It didn't look like the kid's first time. No, he had to have done this before.
He entered Beaver Stadium the subject of scrutiny, the villain who spurned Joe Paterno and his home state for the hated rivals in Columbus, calling State College "too country" while he was at it.
He got ahead of himself last year and tried to do too much for his team, costing it an outright conference title with a juvenile play that is now out of his system.
"I didn't cry or anything," Terrelle Pryor said of that day he hung his head low on the Ohio State bench. "I wanted to cry."
He then took the field Saturday amidst the boos and chants, amidst the crowd that so desperately wanted him just two years ago that now made t-shirts mocking him for wanting to cry.
"I was trying to get one of them," he laughed, looking nattily attired himself in a gray pinstriped suit his mom bought him. "It's all fun and games when you go somewhere else and they gotta find something to rag on you. I mean, I did mess up last year and you learn off that type of stuff."
He learned from that stuff -- the turnovers, the eye black, the comments -- at a rate that could be expected from a 20-year-old. His coach didn't budge and neither did he, and they both made that clear after their 24-7 win Saturday.
"I've never wavered in my thinking of his progress," Jim Tressel said. "I know others have, but I get to be at practice, and I get to be at meetings, so I'm not complaining that others have wavered."
He didn't dazzle you with numbers -- his 125 yards equaled his counterpart's -- but it was clear who the better quarterback was at least on Saturday and it is clear now which team is shaping itself up for another national title run a year from now.
The Buckeyes -- those obnoxious, loud-mouthed, big-game choking Buckeyes -- are now in position to claim a fifth straight conference crown.
With their least talented team in the last five years.
Tough to swallow?
Sure. But when you scoop the nation's No. 1 recruit from a rival's backyard, when you break him in as a true freshman and still clinch a share of the conference crown that season, your future is in pretty good hands.
When you field a young team that takes on the nation's best year-in and year-out, bounce back from tough losses and make the Beaver Stadium White Out look as intimidating as a roll of Charmin, your future is in pretty good hands. And when you're losing only seven starting seniors from another likely conference championship team to graduation -- only two on offense -- your future is in pretty good hands.
"It's very big," Pryor said of the win's effect on his young team, "because the linemen got confidence, we got more confidence, and I'll always have confidence, and I'll always believe in our guys, and I'll always believe in the defense and it's just another step for the linemen and another step for the running backs because they all ran well."
Now there were two minutes and 38 seconds left until the final horn. Pryor was on the sideline riding his exercise bike but not the way he had all afternoon to aid his bum left ankle. No, this was a victory ride, the way Lance Armstrong used to ride out the final stages back when he was winning all those Tour de Frances.
Daryll Clark's fourth-and-4 pass to Andrew Quarless fell incomplete and Pryor got off the bike to go back in. An assistant pulled him aside to tell him his day was done. He lifted Dan Herron with joy in his arms, and he fielded congratulations from his teammates before looking to the crowd.
"We chasing it!" he told them.
No, Terrelle, the rest of the Big Ten is doing the chasing. As usual.
