Instant Analysis: Ohio State-Wisconsin

The long and storied history of Ohio State football has witnessed a parade of icons and images too numerous to count. Saturday night in Madison, Wis., a young man named Terrelle Pryor took one very big step toward earning himself a prized place in a proud program’s pigskin pantheon.

Any longtime observer of college football cannot deny the impression made by Mr. Pryor in his team’s heartstopping 20-17 triumph over a brokenhearted bunch of Badgers in Camp Randall Stadium. The greatest athletes of any age or era possess a magical ability to conquer the most daunting of circumstances, even when the odds seem stacked against them. In one drive that might soon acquire legendary, even mythical, status in the state of Ohio, the teenager wearing jersey No. 2 became a distinct No. 1 in the hearts of Buckeyes from Lisbon to Lima and Dayton to Defiance.

Football might be a 60-minute game, but everything you need to know about this ballyhooed Big Ten backyard brawl occurred in one segment of five minutes and twenty-three seconds, for it was in that length of time that Terrelle Pryor—with his Bucks trailing 17-13 and facing the prospect of a ruined season—staged a rally-round-the-flag fightback for the ages, squarely in the midst of enemy territory.

To appreciate what Pryor produced on a successful march that could become almost as famous as George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, one needs to appreciate the first 53 and a half minutes of the Rumble at Camp Randall.

Thrown into the fire as OSU’s starting signal caller after Todd Boeckman’s fall from grace in mid-September, Pryor—an evidently gifted athlete endowed with prodigious physical talents—encountered the first severe test of his heavily-hyped collegiate career against a bruising Badger defense led by DeAndre Levy, a devastating dervish of a strongside linebacker. Thrust into the pressure-cooker of a must-win Big Ten game against a big-name opponent, on the road and at night, Pryor had to learn on the job, but not to the extent that some unavoidable freshman mistakes would cost his team the victory it simply had to have. As the night unfolded, Pryor constantly walked that very tightrope, caught between the limits imposed on him by youth, and the demands placed on him by the sport of college football. At Ohio State, the rewards of a glorious victory are matched only by the agonies of a stomach-punch setback. Knowing this, Pryor accepted the fate that’s part of the territory for a freshman quarterback who takes the reins at an elite program. The 19-year-old walked into the Camp Randall cauldron, into the moment that would determine the trajectory of his team’s season.

Unsurprisingly, Pryor displayed a mixture of skill and squeamishness in the prime-time spotlight. His natural talents and his lack of mastery were both equally apparent against Wisconsin’s defense. On one play, Pryor would throw a dart; on the next snap, he’d lob a floater into tight coverage. Learning and leading at the same time, as he tried to gain a fuller feel for the college game that, in a few years, will kneel before his ripened form of athleticism, Pryor seemed to be processing the game as it unfolded in front of him. This pattern, this grand walking of the tightrope, never ceased throughout the entirety of the proceedings.

On one play, Pryor would leave Wisconsin defenders swiping at nothing but air. On the next portion of his gridiron apprenticeship, Pryor would take a 20-yard sack instead of throwing the rock away. On and on, the opposites emerged, as Terrelle Pryor sought to fulfill his responsibilities while acknowledging his imperfections. This fascinating internal drama occupied the mind of Mr. Pryor over the game’s first 53 and a half minutes. Because of some key moments of indecision from Pryor in the Badgers’ red zone, long Ohio State drives turned into mere field goals, enabling the resilient home team to establish a 17-13 lead with 6:31 left in the fourth quarter.

The stage was set: With his margin for error reduced to nothing, Terrelle Pryor—bearer of expectations, anointed keeper of the Buckeye flame, and heralded Saturday savior for Ohioans from Massillon to Mansfield—took the field and began a paydirt-or-bust mission that would reverberate throughout the remainder of the 2008 season. A win, and the Oct. 25 date with Penn State would almost surely decide the Big Ten title. A loss, and a season’s wreckage would be found in Bucky Badger’s ballpark. Jim Tressel’s team could have had a lead heading into the final, fateful minutes of regulation time, but it seemed somehow fitting that after his mixture of successes and stumbles, Pryor would decide this contest, one way or another, in the crucible of crunch time.

Would this young man, given a burden both impossible and irresistible, emerge a tougher warrior after walking through the flames of pulse-pounding pigskin pressure? Or would the heat of the moment melt Terrelle Pryor’s nerves at a time when Ohio State needed excellence from its still-evolving field general?

That final drive of 5:23—that final march of 12 plays and 80 yards into the Wisconsin end zone—wasn’t a smoothly-paved road. Even then, Pryor alternated between the baffling—a fumble that almost ruined the whole evening for the Bucks—and the brilliant—a calm throw into a pocket of zone coverage that quickly erased the memory of that very fumble. But what must stand out on that drive is that after that fumble, the mistakes stopped flowing from Pryor. The game—in its most decisive moments—came naturally to the One Who Would Be King. Once in the Wisconsin red zone, with the clock ticking toward the one-minute mark of regulation, Pryor didn’t take an errant step or hit a false note. His command of his huddle, his offense, his team, his program, acquired a different aura, a feeling of total calmness and certitude. And when No. 2 strolled into the end zone from 11 yards out with 68 seconds left on the clock, the life of Terrelle Pryor changed in ways that—while not guaranteed to be permanent or far-reaching—surely show signs of casting a long shadow over the rest of the Big Ten for the next few seasons.

Ordinary freshmen don’t do what Terrelle Pryor did on a memorable night in Madison. Ordinary 19-year-olds don’t stare down a typical Bret Bielema-coached defense—on the road, at night—and produce a ballsy late-game touchdown on a lengthy do-or-die drive.

College football, like other sports, will produce a Golden Child every now and then, a leader whose mere presence seems to repeatedly create improbable victories forged from the fires of the most difficult situations imaginable. Men like Jay Barker of Alabama and Tommie Frazier of Nebraska did this solely at the collegiate level. John Elway and Joe Montana, after establishing their reputations as comeback masters at Stanford and Notre Dame, manufactured more last-minute magic in the NFL. All those prime performers—among many, many others in the history of college football—shared one common bond: At a certain point in their very young careers, they left that unmistakable impression only a Golden Child can imprint on the mind’s eye.

Saturday night in Wisconsin, Terrelle Pryor suggested to all the world that this sometimes-tentative teen, who is still immersed in a demanding learning process, will become a Golden Child before very long. And now that the Badgers have been beaten back, the young man entrusted with the fate of a storied program just got a little bit older and wiser. When Penn State visits the Horseshoe later this month, a Golden Child—in the midst of his freshman season—will have a chance to stamp himself as a college football legend. That’s what happens, after all, when you overcome the pressure and deliver a victory as sweet as the one Ohio State claimed on an unforgettable evening in October.

The King of the Big Ten is, contrary to the rumors that surfaced after the loss to USC, definitely not dead. Long live the king, now led by its pigskin prince, a Golden Child by the name of Terrelle Pryor.