On Terrelle Pryor and his "mentor," LeBron James, the Chosen Two.
View full sizeLike his mentor, LeBron James, Ohio State's Terrelle Pryor has clearly displayed his belief that the rules are different for members of the sporting elite, says Bill Livingston.NEW ORLEANS -- Terrelle Pryor, the Ohio State quarterback who was a fine high school basketball player, surprised Ohio State coaches this season by proclaiming on Twitter that he would like to play basketball again.
LeBron James, the NBA superstar, who was a fine high school football player, surprised Cavaliers fans this summer by defecting to Miami as a free agent.
The pair communicates by Twitter and cell phone, with James, loyal Ohioan that he is, saluting the Buckeyes' rout of the "baby Blue" (Michigan) in late November.
In the memorabilia sale scandal, Pryor has come close to Maurice Clarett in blowing up what he has built at Ohio State. Clarett finished the job, then tried to bring the OSU program down with him.
Pryor's overall legacy is not going to be the national championship "hump" he promised to help surmount when he was recruited. If he stays, his legacy will be the cumulative effect of nearly four full years under center -- the stat-padding routs of bottom-feeders and the shining record as a starter that OSU finagled for him by letting another player take the first snap of the Fiesta Bowl.
But all that is certain now is that Pryor can't win the Heisman Trophy after missing five games next season with his suspension, nor can OSU likely win a national title during his stay because of it. Pryor and the rest of the Tat Rats, their tattoo parlor sell-a-thon now exposed, have promised to come back for their senior years. There was a payoff for that pledge, with none of the players receiving extra punishment, such as a missed series or quarter, during Tuesday's Sugar Bowl game against Arkansas.
Pryor clearly put little value on his collegiate career or he would not have sold such tokens of success in it as his gold pants trinket, symbolic of a victory over Michigan, or his 2008 Big Ten championship ring. Making good on his promise to return would be the best thing for him. It would, however, be at odds with his limitless view of himself.
Pryor and James are members of the fraternity of the sports elite. They are the Chosen Two. They share a background that wasn't silk sheets and silver spoons and a culture of entitlement, the latter shown in James' high school Hummer and Pryor's bling for sale.
Will the "Block O" on Pryor's arm mean any more than did the script words "Family" and "Loyalty" on the torso of James? It would certainly be an enormous lie Pryor told coach Jim Tressel, were he to leave.
A troubling aspect, though, is that Pryor and James always emphasized going to the "next level." Implicit in this was a feeling that wherever they were was just a stepping stone to a bigger stage and more self-aggrandizement.
James toyed with the idea of a legal challenge to the NBA draft while still at Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary.
He and Clarett, the ex-convict who led Ohio State to the 2002 national championship, were both major celebrities as teenagers, as was Pryor. Clarett actually did challenge the NFL draft after he was suspended for his sophomore season for grabbing everything anyone would hand him. After first winning in court, he lost on appeal.
For his part, Pryor called a news conference on national signing day -- to announce he wasn't signing, being undecided on which college he would deign to play for. He chose Ohio State because its offensive scheme is similar to those of NFL teams, thus, he thought, hastening his departure.
It should have been a red flag when Pryor began associating with James, when he said James was "his mentor," and when he asked Buckeye fans to "treat [James] with respect" if he were to attend the OSU-Miami game in Columbus in the wake of his desertion of the Cavs. James, however, skipped the game as lightly as he skipped town.
Looking back even farther, it should have been a concern when James spoke at such length to me about Pryor, then a freshman, at the Cavs' training camp media day in 2008. James was trying to recruit Pryor as a client for his LRMR Sports Agency, the same sycophantic band who orchestrated the public relations H-bomb that was "The Decision."
Tressel shrugs when asked about the Pryor-James relationship. "They all Tweet," he said, which at least showed more of a handle on the social network than Penn State's octogenarian Joe Paterno, who calls it "Twiddly-dee."
Pryor's career has not been all it was supposed to be. The problem is not only his scattershot arm, but in his head and the muddled values that swirl inside it. It was evident in the eyeblack patches he wore as a freshman, on which he wrote "Vick" as a tribute to NFL quarterback Michael Vick, an ex-con and dog killer.
The next problem could be in his ear, because the mentor who has it favors greener pastures.