I think it was pretty obvious he wasn't going to play this year. As much as I knock the kid, I have to admit that on the football field he did pretty much all that was asked of him. Big 10 freshman of the year, 3 Big 10 titles, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl wins, 3-0 vs Michigan. You really coudn't ask for much more. The problem was Pryor's arrogance surrounding breaking the rules. Something he clearly knew he was doing, but continued doing throughout his career. And basically showing no remorse for getting caught. Just only half-ass attemps at softening the damages.
Reggie Bush, Terrelle Pryor, (fill in the blank). Ego plays a big part in life. When you are an elite athlete you get special treatment. Sometimes your future agent is simply referred to as your mentor. The fact that you drive one new car after another those are just one of the little things that people notice. Why should they jump to the absurd conclusion that you are doing things that are taboo and can have an effect on your team, your program, and your school. But, some times conclusions are right on, sometimes they are just that obvious, sometimes everybody knows and just turn their heads. Maybe Charlie Sheen is right when he says "winning". Maybe winning is a perception, not a reality.
What is important is not "the winning" it is that you come out a winner and there is a difference. Is Pryor's head coach a winner in the end, is his team, his program, his school better off than they were before he got there or did everyone just use everyone. I think the biggest joke in this whole scandal was that the NCAA let those players including Pryor participlate in their last bowl game. What was that all about? Truth is the NCAA has become a laughing stock because all they do is put a band aid on a mortal wound. But in the end it is all about winning and all the wrappings that come with it. The end justifies the means and besides you are innocent until proven guilty.
Who is guilty? Probably all of us because we are homers and we are fans of the game in general. Now in a few years when and if Cam Newton becomes the next Reggie Bush and Auburn becomes the next USC we can all sit back and say
"you know I saw that coming". Well the truth is that everyone in Columbus saw this coming too, they just went along for all the wrong reasons. Not to say College athletics are pure by any means but people like Bush and Pryor put ego ahead of everything. At first everything they touch turns to gold but in the end it turns to shit. In the process all the enablers can't blame Pryor because they have to blame themselves too. Winning.
What is important is not "the winning" it is that you come out a winner and there is a difference. Is Pryor's head coach a winner in the end, is his team, his program, his school better off than they were before he got there or did everyone just use everyone. I think the biggest joke in this whole scandal was that the NCAA let those players including Pryor participlate in their last bowl game. What was that all about? Truth is the NCAA has become a laughing stock because all they do is put a band aid on a mortal wound. But in the end it is all about winning and all the wrappings that come with it. The end justifies the means and besides you are innocent until proven guilty.
Who is guilty? Probably all of us because we are homers and we are fans of the game in general. Now in a few years when and if Cam Newton becomes the next Reggie Bush and Auburn becomes the next USC we can all sit back and say
"you know I saw that coming". Well the truth is that everyone in Columbus saw this coming too, they just went along for all the wrong reasons. Not to say College athletics are pure by any means but people like Bush and Pryor put ego ahead of everything. At first everything they touch turns to gold but in the end it turns to shit. In the process all the enablers can't blame Pryor because they have to blame themselves too. Winning.
Yet more allegations regarding Pryor NCAA rule breaking surfaced tonight
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=6637444
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=6637444
I don't think that the $40,000 Pryor received for signing mini football helmets etc. was just a pittance. I hear that Pryor also had a flair for Gucci shoes and jewelry etc. Now that he's done with school, the NCAA can't touch him any longer. That 5-game suspension can also be tossed into the waste basket. It's looking more and more like Pryor, Tressel and OSU will soon be following in the footsteps of Reggie Bush, Pete Carroll and USC if the wind is blowing in the direction I think it is. For the time being anyway. Many similarities there.
Probably the best chance of this kind of thing landing elsewhere would be anyplace football is king and players can command the kind of public attention those guys got. The field is wide open. I'm not sure where Oklahoma stands in all of this being that they are just as large a target and the players are just as popular in Norman as anyplace else. Maybe the Rhett Bomar thing a couple years ago cooled things down there for a while. Can't really say. But what I can say is that the future of many big football programs seems to rest on the willingness and ability of people close to the programs (some fans, boosters, people in the know etc.) to keep their yaps shut.
Nowadays, the NFL is waiting just around the corner begging the best college football talent to abandon the gulag, the underground sneakiness and/or self imposed poverty, and just "come on down"... the price is right!
Is this whole scenario sick or what? Our future heroes keep on rising up from the most foul situations and set of circumstances ever witnessed in CFB -- time and time again. I forget exactly where Cam Newton landed, but it's probably a safe bet to say he's the next future mega millionaire in pro football, either him or it might be someone like Andrew Luck or maybe a guy like Eric Berry... maybe.
