No. 3 Tennessee (8-0, 4-0 SEC) will play at No. 1 Georgia (8-0, 5-0 SEC) Saturday in Week 10.
Rankings reflect the USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll.
The Vols are No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings, while Georgia is No. 3.
Kickoff between the Vols and Bulldogs is slated for 3:30 p.m. EDT. CBS will televise the SEC East matchup from Sanford Stadium.
Former Vol Ted Schwanger provided a score prediction to Vols Wire ahead of the contest. Schwanger is predicting a score of Tennessee 45, Georgia 38.
Schwanger played for Tennessee from 1952-53.
Schwanger, from Sandusky, Ohio, was committed to Michigan State before arriving at Tennessee to play for Neyland.
Michigan State was coming off a national championship season in 1951 (Billingsley, Helms, and Poling) and were led by Hall of Fame head coach Biggie Munn.
Tennessee also won the national championship in 1951 (Associated Press, Litkenhous, UPI and Williamson).
“When they (Tennessee) were recruiting me, Tennessee was No. 1 and Michigan State was No. 2 in the country,” Schwanger told Vols Wire.
Schwanger lived 180 miles from East Lansing and was set to attend Michigan State and play for Munn.
“I was going there every other weekend and played golf with Biggie Munn a couple of times,” he said.
Schwanger planned on working at General Motors the summer before college, but workers went on strike.
“At that time we had a General Motors plant in Sandusky,” Schwanger said. “It’s funny how things happen in your lifetime. I was supposed to have a job at the General Motors plant for that summer and they went on strike.
“So Tennessee called me and wanted me to come and visit. I had never been on an airplane, so I thought why not? I went there for three or four days and took my golf clubs. I called my mother and told her I wasn’t going to come home.”
Schwanger never questioned why Neyland and his assistants went after him as hard as they did.
“I never really asked why they came so hard,” Schwanger said of Tennessee. “The only thing I could think of was maybe they lost somebody that was planning on coming there and changed their mind at the last minute. You could do that back then because you did not sign a letter of intent, so it was wide open.
“I had planned on going to Michigan State and two or three weeks before, Tennessee’s defensive line coach Farmer Johnson visited me. He said I can also bring my brother with me and he can be a manager. He said the first year you will be able to play some because we have Andy Kozar (fullback) coming back. At Michigan State, freshmen still could not play at that time. The NCAA was trying to get more equal teams than the big schools getting all the players. I think Tennessee came real hard at me because they also realized the next year we were going to have to play both ways.”
With the Korean War escalating in the early 1950s, most major conferences allowed freshmen to play. Schwanger was able to play during his first season at Tennessee in 1952.
Schwanger finished his Tennessee career with 743 rushing yards on 142 attempts and scored two touchdowns.
He met his eventual wife while playing at Tennessee and left UT following the 1953 season. Schwanger and his wife married after the 1953 season and Neyland had a rule if you were married, you then lost your scholarship.
“I made a good choice going to Tennessee for two years,” Schwanger said. “If you got married, it meant you lost your scholarship and I got married after my sophomore year.”
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