College Football News - Terrelle Pryor's Michael Vick quote

Terrelle Pryor of Ohio State has been a sports star before he even set foot on a college campus. His recruitment race between Michigan and Ohio State among other colleges like Oregon and Penn State was perhaps the most highly-publicized in sports history, and Pryor added fuel to the fire by waiting until after signing day to finally decide.

So in that respect, you would think Pryor would be a little more media savvy than what he showed this past weekend.

Pryor was asked about his “Mika Vick” eye black after the game, and his response has elicited plenty of questions from curious analysts and fans.

Pryor said that the “Mika” part was not a clever spelling of Vick’s name but was in fact a nickname given to his sister growing up and was written on his eye black for her.

But the Vick part was indeed in support of Michael Vick, the embattled former Atlanta Falcons and current Philadelphia Eagles quarterback who served 18 months in federal prison for his role in a dog-fighting ring.

It’s understandable that Pryor would be a fan of Vick, he revolutionized the position during his college days at Virginia Tech when he became one of the most dangerous run-pass threats in college football history, but Pryor’s reason as to why he still is a fan of Vick came out of his mouth a little awkwardly.

"I know what happened with him and, I mean, I don’t want to talk much. I’m just going to be very short and sweet with it, but I just feel he made his mistake and I think he just needs more support.”

That was Pryor’s first part of the statement, but the second part was a little more interesting to say the least.

“Not everybody’s the perfect person in the world,” he said. “I mean everyone kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me, whatever. I think that people need a second chance, and I’ve always looked up to Mike Vick, and I always will.”

You can kind of understand where Pryor is coming from on that statement, but it’s obvious he could benefit from a little more instruction from the OSU PR people.

Pryor wasn’t seeking more attention by making that statement, but he might have inadvertently brought some extra unwanted media hype his way with the awkwardness of his words.

Now, reporters will probably come looking for him after every game trying to get more gems out of him and it could be a bit of a distraction.

OSU head coach Jim Tressel tried to deflect attention with a few media-savvy jokes as he always seems to do, but it’ll be interesting to see whether or not this story goes away.

Pryor and the Buckeyes have bigger things to worry about, however. Bigger and faster things to be exact, as the USC Trojans come to town this Saturday night.

The Buckeyes are 6 ½-point underdogs to USC at BetUS right now, and Tressel and company need to put together and offensive gameplan to allow them to score more than the three points they scored in last year’s 35-3 loss.