Ohio State fans heading to "The Horseshoe" this morning to help celebrate the team's first national title in more than three decades will also have an interesting conversation piece to talk about on the drive.

Fans now have the first urban legend surrounding the football team's national championship.

E-mail inboxes of Buckeye fans throughout Ohio and the nation have been inhabited by a two-page long "speech" purportedly given by Coach Jim Tressel before the Buckeyes took the field against Miami (Fla.) in the Fiesta Bowl.

"Men, tonight you embark upon the last portion of a journey that you started 12 months ago when we walked off the field after the bowl game," the speech begins.

"Part of the journey involved some of our friends leaving us for various reasons to go their separate ways. But those of you who remain are a part of something special here at Ohio State University. You stayed for a reason. You stayed on because you care about the school, what it stands for, your teammates, and yourselves!"

It's a great speech, but there's one problem. Tressel never said a word of it.

Where did the stirring speech -- which according to some Internet message boards, brought tears to people's eyes -- come from?

Ken Pryor, a Buckeye fan now living in Bethesda, Md., wrote it the day before the Buckeyes played in the Fiesta Bowl and it's now posted in the "Hall of Fame" on The O-Zone, a Buckeye fan site not affiliated with the school.

"It's really taken on a life of its own," Pryor said in a telephone interview Friday. "I didn't want people to think it was coach Tressel's actual words. I really approached it like, 'If I were the coach of this team, what would I say to these players before the game?' I sat down at my computer and the words just came to me."

The "speech" has been distributed by Buckeye fans all over the country. Pryor said he's received e-mails from people in Massachusetts and another fan site, bucknuts.com, has posts which say Pryor's work was forwarded by the alumni chapter in Austin, Texas.

Saying Pryor is an avid Buckeye fan is like saying Archie Griffin was a good running back. Pryor, who grew up in Canton, is a huge Ohio State fan. His obsession with all things Buckeye started with his father and grew as he watched players from Canton McKinley High School head off to Columbus.

"I get very keyed up about the games," said Pryor, who works as an associate producer for the Discovery Channel. "About three days before the Michigan game, I couldn't sleep."

Pryor, who's been contributing to the site for about two years, said he sat down at his computer Jan. 2 and the words began to flow. He finished the "speech" and sent it to the Web site, which posted it on Jan. 3 -- the day of the Fiesta Bowl game.

The week after the game, Pryor said he started getting e-mails telling him his work was being passed around as Tressel's actual pre-game speech.

"I couldn't believe it," he said.

Officials at The Ohio State University could not be reached for comment, but the athletic department's webmaster said that the school is aware that Pryor's column is making the rounds as words from Tressel. The webmaster also said Tressel never made the speech.

Kenny Peterson, a defensive lineman on the team, told WBNS-TV in Columbus that Tressel's pregame approach was simple.

"Everybody thought it was some big Woody Hayes speech. It wasn't anything like that," he told sportscaster Dom Tiberi. "We stuck to our usual routine, said the Lord's Prayer and then said our little prayer. We took the field and that's it."

So, how did the whole thing get twisted?

"I really don't know," Pryor said. "I wasn't trying to be dishonest and didn't want to gobble up all the credit. Someone just picked up what I wrote and turned into something else."

Part of the problem might have been the headline placed on Pryor's work -- "Pre-Championship Game Speech" -- which was placed on the writing by the site builders and was just ambiguous enough for people to think that the words were Tressel's.

As for Pryor, he's humbled by the response to his work.

"It's really amazing that people think that what I wrote came from coach Tressel," he said.

Reach Michael Throne at mthrone@nncogannett.com.

Originally published Saturday, January 18, 2003