Penn State Football: Terrelle Pryor, the Nittany Lion

UNIVERSITY PARK – It’s a wonderful life? Hardly.

With Daryll Clark gone, but not forgotten — who can forget the Eastern Illinois game four weeks ago, when he threw for three scores, ran for another and engineered a 31-28 upset over his old team? — we thought this quarterback mess was over.

But nooooo, Terrelle Pryor just wouldn’t let bad enough alone.

Ever since March 19, 2008, when Pryor told Joe Paterno that he was coming to Penn State, eschewing Ohio State and Michigan, the No. 1 high school football recruit in the nation has been a burr in the butt of Paterno, his son Jay and legions of Nittany Lion fans.

Remember last season, when he wouldn’t take “no” for answer when the Nittany Lion head coach told the Jeannette flash that he was going to redshirt? Not that Joe knew what might be best. He’s been coaching over twice as long as Pryor has been alive. Redshirting seemed like a good idea at the time. Both Clark and Pat Devlin had tons more experience, and leadership qualities out the ying yang. Funny thing, because with Terrelle around, the yin and yang of the team was way off.

Feng shui? The team’s compass was headed south — only we didn’t know the half of it.

We heard that Tom Bradley, who helped recruit Pryor, stepped in and tried to convince the kid that it was in his best interest to sit out a season. Reduce the log jam at QB, have him correct some shoddy mechanics under the tutelage of the younger Paterno, get his feet on solid ground in the classroom, not be a round peg in a square hole.

Didn’t listen.

Instead, he went to The Collegian. Fussed and hemmed and hawed. Big time. Made the front page, though. Sixteen times in one semester. How can we forget? Aped the other Terrell, sans “e,” and did sit-ups in front of his dorm to a gathered media throng. Did a Keyshawn and asked for “the damn ball.” As far as Pryors go, only Richard did comedy better. His act was laughable.

“Hey, Williams and King didn’t redshirt,” Pryor said.

“Hey, Williams and King were mature and disciplined,” Paterno answered back at his weekly press conference, “and we didn’t have a Clark or Devlin ahead of them, either.” Eighty-one years and none of these problems Pryor to this.

If you recall, Joe didn’t acquiesce. Threw Terrelle out of practice a week. Then two weeks. He had kind of been through this before, with Quintus McDonald, who came to Penn State in the 1980s as a high school All-American with more Gatorade honors than Tiger and MJ combined. Joe stood firm with QD, he stood firm with TP.

“Redshirt, and that’s my final answer,” said Paterno. Who wants to be a millionaire? Pryor, of course. Now.

Clark, who beat out Devlin for the starting job, had a fine year despite the noise. Led Penn State to an 11-2 record, threw for 19 TDs and was named first team All-Big Ten. Then he left.

“Sorry Joe and Jay, but that kid’s driving me nuts. I have ulcers, diverticulitis, a tic in my left eye and hemorrhoids. That kid’s a pain in the butt,” Clark said. “I need six credits for my degree. I’ll get them at I-AA Eastern Illinois. See you on October 10th.”

Two days after that, Devlin left for Delaware.

“Just you and me, McGloin,” Pryor said to his new backup. “Boom boom pow.”

Well, 2009 started out well enough. Remember when we cheered as he dashed and darted and improvised more than Second City on his way to 127 yards rushing and two TD passes against Akron? The loss to Syracuse was a fluke, we said. The Lions only gave up seven points, on a pick six. Bt they scored only six on two field goals. Terrelle threw four passes to us, three to them.

Temple was a win, with brief flashes of stardom. Before, during and after the game. “Daryll and Pat who?” he asked. The Nits’ locker room loved that.

Then came the Vick eye blacks and as punishment, Joe held him out of the first half against Iowa. Might as well have been the whole game. How about that screaming match with Sean Lee on the sidelines in the second quarter? You knew there were about 47 guys who wanted to see Sean go Bruce Lee on him.

The Nittany Lions squeezed out a win against Juice and Illinois. Clark’s comeuppance against Clark’s new team followed, then a win against Minnesota. Michigan was bad. Maybe worse, than anything Terrelle had experienced. He played his heart out against the Wolverines, trying to impress Rich Rodriguez. It was the U-M boss who first recruited Pryor at West Virginia, then at Michigan. His numbers were so bad (6 of 19 for 76 yards and two INTs), you would have thought he was a quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.

Enter Todd Blackledge, the Lion quarterback who led Penn State to the 1982 national championship, played in the NFL and is now a primetime color analyst on ESPN. God bless him.

“[I’m] trying to mentor him and get him through ‘life in the spotlight,’ which I’ve been through,” Blackledge said from his North Canton, Ohio, home. Blackledge said he has been speaking to Pryor on the phone in recent weeks to try to help him deal with celebrity at a young age.

“Being that No. 1 guy, how do you adjust to it and how do you get through it and still perform at a high level?” Blackledge said. “Sometimes it can be very difficult on [a young athlete]. I’m trying to be that guy who can really help him get through a lot of situations which he’s never seen before, but now he’s seeing and understanding.”

Pryor said the bad game in the snow against Minnesota had helped open his eyes.

“That opened me up to the world and opened me up to myself and who I am as a person,” Pryor said. “I think maybe that was the best thing to happen to us last week. Maybe we’ll learn from it. We’re having real good practices, and we’re just trying to get the fans back on our side.”

Paterno has been uncharacteristically quiet through it all this season. It was only after the Northwestern game, a 34-13 loss when Pryor started ignoring the plays sent in by Mike McQueary, that Paterno put his white-socked foot down.

“One last shot, that’s all he gets,” Paterno said at a media gathering on Tuesday. “Then it’s on to the kid from the coal region — Mick Coins. He’s polite and listens well.”

With that, Paterno shook his head, ran his right hand through his rapidly graying hair and left the press conference after only eight minutes.

He wasn’t happy with Pryor and he wasn’t happy with Jack Ham.

Earlier this week, Ham — a Hall of Fame linebacker, a Nittany Lion legend and the analyst on Penn State’s football radio network — came out in support of Pryor.

“People expect the world from him,” Ham told Ron Musselman of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. “Remember, he’s a sophomore — 18, 19, 20 years old — who was thrown into being the starting quarterback at a big-time program.

“Gosh, you can’t expect him to come out and dominate games when you’re playing people like Ohio State. It’s a tough thing for him to do. The bottom line is, people are expecting way too much out of him.”

All Paterno could say was this: “That Ham, I hear he broadcasts the games in jeans and wears some kind of hippie shoes. And he’s got a beard. For crying out loud, I have enough problems with what’s going on the field. He’s worse than Millen.”

To add insult to injury, Jim Tressel, the Ohio State coach, was laying it on thick about the One Who Got Away. When asked about how the Penn State offense is this year compared to 2008, he couldn’t wait to pump up the Pryor knowledge.

“I think they’ve done some things a little differently in the offense to take advantage of his tremendous ability,” Tressel said. “He started a little bit slow, to be frank with you, but the last few games he’s been very, very overpowering, really. He’s running well, he’s throwing the ball well deep.”

Last night, Joe had to be going home and telling Sue, “I wish he had gone to Ohio State.”

And Pryor, no doubt had to be thinking, “I wish I had gone to Ohio State.”

And Tressel, trumping them all, had to be saying to himself with a smile, “I’m glad he didn’t come to Ohio State.”