of greatness. He has shown only mediocrity, which is what frustrates Buckeyes fans.

They longed to see a quarterback who could win championships, a quarterback who could create magic with his legs and with his arms. Buckeyes fans thought they had that magical quarterback in Terrelle Pryor.

They thought wrong.

Pryor's arm holds all the hope for OSU titles

You can’t be a Buckeyes fan without walking around with expectations as grand as that canyon in Arizona, even while they're staring at a mountain of evidence to the contrary. For what do people who shed Scarlet and Gray tears expect this season -- a National Championship?

That is, of course, what the faithful expect; it is always so at Ohio State.

They share the same inflated dreams as men and women who root for Florida, Southern Cal, Texas, LSU or any of the other college football powerhouses. It’s BSC title or bust, which explains why OSU fans -- and even sportscasters -- are so hard on Terrelle Pryor.

They’ve forgotten, however, Pryor is a sophomore, simply a gifted underclassman who has plenty to learn about playing quarterback. No one claims he isn’t an extraordinary talent, but no one sees him as a finished product either. His play, thus far, has been typical of an inexperienced player: as many lows as highs.

In a win over unbeaten Wisconsin, Pryor had plenty of lows last Saturday. His play was hardly a performance for the video archives, except for critics to examine in the years ahead if he doesn’t show progress.

His progress has been agonizingly slow, making all the lofty talk about how good Pryor was going to be sound like the talk that surrounded Justin Zwick when he came into the program earlier this decade. It’s difficult to point out what Zwick did during four seasons at Ohio State, aside from retarding the progress of Troy Smith.

Expectations can be funny things, because they can keep coaches from using their best judgment. Coach Jim Tressel used poor judgment in sticking with Zwick too long. Is it possible Tressel’s doing the same with Pryor? It’s not as if Tressell has another Troy Smith tucked away on the bench. Buckeyes fans could use one, though.

They can’t entertain the thought of a National Championship until their Buckeyes, who play Purdue this afternoon, learn to use the forward pass as more than a tease. They can't think of winning the Big Ten either unless Pryor learns to throw. His legs do dazzle, turning routine plays into SportsCenter highlights. But his arm is what will cement his greatness, if greatness is achievable in a program that can shackle it.

For the road to greatness comes littered with risk, and Tressel isn’t a coach who tolerates risky play. Because he doesn’t, he keeps Pryor from achieving what his potential says he should achieve. He should be showing many of the football traits Tim Tebow displayed at Florida as a sophomore.

Watching Pryor, you see nothing in his play that resembles Tebow's. Is Pryor the offensive threat Tebow was a sophomore? Is Pryor as good now as Tebow was as a freshman?

That’s what troubles Buckeyes fans, because most think the answer to the latter is “no.” They keep waiting for Pryor's breakout performance, the game that will start to define what Pryor can be. He needs to be more than he is now if the Buckeyes are to make this season or the next one hold hopes of a National Championship.

I don’t think the planets aligned for that title this season. Not just because of Pryor, but because the Buckeyes have too many loose pieces to firm up for me to believe they are contenders for anything more than a Big Ten title.

Not even that title is thinkable without better play from Pryor. For he won’t be able to count each week on the OSU defense, as it did against Wisconsin, scoring touchdowns against Penn State, Iowa or even Michigan.

He’ll have to make plays – and make those plays with his arm. With a dozen or so starts on his OSU resume, Pryor has given no indication he can. His mediocrity makes me wonder whether Buckeyes fans should temper their expectations for now till Pryor proves he can win a game with his arm.

(Photo of crowd outside Ohio Stadium by Brent Veverka)

'Fire' Tressel? Have OSU fans gone crazy?

He used to be icon, a sports god of sorts. Coach Jim Tressel could have run for Ohio governor and won handily as a write-in candidate. But the only time people use the word "run" with Tressel's name now is when they cry about wanting to run the man out of town.

They want to fire Tressel for losing too many big games.

Well, what must the talk be like among Southern Cal alumni these days after coach Pete Carroll lost another game Saturday to an unranked opponent?

For college football fans, I have a bit of advice for you: relax, no college coach is going to beat everybody; a football program like the Washington Huskies is also ready to spring an upset.

