Rose Bowl Storylines: How Terrelle Pryor Has Affected Oregon, Ohio State

Many college football enthusiasts, from Pennsylvania to Oregon, remember two years ago when a quarterback named Terrelle Pryor from Jeannette, Pa. was the talk of the nation and schools from all over the country were coveting his services. 

There were many other quarterbacks going through the same process with much less national excitement. One of them was the City College of San Francisco's Jeremiah Masoli. 

Masoli had just finished up his freshman year, which wound up in a national championship for the Rams. In fact, Masoli didn’t even decide which school to go to until the spring—about two months after signing day. 

He chose the Ducks and while he put up impressive stats in junior college, no one was expecting what was to come.

Pryor eventually committed to Ohio State, claiming Oregon was just too far away while hinting that Ohio State would better prepare him for the National Football League. 

Duck fans were disappointed, but not surprised as Oregon was and still is new to the national recruiting front. 

The quarterbacks started their 2008 season with other signal callers in front of them—with Pryor sitting behind Todd Boeckman in Columbus and Masoli fifth on the depth chart in Eugene. Ohio State looked to be a national championship contender again, until USC humbled them 35-3 on a sunny day in Southern California. 

That was when things changed for the Buckeyes.

Pryor became the starter midway through his freshman season and looked impressive for most of snaps despite still making some “freshman mistakes.” 

In Eugene, after injuries to multiple quarterbacks, Masoli found himself starting for the Ducks, a team that the previous year had been ranked No. 2 in November. 

To say Masoli struggled at first would be putting it nicely. He was 28-for-48 in the first four games of his career, but did not throw any interceptions. As the season progressed, things seemed to slow down for Masoli, though. You could see steady improvement through the final month of the season.

Fast forward to this year and both teams were ranked highly. Yet, both quarterbacks struggled early, Masoli looking worse than Pryor, but Masoli, becoming a perennial slow starter, progressively got better throughout the season. 

After a four-completion performance against Utah, the junior completed 21 of 25 passes with three touchdowns against then-No. 6 California in a 42-3 rout of the Golden Bears.

Ohio State struggled against Navy early in the season and again lost to USC, leading people to question coach Jim Tressel’s playcalling and Pryor’s decision-making. 

Now both teams are sitting pretty as the champions of their respective conferences and are playing in the “Granddaddy of Them All.” 

Would either team be in this position if Pryor had gone to Oregon or Penn State instead of Ohio State? Would one of these teams have been better off? 

In the end, Pryor would have been a much better fit in Chip Kelly’s system, but Oregon fans would trade Masoli for Pryor in a second. 

Ohio State will defend Pryor because of his raw athleticism, but if Oregon gets up in this Rose Bowl game and forces Ohio State to throw the ball the majority of the time, the Ducks will win because Pryor has yet to show consistency to complete passes and be an accurate passer.

There is no doubt Pryor can be a huge star, but much more work needs to occur. The Rose Bowl game could be a place to take a big step forward as it sounds like Tressel will put more of the workload on Pryor’s shoulders. 

I may be an Oregon fan, but as a college football fan, I hope that this game is well-played by both teams and goes down to the wire.

Check back next week for next week’s Rose Bowl storyline, Oregon’s defense versus Ohio State’s offense.