It's interesting that USC has also been "officially" stripped of their '04 BCS title. I didn't know the NCAA could invalidate anything the BCS does. I guess they can do that just by saying they forfeit their wins. To me, all of this "official" nonsense is nothing but a bunch of ceremonious hoy palloy. None if this will matter for about 50 years when all that's left will be "official" records to know teams by.
However, in the spirit of "official" proclamations... I say let Auburn have USC's '04 title. They'll need it when Oregon gets awarded Auburn's '10 title once the NCAA gets around to opening up Cam Newton's can of worms. (Go Ducks) Now if that doesn't prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Tommy Tuberville was hands down a much better coach than Gene Chizik, nothing ever will. As long as the history books get it right, that's all that matters.
But then again, we may have to wait and see what happens to Oregon when the NCAA is done with them. I guess that would mean that Chip Kelly isn't really as good a football coach as I though he was. (darn it)
AHA! I knew it all along.... eventually Boise State will be declared the BCS champion of CFB for the 2010 season without even playing for it! (Maybe that will shut them up once and for all.)
Could this mean that my $500 bet at 15-1 on them to win it all last season will pay off?
(just kidding... I doubt that the Greek really gives a sh*t what the NCAA has to say... and neither do I or do most
CFB fans for that matter, even if they do seem adept at creating pot holes in the road to success after the fact.)
Just step back for a moment and then look at all that's happened so far.
Do the names "Barnum and Bailey" come to mind?
About all that's left for us die hard fans of CFB is to look forward to is the upcoming season and to hope things work out for our own homer selves. It gets kind of tough though trying to size things up with all of these curve balls flying around everywhere you look. Now that upcoming Colorado/Ohio State game is starting to look very interesting.
BOL to everyone here this season. You'll need all you can get. Truer words were never spoken.
Probably the best chance of this kind of thing landing elsewhere would be anyplace football is king and players can command the kind of public attention those guys got. The field is wide open. I'm not sure where Oklahoma stands in all of this being that they are just as large a target and the players are just as popular in Norman as anyplace else. Maybe the Rhett Bomar thing a couple years ago cooled things down there for a while. Can't really say. But what I can say is that the future of many big football programs seems to rest on the willingness and ability of people close to the programs (some fans, boosters, people in the know etc.) to keep their yaps shut.
Nowadays, the NFL is waiting just around the corner begging the best college football talent to abandon the gulag, the underground sneakiness and/or self imposed poverty, and just "come on down"... the price is right!
Is this whole scenario sick or what? Our future heroes keep on rising up from the most foul situations and set of circumstances ever witnessed in CFB -- time and time again. I forget exactly where Cam Newton landed, but it's probably a safe bet to say he's the next future mega millionaire in pro football, either him or it might be someone like Andrew Luck or maybe a guy like Eric Berry... maybe.
It's interesting that USC has also been "officially" stripped of their '04 BCS title. I didn't know the NCAA could invalidate anything the BCS does. I guess they can do that just by saying they forfeit their wins. To me, all of this "official" nonsense is nothing but a bunch of ceremonious hoy palloy. None if this will matter for about 50 years when all that's left will be "official" records to know teams by.
However, in the spirit of "official" proclamations... I say let Auburn have USC's '04 title. They'll need it when Oregon gets awarded Auburn's '10 title once the NCAA gets around to opening up Cam Newton's can of worms. (Go Ducks) Now if that doesn't prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that Tommy Tuberville was hands down a much better coach than Gene Chizik, nothing ever will. As long as the history books get it right, that's all that matters.
But then again, we may have to wait and see what happens to Oregon when the NCAA is done with them. I guess that would mean that Chip Kelly isn't really as good a football coach as I though he was. (darn it)
AHA! I knew it all along.... eventually Boise State will be declared the BCS champion of CFB for the 2010 season without even playing for it! (Maybe that will shut them up once and for all.)
Could this mean that my $500 bet at 15-1 on them to win it all last season will pay off?
(just kidding... I doubt that the Greek really gives a sh*t what the NCAA has to say... and neither do I or do most
CFB fans for that matter, even if they do seem adept at creating pot holes in the road to success after the fact.)
Just step back for a moment and then look at all that's happened so far.
Do the names "Barnum and Bailey" come to mind?
About all that's left for us die hard fans of CFB is to look forward to is the upcoming season and to hope things work out for our own homer selves. It gets kind of tough though trying to size things up with all of these curve balls flying around everywhere you look. Now that upcoming Colorado/Ohio State game is starting to look very interesting.
BOL to everyone here this season. You'll need all you can get. Truer words were never spoken.
what could the NCAA do? wouldnt they be required to do a full investigation before coming to a decision? the NCAA is often very slow. It was on OSU's and Tressel's shoulders to do the right thing and suspend them immediately. But that would have made for an awful bowl game that OSU would lose and OSU didnt want that.
So they tried to do the next best thing to cover their ass.
