Ohio State tight end Rory Nicol didn’t think there was anything special about rivalries — until the opening kickoff of his first game against Michigan.
“I was a freshman and Ernest Shazor knocked me into, probably, the third week of my junior year,” he said, wincing at the thought.
Nicol’s story may provide some insight as Ohio State’s touted freshman quarterback, Terrelle Pryor, prepares for his first game against Michigan. A native of Jeannette, Pa., Pryor isn’t steeped in the traditions and the enmity of the series.
Yet.
After the Buckeyes’ 30-20 win last week at Illinois, Pryor said of the Wolverines: “I just think of them as every other team. They’re just another team to me until I get into this rivalry.”
For most players, the ferocity of the hitting and the stifling pressure set this game apart from all others. Almost everyone on both sides talks about the weight of the hopes of former players, the pad-cracking hits and the vitriol of the opposing fans.
“The first time I experienced it, it blew my mind,” said Ohio State kicker Ryan Pretorius, a native of South Africa who grew up 8,700 miles away from the rivalry and didn’t even play in that first game.
Adding kindling to the blaze, Pryor the nation’s No. 1 quarterback recruit last spring, chose Ohio State over Michigan.
“It’s in the past,” said Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez, also participating in the rivalry for the first time. “Once he got signed and he goes to another school, my focus is on the guy that’s playing for us. And you have to do that. I don’t think you can (do) hypotheticals and what-ifs. You have to say this is what reality is, and this is what we do.”
The callow 18-year-old Pryor has had a profound impact on the 10th-ranked Buckeyes (9-2, 6-1 Big Ten). They have won seven of eight games since he took over as the starter.
They need to beat Michigan (3-8. 2-5) to clinch a tie for the Big Ten title.
Pryor was not permitted to speak with reporters this week, but head coach Jim Tressel said he has the utmost confidence that his big (6-foot-6, 235 pounds), speedy freshman is ready to be thrown, literally, to the Wolves.
“I’m confident Terrelle can handle it,” he said.
His teammates feel the same way.
“He’s had people talk every week about how he was going to face some new challenge,” wide receiver Brian Robiskie said. “I can remember his first start, his first Big Ten start, his first road game. Every time it was something new and people kept trying to throw stuff at him. He just does such a good job of preparing through the week and tuning everything out, that none of that really matters. He understands, like everyone else, that this is the biggest game on our schedule.”
But few believe you really get a feel for the rivalry until you’ve experienced it.
“Any athlete worth his salt is always confident, but when you’re a freshman, everything is new,” Michigan quarterback Rick Leach said. “You can hear about the rivalry and read about it, but there’s nothing like being in the game.”
Pryor’s signing marked him as a celebrity in this football-mad state even before he had attended a college class.
Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee bemoans the pressure that that puts on a kid — at the same time he readily admitted that he was calling the coaching staff last spring to check on its progress in signing Pryor.
“What we have here is the development of a hero complex in America,” Gee said. “That is the fact that these are 18- or 19-year-olds and all of a sudden they’re put on the front pages of every major American newspaper. Think about the pressure it puts on him. I’ve been very impressed with him, but it also says something about the process.”
Pryor, who leads the Big Ten in pass efficiency, has had good games and bad. He has shown an amazing knack for avoiding a closing pocket and turning negative yards into big gains. But he has also had difficulty throwing the ball with authority more than 10 or 15 yards. At other times, he’s taken sacks instead of throwing the ball away.
He has said that playing college football is “easy.”
“I just think as you’re growing up and playing football, it’s just a game,” he said a week ago. “Football is more simple than everyone thinks. You have four downs to get a first down and every down until fourth down you have to get at least three yards or more. If you do that and you move the chains and don’t turn over the ball you get a victory.”
Michigan’s players are aware that Pryor could have been a teammate instead of an adversary. They have mostly said all the right things about going up against him.
“He’s got awesome athleticism when he gets out of the pocket, so you have to contain him,” linebacker Obi Ezeh said.
Then he added, “When he’s back there in the pocket, he’s just another quarterback.”
Ohio State’s players don’t find anything ordinary about Pryor.
“He’s made a ton of plays for us and that’s really the important thing,” Nicol said. “You don’t want to think about him in maize and blue, either.”
Regardless of what colors he’s wearing, he’s in for a wild ride. Some rookies to the game handle it extremely well, others are traumatized by it.
“Going into your first (Michigan-Ohio State) game, you have no idea what to expect,” Leach said. “People can talk to you about it until they’re blue in the face, but you won’t know in your heart and mind what it’s like to be in this game until you get one under your belt.”

