The End Zone: Ohio State

Ohio State beat writer Matt Markey

His ultimate whimsy would have Terrelle Pryor riding into Penn State's Beaver Stadium atop a mighty steed, plundering and vanquishing the peasantry, and then charging off towards his more metropolitan digs in Columbus. The indigenous folks have a different version of nirvana. They want to see Pryor -- Pennsylvania's Prodigal Son who abandoned the Keystone State for that evil kingdom across the Ohio River – defeated and humiliated. When Pryor called his state's university “too country” and then cast his prodigious lot with the Buckeyes, most Quaker Staters from Oil City to Doylestown saw it as the kiss of Judas Iscariot, the ultimate betrayal. The populace along the ridges of the Allegheny Plateau were steamed by Pryor's comments about their prized school.

Pryor fumbled in last year's game, setting up Penn State's winning touchdown, and the bumpkins celebrated his folly like Benedict Arnold had been felled by a bullet from his own revolver. Photos of a demoralized Pryor slumped on the bench, his hands cradling his head, became the trendy wall paper on the State College campus. Now Pryor goes home, where 100,000 should be foaming at the mouth in anticipation of delivering more misery. For years they were enamored with him -- until Pryor said he'd huddle with the enemy. Almost two years later, the Nittany Lions remain a bitter, jilted lover from that failed courtship of Terrelle Pryor.