Instead of holding a clipboard at Ohio Stadium, he'll be at O.co Coliseum (yes, that's the name it's actually going by nowadays) trying to avoid laughing at whatever it is Jason Campbell does while trying to play quarterback.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell will have you know the two suspensions of identical length are not related. The five-game ban from the NFL is due to Pryor's attempt to undermine draft rules, according to NFL spokesman Greg Aiello.
"Pryor made decisions that undermined the integrity of our draft eligibility rules," Aiello told Fox Sports. "He skipped the regular draft. He then made himself ineligible for college football."
The choice of words here is interesting. Pryor "skipped" the regular draft, i.e. he was still at Ohio State and didn't announce until June he planned to enter the NFL. Pryor "then made himself ineligible" for college football, as if his prior actions hadn't made him partially ineligible already.
It's understandable that the NFL wants to protect its brand. The league doesn't want star players holding themselves out of the regular draft to increase their leverage in the supplemental draft. That's why such a suspension exists for Pryor.
This begs the question, however, as to why the league hasn't been as vocal about suspensions to North Carolina's Michael McAdoo or Georgia's Caleb King, both of whom entered the supplemental draft. The answer is that Pryor is the high-profile guy, and therefore the best guy for the league to use to make its statement. The violations by McAdoo, especially, are arguably as egregious as Pryor's, but a three-star defensive end from a historically mediocre program makes a poor example.
Better to publicize the suspension of one of the best players in college football last season, who played for a corrupt program the NCAA is trying to make an example of. So the NFL pulled a number out of a hat. And what do you know? That number just happened to be five games, the same number Pryor was already slated to serve.
Message delivered.
