Tracy Jackson’s football career started with a YouTube search.
When he moved from Chicago to Memphis before his junior year of high school, Jackson had never played the sport. He wanted to try something new, so he looked up Memphis prep football online and went with the first high school that came up.
“Honestly, true story,” Jackson said. “The first school I saw was Whitehaven. So I went up to Whitehaven the next day, met Coach (Rodney) Saulsberry there. And then they knew I was a big dude, so they gave it a try.”
Jackson, now a 6-foot-1, 301-pound junior at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is an every-down starter these days on an offensive line that has helped turn the Mocs (2-2, 1-0 Southern Conference) into a run-first team heading into Saturday’s 2 p.m. matchup with The Citadel (1-2, 0-1) at Johnson-Hagood Stadium in Charleston, South Carolina.
UTC offensive line coach Kevin Revis didn’t watch video of Jackson as a high school player until his senior season. Revis liked what he saw. He liked what he found at Whitehaven even more.