Terrelle Pryor is on Fire
Words. HShoop
People are flat-out losing their minds over this kid. He’s been called the most highly recruited athlete ever. Some have said that the signing of this 6-6 230 lbs. top-rated quarterback and small forward from Jeannette (Pa.) is a bigger deal than LeBron James‘ was in 2003.
If you didn’t catch it on Wednesday’s National Signing Day for football recruits, Pryor didn’t sign. He’s narrowed his list down to Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon and Michigan. It’s just a real shame that he’s backing off of his early hopes to play both football and basketball at the next level. Ronald Curry did it in 1998. Julius Peppers did it in ’01. But Pryor’s priority seems to have shifted to the pigskin.
“Now that I’m starting to get more realistic about this whole thing, I just think there’s no way I could play both football and basketball,” said Pryor in his school newspaper. “If I want to win a national title, I’m going to have to work out and lift weights in the offseason. Maybe even go over films. Plus, I’ll want to chill a little. I don’t know if I can do all that and play basketball.”
Pryor’s been a stud on the hardwood since he first arrived at Jeannette High. During his first practice, he demanded coach Rick Klimchock’s attention.
“He said to me, ‘Coach, watch this,’”says Klimchock. “He was five feet from the hoop and had his back to the basket. He did a backwards gather step and reverse dunked it. I said, ‘You know what, I just became a better coach today.”
But Pryor’s celebrity as a football player, where he’s been acclaimed ‘the next Vince Young’, precludes him from getting the attention he deserves on the court. It’s become nearly impossible to find out anything about his success as a basketball player because search engines are overrun with stories about his 4.4 speed and laser-rocket arm. The only evidence that he even plays ball is on Ohio State blogs, where fans try to convince themselves that he’ll choose to be a Buckeye because their basketball program is in better standing than Michigan’s or Penn State’s.
If he keeps his word that he’s done with roundball, unfortunately the crazy videos of him cramming over kids on the break will come to an end.
