For Tennessee, the only real drama we saw on the football field on Saturday night against the Florida Gators was junior linebacker Quart’e Sapp exiting the sidelines early.
Sometime during Florida’s 47-21 win over the Vols, Sapp was asked to leave the sidelines by Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt — at least that’s Pruitt’s side of the story. Sapp said that didn’t happen in a tweet on Sunday.
Today, Pruitt squashed the whole situation.
“Quart’e has been a great ambassador,” Pruitt said. “He came and saw me yesterday. Me and him sat down and talked and we’ll keep that in-house. I’ll say this, since I’ve been here he’s been a really good ambassador for our football program and he’s been a good leader on our team. One mistake don’t — you know, everybody makes mistakes. So we’re going to move on and we’ll go from there.”
Pruitt went on to say that there will be no suspension going forward.
Regardless of how you feel about what Sapp did on Saturday night, you have to love how quickly this situation was resolved. Pruitt didn’t make up some story to cover things up (like falling on a helmet) — he got it out in the open and was very direct about it.
Two days later, it seems like this story is dead. That’s a good thing and honestly pretty refreshing after how the previous staff operated.