Hlas column: Pete Rose could have told fellow Ohio sports star Terrelle Pryor that autographs have quite a market

With all the hubbub about former Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor allegedly making $20,000 to $40,000 for signing items in the 2009-2010 school year, something bigger than this concerns me.

Namely, who's buying this stuff? And why?

What possesses people to have a signed jersey or helmet or photo from an athlete if they had to pay for the signature?

There's no personal connection between player and fan, no player doing a fan a favor out of kindness, no genuine give-and-take.

What's the value in a bought autograph, unless you can turn around and sell it for more money to some sucker? The only autograph I want is from a billionaire philanthropist on a personal check, something to lift me out of my middle-class malaise.

OK, let's say an athlete made a victory or a season happen that touches your emotional core. Great. But you've got your memories. Does buying a signature on something somehow add more to them?

I stayed at the Mirage in Las Vegas last month. I couldn't walk to the hotel's guest elevators on the ground floor without being very far from a familiar sports figure who had a table set up outside a sports memorabilia store. It was baseball's all-time leader in hits, Pete Rose.

He sat there from noon to 6 p.m., happy to sign items if they were purchased from that store. He's been doing that in Vegas for seven years. According to The Sporting News, he did it for 22 days in May. He is 70.

Rose makes a lot of money doing that. He talks to the people - and listens to them - while he's signing. It's harmless, yes. If it makes people happy, wonderful. At least they spent a little time with Rose, even if his purpose was purely mercenary.

But if you were at a friend's house for dinner and he said “Here's an autograph I bought from Pete Rose,” before you ate, wouldn't that make you question his judgment in preparing your meal?

What do all those Ohio State fans who reportedly bought items signed by Pryor feel they got? I'm sure some of you are thinking I just don't get it. You're right, I don't. In fact, to me it seems bizarre.

Another question: How could Pryor's autographs-for-pay not have been common knowledge across Columbus and the Ohio State campus?

People don't buy memorabilia to hide it. There's no way everyone who bought a Pryor-signed item would have kept it to themselves and not told anyone what they paid for it and how they got it.

Let's say the source who talked to ESPN's “Outside the Lines” is accurate and Pryor did receive thousands of dollars worth of free food at local restaurants and convenience stores, free drinks at bars, free tattoos, and free loaner cars from local dealerships.

That would only be the umpteen-thousandth time a college athlete has taken something for nothing in violation of NCAA rules. That stuff goes back to the dawn of college sports. Such “amateurism” in college football was among the many things ridiculed in the Marx Brothers' 1932 movie, “Horse Feathers.”

Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx), the new president of Huxley U, hired bumblers Baravelli and Pinky (Chico Marx and Harpo Marx) to help his school win the big football rivalry game against Darwin U. They did just that, putting banana peels and a horse-drawn chariot to clever use during the epic clash.

Wagstaff said this in the film: “Have we got a college? Have we got a football team? Well we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.”

A movie like that couldn't get sold today, since a lot about big-time college football already is a satire.