Penn State Football: What If Terrelle Pryor Had Chosen Penn State?

Embattled Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor has come under fire of late following the resignation of head coach Jim Tressel.

Tressel, who hid information from the Ohio State compliance office, his bosses, and the NCAA, made his own bed with his poor decision-making, but Pryor has become a scapegoat for many of the downfalls for the program in the aftermath.

A number of Penn State (and Michigan) fans have found themselves breathing a sigh of relief that their favorite program lost out to the Buckeyes on a recruiting tug-of-war for Pryor, as it appears it is a real possibility that Pryor has played his final college football game before starting his senior season.

Pryor was highly recruited out of Pennsylvania and entered the college football world with lofty expectations of leading the Buckeyes to Big Ten and BCS titles with a Heisman Trophy along the way. Maybe things have not gone quite as planned, but Pryor has led Ohio State to at least a share of three Big Ten titles and a pair of BCS bowl victories (Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl), and also has a perfect record against Michigan to go along with all of that.

But with the success has come plenty of controversy. Pryor has at times been more outspoken than he could have or should have been, and has said things that failed to go over well, including public backing for Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Mike Vick. It begs the question, would this have happened if Pryor had gone to Penn State? And how would Penn State's program look with Pryor in Happy Valley?

Let's flip the calendar back to 2007...

Penn State was wrapping up a 9-4 season with Anthony Morelli as the quarterback, and the transition to Daryll Clark was about to get underway. Pat Devlin was sitting third on the depth chart as well.

Penn State's quarterback situation was supposed to be in decent shape for the next few seasons, so the need for a quarterback in recruiting was not the most severe. But the opportunity to secure one of the highest rated prospects at the position and in the nation and keep him in your home state was definitely worth pursuing.

That prospect of course was Pryor. After a prolonged recruiting battle between Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, he decided to sign with the Buckeyes in the spring of 2008.

Let's pretend that decision ended up with Penn State on top. All of a sudden, the Nittany Lions would start the 2008 season with Clark, Devlin and Pryor on the roster.

An open competition probably would have been formulated for the replacement for Morelli, but Clark would have been the most likely to win the starting job, as he did in 2008 over Devlin.

With Pryor on Penn State's roster, there would have been no fumble in the Ohio State game, but Todd Boeckman was playing poorly at the start of the season and was no sure thing to hold on to the football either.

Devlin actually led the Nittany Lions to the big win in Columbus that season, but would Pryor have entered the game in relief of Clark at any point? If so, would he have fumbled and allowed Ohio State to take control of the game?

With Pryor on the roster and Clark seeing the starting job still in his hands, Devlin would probably still have transferred to Delaware. Once Devlin originally transferred, Penn State picked up Kevin Newsome in recruiting.

Newsome probably never comes to Penn State with Pryor on the roster, just a year separating the two. And the following recruiting season probably does not see Rob Bolden and Paul Jones commit to Penn State (maybe one of the two).

The quarterback situation would probably have stayed with Clark in 2009 even with Pryor on the roster, but the focus would have been on 2010, when Pryor would be groomed for the starting job with two years as a back-up.

Pryor was a starter early in his freshman season at Ohio State, so this could have led to a completely different Pryor on the field. Would his passing game have been fine-tuned while serving as a back-up? Would he have learned to read defenses a little differently?

And how would that 2010 season have gone if a conditioned Pryor was suiting up in a blue jersey with white numbers?

The odds are that there would have been no quarterback competition or controversy. Bolden, who may not have been on the team, would not be starting in week one as a true freshman, and he most certainly would not have been starting at Alabama in week two. Penn State failed to capitalize in the red zone a number of times last season, including the Alabama game.

Pryor completed 69.1% of his red zone passes in 2010, up roughly 17% from 2009. He accounted for 18 touchdown passes in the red zone in 2010, nearly twice as many as Bolden and Matt McGloin threw for Penn State in 2010 (10 total).

Again, if Pryor is getting playing time at Penn State, there is no Bolden or McGloin. Having Pryor may not have led the Nittany Lions to defeat Alabama on the road, but it may have resulted in a closer game.

Speculating how many wins Penn State would have had if Pryor was on the roster is really impossible to tell, but things could have been different. Pryor would have served two seasons as a back-up behind Clark.

There is no telling how different his game would have been by watching and learning in the back-up role, but there is also no telling how he would have reacted to that scenario.

And what if he got in to trouble?

Penn State has a very clean history when it comes to the football program. Players who are caught getting into mischief are punished, whether it be by suspension or being removed from the roster. The oversight at Penn State has done a commendable job with their football program, an area in which Ohio State seems to have let down the university.

Maybe Pryor would have been a different character at Penn State. It does not mean people would have liked him (there have been plenty of Penn State players that fans could not gel with), but if we are talking on-field production, the Pryor experiment would have been much different in Happy Valley.

Even if it was a little too country for him.

Kevin McGuire is the national college football writer for Examiner.com. Follow his college football discussion on Twitter @KevinOnCFB.