Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Stay tuned

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The Tennessee Volunteers suffered quite a beating at the hands of Florida on Saturday, but junior linebacker Quart’e Sapp wasn’t there to see all of it. And now, his future with the program is in question.

During his comments after the 47-21 loss, Tennessee’s coach Jeremy Pruitt told the media that he asked Sapp to leave the sideline when he refused to enter the game when Pruitt asked him to. During the game, rumors swirled that Sapp had abruptly quit the team.

“He wouldn’t go into the game when he was asked to go in,” Pruitt said via the Knoxville News-Sentinel. “I don’t know how things were done before, but when you tell somebody to go in and they refuse to go in, we’re not going to do that around here. I asked him to leave. He didn’t leave on his own. I asked him to leave.”

Pruitt, who is in his first year of coaching the Vols after two years as defensive coordinato­r at Alabama, said that Sapp has been a really good “ambassador” for the program, and indicated that he hadn’t had any disciplina­ry issues with him before.

Sapp has played in just one game this season and made three tackles. He made 78 tackles last season when he was a sophomore.

In a message posted Sunday on Twitter, Sapp had a different account to what happened.

“Never would I disrespect my team, my coaches, my family or the fans by not giving my all for Tennessee,” he tweeted. “I’m only going to address the situation publicly once, knowing the current narrative has been created through miscommuni­cation.

“During the UT vs UF game I never was asked nor did

I ever refuse to go into the game. There was a sideline confrontat­ion [I’m sure will be resolved internally] that occurred and the other party involved had to be restrained.”

While Pruitt seemed to indicate that Sapp’s standing with the team moving forward was in question, Sapp wrote that he would continue to be “fully committed” to the program.

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