Former Tennessee natives, fans on UGA roster ready for Saturday
Georgia is set for a 3:30 p.m. ET kickoff against the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday, and while the matchup is certainly important for the Bulldogs’ postseason plans, it’s a more personal affair for a couple of current players on the roster in Athens.
Take defensive lineman Zion Logue, a native of Lebanon, Tennessee, for example. The 6-foot-5, 310-pound senior didn’t grow up rooting for the Vols, though his household did. Instead, as a fan of basketball, Logue rooted for the Wildcats of Kentucky. That doesn’t mean the former four-star recruit was a stranger to Knoxville, however.
“Recruiting process-wise, that was Butch Jones and Jeremy Pruitt (were there). I wasn’t really highly touted. I went up there a couple times, stayed up there eight hours one day and didn’t really even get looked at,” Logue said.
The interest from the Vols would take a turn soon thereafter, though, and Georgia was a big reason why.
“I come down here going into my senior year, get an offer from here, get back on the interstate — on 316, and then, Jeremy Pruitt calls,” Logue said.
By that point, he was seemingly quite turned off toward his in-state program.
“It wasn’t really a big relationship with them,” Logue said.
A former Tennessee fan turned all Dawg
While Logue may not have been cheering for the Vols, it was a different story in Rome, Georgia for offensive lineman Tate Ratledge.
“Growing up, dad’s side of the family, die-hard Tennessee fans. So it was kind of what I was raised as,” Ratledge said. “Grew up, went to a couple spring games here and there. That was always the team of choice around the house.”
As Ratledge began to shift his mind toward the next level, those notions shifted, both for himself and those around him.
“When it got to the time where I started getting recruited, my dad was like you need to put all that behind you. You need to go make your own decision,” Ratledge said. “He said, ‘I’m not going to live my life through you. I’m a huge Tennessee fan, but you’re not going to hurt my feelings if you don’t go there.’ End of the day, it just came down to picking what was best for me.”
It’s worked out quite well for the junior guard, and he’s been able to move beyond his earlier engrained love for the orange and white.
“I think me and Ladd [McConkey] mess with each other about it here and there more than other people do. I’ll kind of hear (about having been a Tennessee fan) every now and then from other people,” Ratledge said. “But, it’s fully behind me now. I’ve been here for almost four years now, so I’d say it was pretty much behind me.”
