It's still basketball season and already Rich Rodriguez is 0-1 against Ohio State.

Quarterback Terrelle Pryor, the latest football recruiting deity, announced Wednesday what had been suspected for more than a month - that he'll play for Jim Tressel.

The heavens didn't crash down upon Ann Arbor. It's a personal hunch, but odds are Michigan football will survive and even prosper.

There's nonetheless disappointment for Wolverines fans because Rodriguez offered a natural fit for Pryor - the philosophical style he craved and the likelihood of an immediate starting job.

But it wasn't enough.

Recruiting victories are largely symbolic, but considering the Wolverines haven't beaten Tressel and Ohio State on the field the past four years, any kind of triumph would have been appreciated.

Rodriguez came to U-M with one edict: Beat the Buckeyes. Pryor was the first head-to-head test, and Rodriguez couldn't get it done.

Those who live and die with the Wolverines are left to pray that the 6-foot-6, 225-pound YouTube highlight star is somehow nothing more than a figment of recruiting hyperbole. Should Pryor's performance prove remotely close to the hype that follows him, Tressel's winning streak over Michigan could double.

But the immediate nightmare is that Tressel might use Pryor in his freshman season, just as Florida coach Urban Meyer used another extraordinarily athletic prodigy, Tim Tebow, in his first season in 2006, when he shared time with senior Chris Leak.

Nobody wants to imagine this, particularly on a full stomach, but Pryor could prove to be the wild card in ensuring Ohio State a third straight appearance in the national championship game.

Please, dear God, spare all who love college football another OSU-SEC embarrassment!

But if there's any relief for fans in Pryor's decision, it's that the circus sideshow finally came to a close. This was a kid who held a news conference on signing day to tell everybody that he hadn't made a decision.

The Pryor courtship only further confirmed how completely out of whack the football recruiting process has become in this interactive era of blogging and message boards. It's insane to think that an 18-year-old athlete can hold rationally thinking individuals emotionally hostage for months at a time.

"I don't like being in the spotlight," Pryor told reporters Wednesday in his high school auditorium in Jeannette, Pa. "I didn't ask to be No. 1 in the country."

But he certainly milked it for all it was worth.

It's no secret how badly Rodriguez wanted Pryor. He notified Pryor of his intentions to take the U-M job before he told his West Virginia players.

But he couldn't get the better of Tressel in his first try, and now the gap between Ohio State and Michigan is a little wider.