Going through a football season is a minefield, as Tressel and Carroll know well. Each weekend holds the prospect for a good team to end up on the wrong side of the score. Last Saturday was Carroll’s team’s turn. But other coaches will follow suit as the '09 season rolls on.

That’s the lesson for feckless Buckeye fans to learn. They aren’t satisfied with a coach who has made everybody who bleeds Scarlet and Gray forget the John Cooper era.

Now, let me confess straightaway: I was never keen on my alma mater’s decision to hire Tressel in the first place. I didn’t think a coach from a football program like Youngstown State had proved he was capable of stepping up to the Major Leagues, because the demands at an elite Division I program like Ohio State trumped whatever challenges Tressel faced at YSU.

But Jim Tressel understood Ohio State football, a fact he made plain on the day his hiring was announced. He talked boldly about righting the many mistakes of Cooper, who never grasped the importance of beating Michigan. Tressel revived what had been a one-sided rivalry, and his success at defeating the Wolverines hastened coach Lloyd Carr’s departure.

Year after year, he’s brought that victory home, which is far more important to OSU football than losses to the Trojans.

I learned years ago that fans – and my fellow OSU alums -- are fickle. For them, it’s all about what a coach like Tressel has done for them lately. Even then, no coach can win enough to satisfy a certain segment of Buckeyes fans; not even the late Woody Hayes could do that.

Ask Trojans fans or people who follow Oklahoma about losing. They know it, too. Coach Bob Stoops has a championship ring and a fistful of Top 10 finishes; he also has a loss to Boise State in a bowl game and to Brigham Young this season. Has Stoops won enough in Norman to satisfy OU fans?

A few days before the Toledo game, I listened as Tressel fielded questions about the USC loss. On his weekly radio show, he faced criticism from the faithful; he felt the anger and frustration of men who measure their manhood on how well their alma mater does. They seemed to want Tressel to commit self-flagellation on the airwaves. He didn’t.

While he acknowledged their disappointment, Tressel never let their feelings define him or his football program. He came across as man self-assured about the direction his team is headed. He put the focus on his football tomorrows and not on his football yesterdays.

Too bad so many Ohio State alumni can't do likewise, which is a pity. But they need to remind themselves that Tressel has done more good than bad with his program.

He has one NCAA championship, the same number as Les Miles and Stoops have. Tressel's total is one more than Cooper and Earle Bruce combined were able to win and one more than any other coach in the Big Ten, not named Joe Paterno, can boast of.

Shouldn’t that appease people awhile?

Pryor restraint: OSU falls apart – again

It wasn’t the death march to the gallows – not the slow, measured trek to a public execution -- that so many had predicted. In the end, the biggest game Saturday just concluded in another loss for Ohio State to Top 5 team.

All things had been pointing to a demoralizing blowout for the No. 8 Buckeyes, regardless of the fact they were playing No. 3 Southern Cal inside The Horseshoe and the Trojans were starting freshman – and not a redshirt freshman -- Matt Barkley at quarterback. But the game wasn’t a blowout; it was an 18-15 nail-biter.

None of that meant much to the Buckeye faithful.

Not in The Horseshoe. Not in Columbus. Not anywhere Ohio State goes when its opponent on the other side of the football field is more than Navy or the Mid-American Conference punching bags the Buckeyes fatten their out-of-conference record on.

The Trojans, who have beaten Big Ten opponents 10 straight, resembled those lesser programs the way Tiger Woods does a weekend hacker with a 18 handicap.

In this game, the Trojans showed an unshakeable will to win. Not once did they put their sleek, young quarterback at serious risk. They let their defense dominate late, and it displayed the kind of toughness, discipline and quickness that secures Southern Cal's place among college football’s aristocracy.

Forget about the fact USC coach Pete Carroll had to rebuild his defense from scratch. It didn’t matter. Carroll dipped into his deep pile of talent and found replacements better than anything coach Jim Tressel had to counter them.

Tressel had no schemes – and no clue how -- to exploit the Trojan defense or to free his quarterback Terrelle Pryor for long runs or efficient, quick-strike passes. At times, the skittish Pryor looked to be operating a short-handed offense: something in the order of nine against 11.

