The Tennessee Vols experienced an embarrassing moment this past weekend during 2025 five-star offensive tackle David Sanders Jr's official visit to UT. 

Sanders, the No. 2 overall player in the 2025 recruiting class, posted a photo of his steak on Saturday evening and fans quickly noticed that his name was misspelled on the name card that was placed on the table. 

Instead of "David", the name card read "Davis". 

An obvious mistake, albeit one that Tennessee didn't want to happen. 

Sanders didn't appear to be bothered by the mistake, making light of the spelling error in an Instagram post on Monday. 

"They might’ve spelled my name wrong but we all know it’s a lil (Rocky) to get to the (Top) GBO," wrote Sanders. 

Despite the fact that Sanders made light of the error, it's inevitable that other programs/fan bases will use Tennessee's minor mistake against the Vols in the recruiting battle for the five-star offensive tackle. 

"Fan bases are going to pile on, coaches at other schools are going to pile on," said VolQuest's Austin Price on 104.5 The Zone on Tuesday when asked about the spelling mistake. "And if that had happened at another school, I'd expect Tennessee to try to exploit it." 

Price, a longtime Vols insider, then pointed out why the spelling error shouldn't be viewed as a big deal and why other programs should be careful when it comes to using the error to negatively recruit against Tennessee. 

"You also run the risk of alienating yourself as the other school if you get too pushy about such a small deal," explained Price. "At the end of the day, (Tennessee head coach) Josh Heupel didn't type up that name card. (Offensive line coach) Glen Elarbee didn't type up that name card. It's, you know, a third-level staffer working in the recruiting office who hit the wrong key on the keyboard. Yeah, it's embarrassing. Tennessee didn't want that to happen. But at the same time, if you know the Sanders family, they're very intelligent people, very smart people. And they're not going to make a decision as big as this one based on such a minute — and that's their words — minute deal." 

"I don't think David Sanders is making a decision based off of such things," continued Price. "And I think schools that try to make a big deal out of this only hurt themselves. Because, at the end of the day, if that's your best recruitment of David Sanders, that you gotta point out somebody else's minute mistake, then what are you really offering?" 

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That last line captures the situation perfectly. Sure, it's an unfortunate mistake that Tennessee wishes didn't happen. But it won't be the determining factor in Sanders' decision. And if another program tries to use that mistake to convince Sanders to sign with them, then they're really missing what Sanders is all about (which is academics, football, family, culture, etc). 

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