Pryor Trusts Brewster
February 7, 2008Recruiting Shenanigans
February 7, 2008First off, I’m not sure how many fans of this site are still living in the Cleveland area, but today’s front page news regarding Eaton Corp. is pretty huge. I realize that many people emotionally rebelled against the Jacobs-to-Progressive Field change, but a Fortune 500 company planting roots for years to come in the heart of downtown Cleveland is hopefully a sign of things to come – at least on an economic basis.
Now that I got that out of the way…sports! The big news around these parts are undeniably regarding the Ohio State University football program. The 19 new members of the Buckeyes is one of the more impressive classes in recent history for a program that typically does not top the charts in terms of incoming freshmen. With these fairly big names (and big bodies) locked up for the foreseeable future, all attention turns to Terrelle Pryor – assuming it hadn’t been there from the get-go.
Bill Livingston agrees with most of the sentiment that the Penn State addition is something that the heralded quarterback is doing simply to appease the masses, with the “masses” being his family. Penn State deserves some credit for placing a lot of their recruiting efforts on Pryor’s father, opposed to Pryor himself, obviously realizing how much his father’s opinion means to the teenager. One thing that Ohio State has going for them in this battle is the obvious lack of quarterback talent that PSU has developed throughout recent memory. When you’re hoping to bring in a kid in his late ‘teens, what you did 20 years ago does not mean much.
Which leads us to the recruiting story of Kevin Hart. Kevin is a senior offensive lineman prospect that currently attends Fernley High School in Lyon County, Nevada. You see, Hart had recently held a press conference in his school to tell the entire student body (as well as faculty, staff and coaches) that he had agreed to play for Cal-Berkley. The only problem? Cal never recruited the student, sending a media blitz to find out what had actually happened. Was the family scammed?
After the fiasco spun out of control, Kevin finally admitted to making up the entire story, claiming that he just “really wanted to play D-I football,” and when he realized that it wasn’t going to happen, he simply made himself believe it. Now if anything is a testament to why high school students can’t go directly to the NFL, Kevin Hart should be the poster child. In the days of Social Networking sites and web 2.0, you can make anyone believe anything if you try hard enough. Its just unfortunate that the victim was actually self-inflicted.
For those after the professional sports scoop…
The Cavaliers will hopefully build off of the momentum from the Celtics win and take it to the road for back-to-backs against Houston (tonight) and Atlanta on Friday, which will start their four-games-in-five night stint. Could be ugly, but LeBron seems to flourish in moments like this. Let’s just hope that the rest of the team can gut it out.
The Browns will send a handful of deserving players to the Pro Bowl, one being quarterback Derek Anderson. Anderson still feels that the Pro Bowl is a reward, even though the luster has arguably died down over the years.
“This is still a great opportunity and I am honored to be here with a chance to compete with some of the other guys. And join my (Cleveland) teammates here to represent the Browns.”
Of course, when asked about his future in Cleveland, the quarterback gave the understandable answer of “only time will tell.” Time, and money, but time is definitely a key factor.
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When I saw the title of this blog, I figured that a Sharon Reed was getting naked again, someone had been shot, or that the Action 19 Tabloid News team had caught a member of a local pro sports franchise flogging the dolphin in a public library.
Sharon Reed getting naked made the local news here in Columbus. I remember that.