OSU Scandal: Professional Football Players Get Paid
I spent two years at Ohio State in the mid-1990’s getting a master’s degree and being duly initiated into the cult of Big Ten football, so I was disturbed to glance up from the treadmill in the gym yesterday afternoon and see ESPN report that OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor and four teammates had been caught selling things they owned to other people, for money.
Pryor is a 6-6″ 240-lb professional football player who was hired by Ohio State in 2008 on a four-year contract to be their quarterback. He works for head football coach Jim Tressel, who earns $3.5 million per year. Tressel reports to Athletic Director Gene Smith, who earns $1.2 million per year. Smith reports to President E. Gordon Gee, who earns $1.5 million per year.
Pryor was the most heavily recruited young professional football player in the country when he signed his four-year contract in 2008, the equivalent of Bryce Harper, the #1 draft pick baseball phenom who signed a $9.9 million contract with the Washington Nationals earlier this year. But because Pryor has the misfortune