Like many other high school football stars across the country today, Terrelle Pryor sat at a podium of friends, coaches and media. However, the nation’s top quarterback did disclose where he will be playing his college ball. What he did do was answer questions about his recruitment.
“No, I will not make my commitment today,” he told ESPNU, “I’m delaying because no one really knows this, but I play football, we won the state championship and two days later I jumped into basketball, so I haven’t had too much time to get involved in the recruiting process. I’d like to be fair to the coaches, they’ve put a lot of time into me.”
His head coach Ray Reitz echoed the same sentiments as his star player, “We won the state title and two days later he’s on the bus going to Charlotte. The basketball team had a lot of make-up games because of how long the football season went. At one point they played five games in seven days. I feel like him waiting is the best decision.”
With the dead period ending on February 8, that is when Pryor will be allowed to take more official visits. After that, he will have until April 1st to sign a letter of intent. During today’s conference, he only mentioned taking one more trip.
“It’s Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, Penn State, Oregon’s still in it because I have time, so I can visit now so I can head out there and check it out.”
As far as the schools themselves, Pryor says none of them are pressuring him.
“No, the programs haven’t given me a deadline,” he said, “they have all said they have an open spot and they’ll wait as long as possible,” and as for those Michigan and Ohio State fans on the world wide web, Pryor said, “Yeah, I hear from message boards all the time, them battling, it’s the biggest rivalry in college every time they play millions of people are waiting, they’re two great programs.”
Also present at today’s press conference was Pittsburgh Steeler QB Charlie Batch who talked about the his role in the process and perhaps summed up the day the best.
“Basically I’m putting everything out on the table for him but ultimately it’s his decision and when he’s comfortable he’ll do it but today was not the day.”