Time for Pryor saga to end

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I'm going to take a big risk here and assume that you'll keep reading after you see the subject.The recruitment of Pennsylvania high school quarterback Terrelle Pryor.Thanks for justifying my faith.I'm with you, I'm sick and tired of the Pryor saga. The next time I read his name on these pages or see him on television, I hope it's when he announces his college. From a selfish standpoint, I'm hoping its Penn State so I can watch this marvelous athlete play. But it wouldn't matter if it's Eastern Michigan -- his mentor Charlie Batch's school -- which doesn't seem so unrealistic the way Pryor keeps adding colleges to his list and subtracting them five minutes later. Of course, that's his prerogative. He's 18, for one. It's his life, for two. It's important that he makes the right choice and is happy. He doesn't have to do it on my timetable or yours.That's why Pryor is the last person you should blame for making his recruiting story so tiresome. You want to finger somebody? Finger the media for its over-the-top coverage. It would be easy to single out Channel 11 here in Pittsburgh for breathlessly leading its noon newscast last Wednesday by going to Jeannette High School where Pryor announced he was announcing nothing.That was pretty ridiculous. But that would be hypocritical on my part. After all, my newspaper runs the Terrelle Pryor Diary even though the kid hasn't been around long enough to have anything substantial to say. As my esteemed colleague Gene Collier points out, "It's a problem when he writes more in the paper than I do."But, obviously, there's an audience for this nonsense. Web sites devoted to recruiting are all over the Internet. They cater to a troubled class of people -- those who seem to live and die with where a teenager decides to play his college football. On the sports fans food chain, they rank right above the pesky adult autograph seekers you see hanging around every sports event. They need to get a life.Then, there are the college coaches who add to a top recruit's confusion with their full-court, non-stop pressure. These coaches make hundreds of thousands of dollars or -- in the case of head coaches -- millions, yet their jobs seem so demeaning at times. Their livelihoods depend on the whims of 17- and 18-year-old kids, which leads to a lot of teenaged butt smooching.Penn State defensive coordinator Tom Bradley might be the best recruiter in the country. It's believed he's the only reason Pryor is interested in Penn State. Their relationship is such that Pryor will have a hard time looking Bradley in the eye and telling him he's going to Ohio State or Michigan, if it comes to that. (Sorry, Eastern Michigan fans). Imagine what a coach has to do to build that kind of relationship.In Pryor's case, Bradley has worked his family. "My father loves him," Pryor told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Mike White. Bradley also has sent page after page of handwritten notes to Pryor. What could he possibly be telling him? You know, other than how much he loves him as a player?"You might write to congratulate a kid on a game or comment on something happening in his life or mention something that's going on at Pitt," said Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, another excellent recruiter who signed just about every top prospect in Pennsylvania other than Pryor.Wannstedt has mailed his share of letters and sees nothing demeaning about the recruiting process."Recruiting is sales," he said. "If you've got a good product and you believe in that product, it's easy to sell."Recruiting used to be crazier, if you can believe that. Before text-messaging recruits was banned by the NCAA last summer, Wannstedt said he would text 25 recruits at a time and "fall asleep with my phone on my chest." Trinity High School linebacker Andrew Sweat once received 40 texts in one day from the Notre Dame coaching staff. Apparently, the Ohio State staff sent a few more because Sweat signed with the Buckeyes last week.There also are more dead periods in recruiting when the coaches aren't allowed to contact recruits. Wannstedt tells the story that, when he was an assistant at Miami, he visited the Tampa home of offensive lineman Kipp Vickers.On Christmas Eve.Sorry, that's demeaning.Wannstedt got his man, by the way. Vickers, who went on to a seven-year NFL career, picked Miami over Michigan.Pryor, too, eventually will make his college choice. If I were him, I'd take all the time I needed to make the right choice, no matter how much anguish it might cause the concerned coaches and the fans that live on the Internet. I'd probably throw in a trip to Oregon for an official visit even if I had no interest in going there.Why not use the system? Everyone else in the process is using Pryor.(Contact Ron Cook at rcook@post-gazette.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)