With the future of Terrelle Pryor’s career at Ohio State in doubt, there’s speculation that he could apply for the NFL supplemental draft this year.

On Tuesday, an NFL official told ESPN’s Adam Schefter that the supplemental draft would be held sometime in July – as long as there are applicants, that is.

“So far, there have been no applicants,” a league official told ESPN. “If there is one, the supplemental draft would be held mid-to-late July, no later than 10 days before the first training camp opens.”

A total of 45 players have been selected in the NFL supplemental draft since its inception in 1977. The supplemental draft is intended for players who missed the filing deadline for the annual NFL draft or had issues that affected their college eligibility. (You know, like if some player swapped championship memorabilia for tattoos or were given the opportunity to ride around in cars they never paid for.)

In order to be eligible for the supplemental draft, players have to be out of high school for at least three years. That’s obviously not a problem for Pryor, who is heading into his senior season at Ohio State. Teams then submit picks to the league and if their bid is the highest, they receive the player but lose the corresponding draft pick the following year. So in other words, if the Dolphins took Pryor in the third round this year, they’d forfeit their third round pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Seeing as how Ohio State and the NCAA are investigating whether or not Pryor received cars and extra benefits during his playing days as a Buckeye, now might be the time for him to jet off to the NFL. There’s no guarantee of course that he’ll be taken in the supplemental draft, but he may wind up being suspended for the entire 2011 college season. If that happens, he’ll have to wait an entire year to see if some team will take a flier on him in the 2012 NFL Draft, which seems highly unlikely.

If Pryor did apply for the supplemental draft, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for Ohio State. He has already been suspended for the first five games of the season and with Jim Tressel resigning on Monday, the program doesn’t need this Pryor investigation hanging over its head all year. Granted, just because he’s gone doesn’t mean the university or the NCAA will halt their investigation, but at least from a media standpoint, Pryor wouldn’t be around.

Ohio State has enough on its plate then to worry about the constant stream of questions from the media regarding Pryor’s eligibility in 2011.

Rest easy, Buckeye fans: Terrelle Pryor will be in an Ohio State uniform next season.

After speaking with “a source,” Dave Miller of the National Football Post wrote on Monday that Pryor had “not dismissed the idea of going the NFL Supplemental Draft route” and the odds of him staying at Ohio State for his senior season “are about 60-40.”

But Pryor put that rumor to rest last night when he Tweeted:

I’ll be suited up at Lincoln Nebraska !! And first player at QB to meet with the Wolverines for the fourth time!!

Unsurprisingly, Miller is now being lambasted in the comments section of his article, although I find the criticism a tad hypocritical. People spend a quarter of their day searching for rumors and gossip on the internet, another quarter on bashing writers for not coming up with news-worthy topics and another quarter on bashing said writers if their source fails to deliver accurate information. (That last quarter of the day is spent on internet gambling and porn, of course.)

Obviously Miller ran with something that one of his reliable sources came to him with, which is his job. If someone told him that Pryor was thinking about heading to the NFL Supplemental Draft and then Pryor did just that, Miller would have been the fool that sat on golden information if he didn’t print it. Instead, his source was seemingly wrong and now he’s vilified, although such as the life of a writer/blogger.

Of course, the flip side is if Miller just made the information up, in which case he deserves to be criticized. There are plenty of writers and websites that throw sh*t up against a wall just to see if it’ll stick and they deserve to be heckled. I don’t know if Miller fits into this category or not, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Hey, sometimes a writer’s sources just don’t pan out. That doesn’t mean that the writer is an irresponsible journalist and an undeniable bum. (Although in my case, that bum part is pretty spot on.)