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Pryor's sole focus is NFL draft

The next step may be the most important one for former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor. Done with college football and through with talking to the NCAA, now he'll have to convince NFL teams he can fully realize the potential that he has shown since he was a high school quarterback in Pennsylvania.

The next step may be the most important one for former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor.

Done with college football and through with talking to the NCAA, now he'll have to convince NFL teams he can fully realize the potential that he has shown since he was a high school quarterback in Pennsylvania.

Pryor attorney Larry James said yesterday that the QB turned down a chance to play in the Canadian Football League and is now focusing his energies on being drafted by an NFL team.

"He's definitely looking at the supplemental draft," James said.

There are risks and rewards aplenty, both for Pryor and any team considering taking him.

"Some time ago I put up a top-100 list [for the 2012 draft] and I had Pryor right around 100 on that list," said Gil Brandt, an NFL draft analyst and former general manager of the Dallas Cowboys. "And that was before all of this came to fruition."

The "all of this" Brandt was referring to is the smoking rubble at Ohio State: coach Jim Tressel's forced resignation, an ongoing and all-encompassing NCAA probe and, on Tuesday night, Pryor's announcement that he wouldn't return for his senior year.

Pryor, considered the nation's No. 1 quarterback recruit when he signed with Ohio State in 2008, had already been suspended for the first five games of the 2011 season for trading autographs and memorabilia for cash and discounted tattoos. The NCAA also is looking into the cars Pryor has owned or was loaned while at Ohio State. Investigators left campus last week, Ohio State president Gordon Gee says, but the probe will continue ahead of an Aug. 12 meeting between OSU officials and the NCAA's committee on infractions.

The NCAA will get no more answers from Pryor. James said yesterday that since Pryor is no longer a student, he felt no compunction to speak with investigators anymore.

Meanwhile, Gee said Jim Tressel still will pay a $250,000 fine for breaking NCAA rules, despite his resignation.