With major league teams gearing up for spring training, so are college baseball teams around the country. Tennessee skipper Dave Serrano confirmed yesterday that one of his players is leaving the team to focus on another sport. That player just so happens to be Tennessee’s starting quarterback, Joshua Dobbs.
Unlike Florida State’s Jameis Winston a couple of years ago, Dobbs has decided it is in his best interests to focus more on football this spring rather than live the two-sport college life in Knoxville. Serrano told The Knoxville News Sentinel the Vols’ quarterback is welcome back at any time.
“Josh is a wonderful young man,” Serrano said, according to The Knoxville News Sentinel. “He came out and worked out for, I don’t know, a week total. I think he was out here for four days. He just decided that was his fun he wanted to have and he’s going to go back to football. I told Josh he’s always welcomed here. He’s welcome to come down in the dugout during our home games and when his football career is over and football isn’t in his future, he can come back and play baseball.”
Dobbs was a high school baseball standout in addition to a football star. The Georgia native was a pitcher and a shortstop for his high school team and was welcomed to workout with Tennessee’s baseball team this winter with the permission of Vols head coach Butch Jones. It was uncertain whether Dobbs would be a fixture on the Tennessee baseball roster, but it certainly never hurts to have a young football player stay in shape on the baseball diamond. Sure, it presents another injury risk factor to the offseason routine, but there are not enough instances or examples where working out with a baseball team has come back to haunt a football team to suggest Jones should have turned down the idea in the first place.
Tennessee’s spring practices are scheduled to commence on March 7.