OSU's penalities should be stiff. Even though they cleaned house, there have to be strong repercussions, otherwise we'll continue to see athletes pull crap like this.
It would be nice to see TP pay for some of his actions (a la Bush and losing the Heisman and MNC), but since he didnt accomplish as much and now that he's gone....not as much that can be done besides vacate wins and such.
I know this will never happen but how about the NFL/NBA coming out with a statement saying something like, "we won't draft any student athlete if you've been implicated in any type of cheating scandal involving your school, while the investigation is still underway. Once the issue has been resolved, you can apply for entry into the draft."
Post draft..."any player found guilty of impropriety while in college shall forfiet 25-50% of his base NFL salary". How many really good college players would want to jeapordize something like this.
Not my original though, I was at the Mavs game last night and one of my good buddies who's in town on business came up with it. He and I were marginal players at best but something like this where you are jeapordizing the future ability to play in the league would get their attention.
If something like this was in place, if the NCAA could not clean up college athletics, then the NCAA should be disbanded because at this point they would not be trying to clean up sports.
WinOne!!
Post draft..."any player found guilty of impropriety while in college shall forfiet 25-50% of his base NFL salary". How many really good college players would want to jeapordize something like this.
Not my original though, I was at the Mavs game last night and one of my good buddies who's in town on business came up with it. He and I were marginal players at best but something like this where you are jeapordizing the future ability to play in the league would get their attention.
If something like this was in place, if the NCAA could not clean up college athletics, then the NCAA should be disbanded because at this point they would not be trying to clean up sports.
WinOne!!
sdf, the NFL says, hey bro' if the going gets too tough, it's time to bail. The NCAA should realize this and get off their high horse. Their penalties can be tossed in the trash with nothing more than a whim. Ask Pete Carrol.
In principle I agree with everything you are saying. Everyone has to play by the same rules written the way they are written. But as long as Reggie Bush doesn't have to pay back his NFL signing bonus, and as long as USC or anyone else that gets the same treatment from NCAA infractions investigations doesn't have to pay back the money they were paid at the time, nothing the NCAA does will have any kind of lasting effect and that will never happen. The BCS and the conferences control the purse strings. Perhaps in the short term some players and some schools will cool it, but it won't ever be for very long as long as the NCAA remains as slow to act as they are (under great duress from the BCS to leave things be) and as long as the NFL keeps dangling carrots in front of college football players enticing them to leave school early. "Take the money and run" will remain a powerful influence and a viable choice as long as money is at the heart of the matter. It's human nature. It's also a human need, and I'm not just talking about Gucci shoes.
Even in RB's situtuation, giving back the Heisman was merely a self administered slap on the wrist compared to paying back all of his so called "ill gotten" gains. By his play, he still deserved it and everyone knows it. He does too. According to the rules, he also deserved to give it back and he did. What he does later in the NFL hardly changes anything he gets from the NFL when he leaves college football. His name alone deserves a reward. So it goes in the entertainment business. Money does't speak, it swears loudly. Some things will never change.
To me that is the driving force from which I have come to the conclusion that the rules just aren't set up right anymore. The threat of punishment without the possibility of reward has long been acknowledged as a failed approch to influencing human behavior. It assumes fear based reasoning behind motivation will solve things and perhaps for a year or two it may. But in the long run, that creates rebelliousness not compliance.
As long as the pressures coming at players from two opposite directions are not acknowledged for what they are and the rules are not changed to address today's issues and today's problems, it's only logical that players and coaches and football programs will be torn in two opposite directions, constantly being pushed into the gray area and over the line too often. The little voice in their head says it's time to rebel, test things. Is this the devil's advocate or is it common sense? One thing for certainis that it's a part of human nature and either the NCAA realizes this and accepts it and then does something about it or this will go on until they destroy themselves over it. In the long run, nothing will change, only get worse.
The rules are such that making right choices isn't an easy thing to do anymore. The NFL accepts college drop outs. They pay them big signing bonuses. Even if a player doesn't make that cut, he can still command a million dollars every year or two wherever he goes, even in the CFL. Just like in Pryor's situation, what's to lose? A slap on the wrist and then the NFL says to him, don't worry about that, everything is going to be fine. Or maybe some player blows out a knee one spring day and it all goes poof. Then what? (Ask Oregon State's all-American wideout James Rogers what he thinks about all of this. He HAS to play another year because he blew out his knee right before the end of his junior season. His younger brother Quizz was luckier and now he's gone.) Just look at what that scenario has done to the college football recruiting game? Has it ever mattered as much as it does now because of that simple shift in the ground rules every player sees? And does that bug the coaches?
That's plenty for now. It could take me weeks to get this all out of my system.
I never much cared for Ohio State any way.
