It's great that the recent announcement of Terrelle Pryor has put some football buzz back in a cold, dreary and lingering Buckeye winter. It's nice to have something new to write about, but I must confess that it also left me shaking my head a bit.

On Wednesday afternoon after the announcement, driving home, I turned on a Columbus station to see what they were saying. "They" turned out to be callers to a talk radio show and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The ink wasn't even dry and here were a bunch of people dissing an 18-year-old kid, a few even comparing him to you know who. It was clear evidence of the dumbing down of our airwaves by much of what passes for talk or news any more.

I had to laugh though as it reminded me of a similar incident a few years back. I remember to this day exactly where I was when it happened. That day too I was driving, and that same Columbus station had just announced the hiring of a new Buckeye coach by the name of Jim Tressel. The announcement wasn't even done reverberating when they went to their phones that day and their callers started ragging on OSU for hiring a no name and predicting the end of Buckeye football. History has shown how brilliant those minds were, hasn't it? I chuckled once again, turned the malarkey off, and went home to judge for myself the real impact of this day in Buckeye history.

I found it that evening in a Yahoo Sports page that had the actual video of Terrelle and his remarks. (http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=787763 ) The video showed me a caring, articulate, and intelligent 18 year old kid who knew where he wanted to go and who did a good job of describing what it was like to live in the magnifying glass these past few months. (Lest you doubt that, by Wednesday evening that video had already been viewed 46,000 times!) I wondered how those radio callers would have fared going through what this kid has been subjected to.

I wasn't the only one impressed by what I saw. Yesterday, friend John Porentas at the Ozone wrote his usual masterful analysis of the days events, (http://www.the-ozone.net/football/2008/pryorsigning.htm) If his column doesn't get you excited about the potential of things that could be to come, nothing will.

I am quick to acknowledge that we are talking about an 18-year-old kid, and no one has a crystal ball on the future, on injuries, on growth and development, on any of that. But in everything I read, there was one word that said it all to me, one word that told me we're talking here about a whole lot more "Stories of the 'Shoe"! One word that still rings in my mind three days laterand that one word that said "this is big"!

That word? "Giddy". Dispatch writer Ken Gordon described Coach Tressel as "Giddy". Can you imagine? Coach Tress, giddy? If Coach was giddy, then Wednesday was huge.

Welcome, Terrelle, to the Buckeye nation. Never mind those idiots on the radio! We're glad you chose to be a Buckeye. Now that you're one of us, you'll never regret putting your faith in the man behind the vest.

Go Bucks!