There's just one Vince Young

COLUMBUS — To be fair, Terrelle Pryor never asked to be called the next Vince Young.He never proclaimed himself the next Vince Young. As far as we know, he does not have any sweatshirts in his closet with “The Next Vince Young” imprinted on them or dress shirts with NVY (Next Vince Young) monogrammed on the cuffs.But the Ohio State quarterback recruit has been constantly compared to the former Texas All-American, now the starter for the Tennessee Titans.  If you had a dollar for every time he has been called the next Vince Young, you could fill up your gas tank without wincing even a little.Close to half the questions OSU’s starting quarterback, Todd Boeckman, answered during an interview session last week were about Pryor.But before anointing Pryor the next Vince Young, it might be a good idea to study the first Vince Young.FVY (First Vince Young) came out of high school with much the same multi-sports highlights resume as Pryor.Pryor passed for more than 4,000 yards and rushed for more than 4,000 yards in his high school career in Jeannette, Pa. He was a basketball star. He was ranked the No. 1 recruit in the country by several recruiting gurus.Young accounted for 3,800 yards of offense and 59 touchdowns his senior year of high school. He averaged 20 points a game in basketball, earned three letters in track and two in baseball.And in his first season at Texas, he was red-shirted.In case you missed that, here it is again. Vince Young was a red-shirt his freshman year in 2002 when Texas played Chris Simms and Chance Mock at quarterback.And in his second season, Young didn’t start until the Longhorns’ sixth game. In the first five games of 2003, he was used mostly as a running threat and Mock started. He threw 19 passes in the first five games that season.It wasn’t until the second half of the next season that Young finally convinced people he could throw as well as he could run.And it wasn’t until 2005 that he became a quarterback for whom the spectacular was routine week after week after week.The next Vince Young might take a while to develop.  The first one did.Could there be a role for Pryor this season in Ohio State’s offense, much like Tim Tebow, who offered a running threat, mixed with a little bit of a passing threat, for Florida when it beat Ohio State for the national title in 2007?Sure. But it’s also possible if Ohio State goes looking for that type of addition to its offense, Antonio Henton could get the first chance to provide it.As someone who knows a lot more about football than I do explained to me last year before Boeckman won the starting job, it was really a two-man race between him and Rob Schoenhoft, not a three-man race that included Henton.Henton, at that time, was coming off a redshirt freshman season of running scout team plays and Boeckman (four years) and Schoenhoft (two years) both had a big edge in experience.Playing quarterback at Ohio State’s level is not a simple assignment. Experience matters. You probably need a little of it before you can even get into the discussion about starting. Or about becoming the next Vince Young.