BUCKEYE PERISCOPE

BUCKEYES BUZZ: One of the coolest traditions, literally, at Ohio State comes each Thursday before the Michigan game. Students go down to Mirror Lake, some fortified by strong spirits, and jump into the frigid, shallow waters.
Sometimes the ice on the surface has to be broken before the teenage polar bears can make the leap in a show of school spirit.
Sadly, the football players are usually too busy — or too afraid of incurring the wrath of a coach for catching a cold or spraining an ankle — to join in.
DL Nader Abdallah, a native of New Orleans, walked down to the lake last year.
“I had a chance to walk around and look at people doing all of that stuff,” he said. “It was amazing because it was freezing cold out there and people were jumping in. People were coming together and having a great time and it shows how much it means.”
PK Ryan Pretorius: “One of my ex-roommates bought a wet suit just so he could jump in, wore it, jumped in, then cleaned it off and took it back. It’s nuts.”
LB James Laurinaitis: “They’ve got a lot of liquid courage.”
He said he regretted missing out on so many of the joys of college life.
“I guess you maybe find yourself wondering what it would be like to tailgate or do this and that but if you think about how lucky you are to be one of 100 guys per year that’s on this team, there’s nothing in the world I would trade that for,” he said. “I can still jump in the lake when I’m 50, right? Get drunk and jump in there?”
Even coach Jim Tressel was asked what it would take to get him to make the leap into Mirror Lake.
“Probably have to shoot me and throw me in there in November,” he cracked. “I’m not 19 anymore. We’ll let the 19 year olds jump in.”
GENTLE REMINDER: There’s a sign in the Ohio State locker room which says: “Do you remember the score the last time Michigan beat us?”
QUOTE OF THE DAY: Pretorius on what he did with the gold-pants charms given to every Ohio State player after a win over Michigan: “My mom has every pair. I never wear jewelry, as it is, and she’s just a fantastic mom and I couldn’t ask for a better mother in the world. My dad’s a dentist and the first time I gave them to her they kind of looked at them and said ‘Are these molars?’ because they kind of look like teeth.”
THE EARLE OF BRUCE: As is typically the case, former Ohio State coach Earle Bruce spoke to the team earlier this week as a way of setting the stage for Michigan week.
Needless to say, he left quite an impression.
Tressel always has Bruce, who is 77, as a keynote speaker on the Sunday night before the Michigan game. It sets the tone.
“Earle has a way of helping you understand how lucky you are to be a part of that game,” Tressel said.
The Buckeyes players are always a little wide-eyed because Bruce starts out slowly and builds to a rant when the subject is Michigan.
P A.J. Trapasso: “Coach Bruce genuinely dislikes Michigan. I mean full-blown hatred. Me personally, I grew up around it. I don’t hate Michigan. I wish them well all season until the last game because I like having something on the game and having it mean so much. If he could, he would take it off the map, I think.”
“He really gets into it,” TE Rory Nicol said. “He went off last year in the team meeting room. It was pretty comical. That would probably be my highlight of Earle.”
DL Nader Abdallah, on the difference between Bruce and Tressel addressing the team: “Coach Bruce will go up there and speak his mind and whatever he feels he is going to say. Coach Tress is more understanding. Coach Tressel lately has shown a lot of emotion but coach Bruce, when he goes up there, well, it’s two different worlds.”
“Sometimes we laugh at some of the things he says because you see this old guy and he’s going off about Michigan,” CB Malcolm Jenkins said. “You see he still has the same enthusiasm we have and we’re 20 years old. You take what he says to heart.”
LB Marcus Freeman: “When I was real young I was just like, ‘Man, this guy is crazy. Who is this guy?’ But the older you get the more you appreciate him and realize he has a passion for this game.”
Finally, LB James Laurinaitis was asked if anyone hated Michigan more than Bruce.
After thinking about it a second, he said, “Alive or dead? Because I’m sure Woody would still be classified for that.”
BUT IS HE A KIPKE? Michigan has had 12 previous head football coaches. In their first meetings with Ohio State, those coaches are 10-1-1.
The only coach to lose his first game against the Buckeyes was Harry Kipke, whose team dropped a 7-0 decision to Ohio State on Oct. 19, 1929.

THE GAME

WHO: Ohio State vs. Michigan
WHEN: Saturday, noon
WHERE: Ohio Stadium
TV/RADIO: Channel 5; WEOL 930-AM, WKNR 850-AM

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