Buckeyes’ Pryor is ready for all the rage

Given the level of vitriol that has been directed at Terrelle Pryor, this design wasn’t all that surprising.

The Penn State Marketing Association, a student group at the school, sells alternate “white-out” T-shirts for football home games. The shirt created for this week featured the Nittany Lion handing a box of Kleenex to the Ohio State quarterback with the title “THE NUTCRACKER” with “a Terrelle Cryer Story” written in cursive underneath.

Though The Daily Collegian reported Thursday that the shirts were pulled from the shelves because of negative feedback from alumni and students, there’s little question that Pryor is reviled at Penn State like few other opposing players in recent history.

Pryor will play at Beaver Stadium for the first time on Saturday when he leads the Buckeyes against Penn State, one of the home-state schools he spurned for Ohio State.

“I’d like to get a few (of those shirts) before the game,” Pryor told reporters this week when told of their existence. “I’d like to wear one in warm-ups. I guess they’re trying to get in my head. I’m glad I found out before the game. I can’t let anything get to me.”

For many Penn State fans, this seems to go beyond just a choice of colleges. Wilson (West Lawn) grad Chad Henne was thought to be more likely to play quarterback for the Lions than Pryor, but there weren’t exactly anti-Henne shirts being mass-produced when he started for Michigan in Happy Valley in 2006.

Of course, Pryor’s recruitment was more stretched out than Henne’s. While Henne decided before his senior season at Wilson, Pryor – rated by some recruiting services as the best prospect in the country – held a press conference on national signing day to announce he wouldn’t be signing anywhere.

Though Penn State was one of his final schools along with Ohio State, Michigan and Oregon, there was a sense that Pryor had the Buckeyes at the top of his list the entire time, choosing to wait until after his Jeannette team captured a PIAA basketball title at Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center before making it official.

“I really don’t know if he mentioned Penn State to everyone or if he had it set in his mind that he was gonna go to Ohio State the whole time,” Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark said this week.

That line of thinking came from interviews Pryor did after winning the state basketball title upon being hounded about his college choice. In those, Pryor called Penn State “too country,” saying, “I just don’t like the area.”

Leading up to last season’s meeting, Pryor emphatically said, “I’m from Ohio now.”

For his part, Pryor fully understands what he’s liable to face from the fans on Saturday.

“They’re going to tear me up,” Pryor said after the Buckeyes’ win over New Mexico State last week. “I’m sure they’re going to be giving me a lot of stuff, maybe throwing stuff, saying a lot of things, but I won’t hear any of it. ... I got my family with me, all 75 (players) that travel, and we’re going to be ready to rock. I can’t wait.

“I’m looking forward to it, you guys are looking forward to it, we’re all looking forward to it. These big games, this is why you come to Ohio State.”

Though he’s only a sophomore, Pryor is already used to criticism. After a promising season as a true freshman, he has yet to make the jump that many were expecting him to in his second year. He was surprisingly pegged as the Big Ten Preseason Offensive Player of the Year over the summer, but hasn’t lived up to that hype.

The 6-foot-6 athlete has taken abuse from fans in Columbus as well, particularly after the Buckeyes suffered a shocking loss at Purdue last month in which Pryor committed four turnovers.

“I’ve been annoyed with some of our people,” the Penn State coach said on his weekly radio show. “People have put out T-shirts knocking the kid. He’s a great player and he’s gotten better. … He gets enough junk from Ohio State fans, I guess, without that.

“He’s a good kid. I enjoyed getting to know him. Forget about all this junk about personalities. I was disappointed in some of our students. But in all fairness to them, they came around and said it was a mistake (to make the shirts). … He’s a great kid and a heck of an athlete.”