Pryor, considered the No. 1 football prospect in the country, made his choice today just before noon at a press conference at his high school.

"It's what I want, and this is what I decided," Pryor said, referring to his decision to attend Ohio State.

Pryor said it was tough to pick OSU over Michigan.

"It makes me feel bad that they had their hopes on me."

The media had gathered here once before to meet with Pryor. That was on Feb.6, otherwise known as national letter of intent signing day. Except Pryor announced that day he wasn’t ready to sign with anyone.

Though he later told rivals.com he had decided to go with OSU, a meeting with his father Craig Pryor the night before convinced him to put off the decision (the deadline to sign was April 1) until he had a chance to give Penn State and possibly Oregon a fair chance. He had made official visits only to OSU and Michigan by that point, and vowed he would make similar journeys to PSU and Oregon before deciding, but he never did.

Oh, he was at Penn State last weekend, but that was to key the Jeannette basketball team’s victory over Strawberry Mansion in the Class AA state championship game. He said afterward he had narrowed his recruiting list to two schools, but did not name them until today.

Nevertheless, Pryor was worth the wait for many reasons, not the least of which is he has proven to be a winner in both football and basketball.

He led the Jeannette football team to the Class AA state championship in December, capping a 16-0 season, then did the same in basketball. Thus Jeannette became just the third school in Pennsylvania history to win football and basketball state crowns in the same scholastic year.

Over three years as the starting quarterback Pryor became the first player in state history to rush for more than 4,000 yards in a career and pass for more than 4,000. And remember, this is the same state that produced Joe Montana, Jim Kelly, Joe Namath and many more renowned quarterbacks.

Some might argue he proved less adept at dealing with the travails of the recruiting trail. In late October last year he said his top six schools were Ohio State, West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Penn State and Florida, though not necessarily in that order.

His list changed, though, when Michigan reached over and hired coach Rich Rodriguez away from West Virginia on Dec.16. Pryor said that day that he no longer was considering WVU, that the Wolverines were now contenders.

The real attraction was Rodriguez and his spread option offense, which the speedy, 6-foot-6, 230-pound Pryor seemed born to manipulate. And the more he looked around, the more he liked the similar offense of Oregon, which had QB Dennis Dixon on the brink of a Heisman Trophy-winning season before he suffered a major knee injury in late November.

Ohio State, meanwhile, countered with recollections of Troy Smith’s 2006 Heisman Trophy campaign, which started in late 2004 when the coaches changed the offense to more of a spread, shotgun look to take better advantage of his versatility. Penn State promised Pryor it would revert to the 2005 offense that saw QB Michael Robinson become the Big Ten offensive player of the year.

Pryor always seemed more enamored of Ohio State as the recruiting process ensued. For example, though he never found time to make official visits to PSU and Oregon, he accompanied his junior football/basketball teammate Jordan Hall to OSU on Feb.24 to watch the Buckeyes play Wisconsin in basketball. Hall has since been offered a scholarship by Ohio State

While Hall was with the other juniors being hosted that day, Pryor got together with Michael Brewster, Mike Adams, J.B. Shugarts and Jake Stoneburner, four already signed players of the 19-member 2008 OSU class with whom he had developed a strong friendship. They had stayed in close contact through the months primarily by cell phone calls and text messaging.

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