Recently, a high school player quit on his team – and coach Kurt Hines shared his reaction to the development on Twitter.
Saturday night, amidst a trying early start to the season for Ohio State, the Buckeyes seemingly had a player quit – mid-game.
In dramatic fashion.
As the Buckeyes, who lost at home two weeks ago to Oregon and have struggled mightily on defense, with coach Ryan Day having stripped defensive play-calling duties from coordinator Kerry Coombs, built a commanding halftime lead against visiting little brother Akron, K'Vaughn Pope constructed an apparent end to his OSU career.
Pope, per Austin Ward, was waved off the field and told to remain on the Buckeyes' sideline during a second-quarter sequence.
Pope took exception. IN a big way. Per numerous reports, Pope tosses his playing gloves into the stands and then immediately began disrobing from his Buckeyes' jersey.
Soon, Pope was being escorted into the OSU locker room – after he initially had begun to walk that way on his own – and then fired off some emotional tweets once he recovered his phone.
“F*** ohio state” read one Pope Tweet at 8:18 p.m.; two minutes prior to that message, Pope Tweeted, “good lucc to my teammates 100.”
It's a jarring development for the Buckeyes' program and the senior linebacker from Dinwiddie, Virginia, who had made 34 career appearances that included this game against Akron.
Welp, based on the tweets from K'Vaughan Pope, I think we can safely assume his career at Ohio State is over.
— Austin Ward (@AWardSports) September 26, 2021
Day partially addressed the incident post-game, but he overall said he needed more time to examine the situation with Pope. Day, however, did speak out against the NCAA Transfer Portal after the Buckeyes earlier this week lost another senior linebacker -- Dallas Gant.
"Yeah, so it was someone just kinda told me with a Tweet or something," Day said after OSU's 59-7 win against Akron of the Pope situation. "I'm going to get the details before I say anything (specific to Pope).
"In today's day and age, guys can leave four games into the season because they can redshirt. If they want to go into the Portal, that's their prerogative. I have a hard time with that because think when you make a commitment to the team at the beginning of the year, that's what you do."
Later asked directly if Pope remained a member of the Buckeyes' team, Day refused to answer.
"I just got off the field," Day said, "so I'm going to have to figure out where that all stands."