In principle I agree with everything you are saying. Everyone has to play by the same rules written the way they are written. But as long as Reggie Bush doesn't have to pay back his NFL signing bonus, and as long as USC or anyone else that gets the same treatment from NCAA infractions investigations doesn't have to pay back the money they were paid at the time, nothing the NCAA does will have any kind of lasting effect and that will never happen. The BCS and the conferences control the purse strings. Perhaps in the short term some players and some schools will cool it, but it won't ever be for very long as long as the NCAA remains as slow to act as they are (under great duress from the BCS to leave things be) and as long as the NFL keeps dangling carrots in front of college football players enticing them to leave school early. "Take the money and run" will remain a powerful influence and a viable choice as long as money is at the heart of the matter. It's human nature. It's also a human need, and I'm not just talking about Gucci shoes.
Even in RB's situtuation, giving back the Heisman was merely a self administered slap on the wrist compared to paying back all of his so called "ill gotten" gains. By his play, he still deserved it and everyone knows it. He does too. According to the rules, he also deserved to give it back and he did. What he does later in the NFL hardly changes anything he gets from the NFL when he leaves college football. His name alone deserves a reward. So it goes in the entertainment business. Money does't speak, it swears loudly. Some things will never change.
To me that is the driving force from which I have come to the conclusion that the rules just aren't set up right anymore. The threat of punishment without the possibility of reward has long been acknowledged as a failed approch to influencing human behavior. It assumes fear based reasoning behind motivation will solve things and perhaps for a year or two it may. But in the long run, that creates rebelliousness not compliance.
As long as the pressures coming at players from two opposite directions are not acknowledged for what they are and the rules are not changed to address today's issues and today's problems, it's only logical that players and coaches and football programs will be torn in two opposite directions, constantly being pushed into the gray area and over the line too often. The little voice in their head says it's time to rebel, test things. Is this the devil's advocate or is it common sense? One thing for certainis that it's a part of human nature and either the NCAA realizes this and accepts it and then does something about it or this will go on until they destroy themselves over it. In the long run, nothing will change, only get worse.
The rules are such that making right choices isn't an easy thing to do anymore. The NFL accepts college drop outs. They pay them big signing bonuses. Even if a player doesn't make that cut, he can still command a million dollars every year or two wherever he goes, even in the CFL. Just like in Pryor's situation, what's to lose? A slap on the wrist and then the NFL says to him, don't worry about that, everything is going to be fine. Or maybe some player blows out a knee one spring day and it all goes poof. Then what? (Ask Oregon State's all-American wideout James Rogers what he thinks about all of this. He HAS to play another year because he blew out his knee right before the end of his junior season. His younger brother Quizz was luckier and now he's gone.) Just look at what that scenario has done to the college football recruiting game? Has it ever mattered as much as it does now because of that simple shift in the ground rules every player sees? And does that bug the coaches?
That's plenty for now. It could take me weeks to get this all out of my system.
I never much cared for Ohio State any way.
WinOne, no it's definitely not an original idea. I think that's been around ever since the NFL opened up the draft to include "hardship" juniors. What was at one time strictly a hardship exception soon became an unfair disadvantage for everyone without a hardship... and that in itself is a hardship -- to be forced to sit out a year without the right to earn a good living just because your grandmother doesn't have Alzheimers or what have you. It was too subjective and so everyone gets to participate without showing cause. Or maybe this got off the ground in baseball and either a basketball player or a football player protested. I can't remember exactly where it began. Let's just blame everything on Pete Rozelle. He's not around to say much about it from his grave in Rancho Santa Fe. (I'm sure someone with a better recollection of history can straighten me out on this one.)
But you are right. It will never go back to the way it was. The ACLU would have a field day with it. Just think of how it would affect minority students and female athletes compared to the white guys and their families. Title IX. Oh sh*t. The only logical alternative would be to adapt. Upgrade the rules to accommodate students and football programs so the everyday things that lead them astray can be managed better and regulated instead of verbotten. It may not keep every junior in school but at least there won't be so many that get into trouble and are forced to flee the coop, and there won't be as much dirt laying around for the NCAA vultures to feed on. That's about as clean as it could ever be.
I think Pryor has more to worry about than just his reputation and getting drafted. It's far from over for him even though he called it quits. The feds are involved in this case, and people are talking about possible tax evasion by Pryor and others.. I know this is just small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. But the IRS can make it as easy or hard on you as they want. Plus this case can and probably will really be stretched out if they pursue those businesses and individals that paid cash and in return received collectible memorabilla that they eventually sold. This isn't as simple as Pryor getting a few bucks for signing his name along with free tattoos. In fact, the IRS may be telling Pryor to stay in town because they'll need him to get to those businesses/individuals.
Well you will never be able to cover your ass with a band aid that is for sure. The NCAA could have prevented the players from playing by simply denying the Ohio St appeal. Sure truth that came out recently was known by THE University at the get go. Yes they deserve everything they get. This is every bit as bad as the SMU thing.