Yet that’s been routine for Tressel’s Buckeyes. Time and again in the past five years, they have come up against top-tier programs and fallen apart.

Coming into this season, no one but the most rabid fan had penciled Ohio State down as a contender for a National Championship. Next year, its fans said. For the Big Ten title, sure; a conference title was doable.

But the Big Ten isn’t much of a football conference these days. Michigan State lost to Central Michigan, after all. OK, Michigan did beat Notre Dame, but how good are the Fighting Irish anyway?

So winning the title means what?

Teams in the Big Ten live on yesteryear’s successes. Those yesteryears were in the long ago. In the present, in these Saturdays that tick toward bowl selections, the Buckeyes and their Big Ten brethren have plenty to prove.

That became clear from watching the Trojans wear down the Buckeyes, a team that most were calling the best in the conference.

For Tressel and his Buckeyes, the conference title – and, of course, beating Michigan again -- is about all that remains. Both are nice consolation prizes, ones that Ohio State fans can think about as they replay in their minds another loss to a big-time program.

Tressel puts season at risk against USC

Style doesn’t count. If it did, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel would be one of the most disagreeable men on the planet this week. The staid Tressel saw his Buckeyes, in a win last Saturday over Navy, perform like an '84 Escort with two pistons.

Their ugly victory resurrected questions about the quality of Tressel’s football program, and with No. 4 Southern California visiting the Horseshoe this weekend, OSU fans might have reasons to worry.

For the Trojans aren’t the Midshipmen, and considering the trouble Ohio State had in beating them, Tressel can hardly be sending his Buckeyes onto the field with overconfidence. He needs nobody to tell him that his teams haven’t been impressive against elite opponent outside the conference since upsetting Miami to win the National Championship in 2003.

Those were the glory days, although it would be foolish to argue that Ohio State hasn’t had success since then. Tressel has a powerhouse – at least inside the conference.

That’s the point: The Big Ten might not be an elite conference anymore. Even in the first week of the season, the conference had its struggles. Iowa barely beat Northern Iowa, and Illinois lost to Missouri.

The Big Ten teams that won were playing opponents beneath their stature. Who didn’t expect embattled Michigan to beat Western Michigan, Iowa to beat Northern Iowa or Penn State to beat Akron?

The schedule gets tougher in Week 2. Michigan plays Notre Dame; Purdue plays Oregon; and Minnesota plays Cal. And the marquee matchup of this week’s schedule is Ohio State vs. USC, a game that Tressel can use to validate his program.

Lose to the Trojans, and even if his Buckeyes run the table, they won’t enter the discussion for BCS Championship Game. Even if they do beat USC, they will have a difficult time making critics forget lousy performances against Florida and Louisiana State.

Those losses have defined what Tressel’s Buckeyes – and, consequently, the Big Ten itself -- are. On paper, they look good. They have size and quickness and speed. Everybody agrees on that.

What they don’t have is superior quickness, disciplined aggression and top-end speed. Man to man, the No. 6 Buckeyes have been a step slower than they can afford to be against the USCs, LSUs and UFs of college football. Overwhelming bulk can’t counter quickness, Tressell and OSU fans have learned the hard way.

These have been painful lessons. Public canings always are. But big-time football isn’t played in a garage; it’s played in 100,000-seat stadiums with national TV cameras focused on the outcome. In these settings, players earn Heismans and coaches grow into legends. Their reputations are forged, forever etched into the game’s archives.

Coaches must win, though. When they don’t win, they suffer the wrath of the second-guessers – partisans who never see too many wins or too much success. It’s never about the past with them; it’s about the present.

But this is the bargain with the devil that coaches like Tressel make when they accept jobs at an elite program. They’re expected to pound the lesser programs like Navy and hold up well against the Trojans, the Tigers (2006) and the Gators (2007).

That’s the situation Jim Tressel finds him in a day before he sends his Buckeyes against Southern Cal. They had their tune-up; they worked out the kinks. Now, they play to stay alive for a National Championship.

They can push that thought out of their minds if they lose, as critics of the Big Ten say they will, to the Trojans.

(Photo of OSU coach Jim Tressel from One Raised Eyebrow)