ESPN’s upcoming special featuring Jon Gruden sitting down with former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor will focus mostly on what Pryor does off the field. But in an excerpt of the show that ESPN aired today, Pryor got into the off-field issues that led him to leave Ohio State.
Gruden asked Pryor, “How did all this happen?” and Pryor responded that he blames himself, although he didn’t get into any details about what, specifically, he and former Ohio State coach Jim Tressel did wrong.
“Pretty much me just making mistakes, you know, and especially losing a great coach to this great university, it was just a disaster,” Pryor said. “I’m very sorry, but at the same time I have to move on because I have a life to live. I’m disgusted on what really went down and what had to happen to the university. I regret the fact that coach Tressel had to leave and I regret the fact that I had to leave. I just wish I could still be there with my teammates. But I’m trying to get used to it and trying to move on.”
On SportsCenter today, ESPN revealed that it requested an interview with Pryor separate from the Xs and Os discussion he had with Gruden, but that the network declined to conduct the interview when agent Drew Rosenhaus said questions about Pryor selling his Ohio State memorabilia would be off limits.
It would be great to see a serious interview featuring a good ESPN journalist like Jeremy Schaap or Sal Paolantonio sitting down with Pryor, but Pryor doesn’t want to answer the tough questions he’d face in that forum. So all ESPN viewers will learn from Pryor is what Gruden gets out of him.