Staff Directory
- Title:
- Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics
- Email:
Danny White’s innovative and forward-thinking approach to the rapidly evolving landscape of intercollegiate athletics primed University of Tennessee Chancellor Donde Plowman to name him Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics on Jan. 21, 2021.
THE WHITE FILE
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Full Name: Dr. Daniel J. White
Birthdate: Oct. 28, 1979
Hometown: New Orleans, La.
Education: Notre Dame, 2002
Wife: Shawn
Children: Aidan, Molly, Caitlin, James
EXPERIENCE
1998-2000: Towson, Men's Basketball Student-Athlete
2000-02: Notre Dame, Men's Basketball Student-Athlete
2004-05: Ohio, Men's Basketball Director of Operations
2005-06: Ohio, Men's Basketball Assistant Coach
2006-07: Northern Illinois, Assistant AD for Development
2007-09: Fresno State, Associate AD for Development
2009-12: Ole Miss, Senior Associate AD/UMAA Foundation Executive Director
2012-15: Buffalo, Director of Athletics
2015-21: UCF, Vice President & Director of Athletics
2021-: Tennessee, Vice Chancellor & Director of Athletics
TENNESSEE CHAMPIONSHIPS
SEC (12)
2021 - Men's Tennis Tournament
2021 - Women's Soccer Tournament
2022 - Women's Swimming & Diving
2022 - Men's Basketball Tournament
2022 - Baseball Regular Season
2022 - Baseball Tournament
2023 - Softball Regular Season
2023 - Softball Tournament
2024 - Men's Basketball Regular Season
2024 - Softball Regular Season
2024 - Baseball Regular Season
2024 - Baseball Tournament
NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
2024 - Baseball
"YEAR IN REVIEW" FEATURES
2021-22 Tennessee Year in Review2022-23 Tennessee Year in Review
2023-24 Tennessee Year in Review
2024-25 Tennessee Year in Review
With extensive industry experience, White led remarkable competitive, academic, and service excellence at the University of Central Florida from 2015 to 2021. Before that, White was the Athletic Director at Buffalo from 2012 to 2015.
Since arriving at Rocky Top in 2021, White revitalized Tennessee Athletics, restoring its national prominence and was named the Sports Business Journal Athletic Director of the Year in May 2025.
White's achievements in his department have led to numerous awards. He has been recognized multiple times as a Sports Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree, made the Orlando Business Journal's 40 Under 40 list, and has been selected several times as one of the 50 Most Powerful People in Orlando by Orlando Magazine. Additionally, he was a finalist for the SBJ Athletics Director of the Year award in both 2018 and 2023.
A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, White was named the NACDA Athletics Director of the Year in the spring of 2019. In 2018, Sports Business Journal recognized him as one of the six most influential people in the sports business, while Orlando Magazine named him the most powerful person in sports in the area.
Rocky Top Revival
Since White's arrival on Rocky Top, Tennessee has consistently excelled in every sport. During the 2024-25 academic year, Tennessee was unique among universities, as its football program competed in the College Football Playoff. Additionally, both the men's and women's basketball teams advanced to the Sweet 16. The men's basketball team also reached the Elite Eight for the second consecutive season, marking the first time in school history that they made back-to-back appearances in the Elite Eight.
For the second year in a row, all 20 of Tennessee's sports teams reached the postseason. This remarkable achievement positioned Tennessee as the only Power Four school in the nation to accomplish this for two straight seasons.
For the first time in school history, Tennessee Athletics achieved its third consecutive top-10 finish in the LEARFIELD Directors' Cup for the 2024-25 academic year. Tennessee ranked sixth in the nation, marking its second-best finish since the Directors' Cup was established in 1993.
The top three finishes for Tennessee in the Directors' Cup have occurred in the last three years. It has continued at a torrid pace since White was named AD. The Big Orange has steadily ascended in the Directors' Cup standings over the last five years since the competition was canceled in 2019-20. Tennessee finished 26th in 2020-21, 13th in 2021-22, sixth in 2022-23 and last year's high-water mark of No. 3.
Before UT's three consecutive top-10 rankings over the previous three years, Tennessee last achieved a top-10 Directors' Cup finish in 2006-07, when it reached a previous-best No. 7.
Five sports finished in the top five nationally, led by softball's national semifinal finish. Overall, 12 UT programs placed in the final top 15 for the 2024-25 academic year.
The success continued in the classroom under White’s leadership. The Spring 2025 semester continued a remarkable run of record-breaking academic excellence for Tennessee Athletics, as the student-athlete population achieved a cumulative 3.43 GPA, the highest GPA in UT history for any semester.
The record-setting spring metrics marked the 25th consecutive semester in which the Vols and Lady Vols combined to post a GPA of 3.0 or higher. For the fifth straight semester, every team in every sport had a GPA above 3.0.
The spring semester included a record-high combined GPA of 3.33 for Tennessee's men's sports, including program-best performances achieved by baseball (3.71), men's basketball (3.59), and football (3.25).
Tennessee Athletics' Rise Glorious Strategic Plan features a directive to "honor the foundation of college sports by maximizing the educational journey of each student-athlete and creating championship-level performance expectations academically."
The wave of momentum on Rocky Top reached a historic level in 2023-24. Tennessee Athletics finished its best year ever, as one of only two Power Five schools to send all its teams to the postseason —the first such occurrence in UT history.
The across-the-board success helped Tennessee earn a third-place finish in the LEARFIELD Directors’ Cup standings, its best mark ever, and its third straight SEC All-Sports Trophy. Tennessee became the second school to win three consecutive SEC All-Sports titles.
Tennessee never won the SEC All-Sports Trophy before White’s arrival.
Eleven sports finished in the top 10, with six in the top five. The banner year concluded with the baseball team winning its first national championship, the 24th team crown in Tennessee history and first since 2009.
In 2023-24, UT also became the first school to win SEC championships in men's basketball, softball, and baseball in the same year. In total, it collected four SEC titles, running its tally to 12 since 2021 after amassing just two in the four years before White’s arrival.
Tennessee has reached the postseason in football, men's basketball, women's basketball, volleyball, baseball, and softball in all four of White’s full years at the helm, the only school in the nation to achieve this feat.
Six days after he was named AD at Tennessee, White announced the hiring of Josh Heupel as the Volunteers' 27th head football coach. Heupel had spent the previous three years working alongside White as head coach at UCF, where he compiled an impressive 28-8 (20-5 AAC) record.
In just his second year at Tennessee, Heupel guided the Volunteers to an 8-0 start, 11 wins and an NY6 triumph overClemson at the Capital One Orange Bowl. Heupel's record-setting offense propelled UT to No. 1 status in the first edition of the 2023 CFP rankings. In May 2023, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame recognized Plowman, White and Heupel collectively as "Tennesseans of the Year."
The football program's emphatic resurgence in 2022 ignited a wick of team success that wove through Tennessee's entire athletic department. A dozen other UT teams followed suit with national top-16 finishes during the 2022-23 season. That comprehensive success led to the Big Orange earning their second consecutive SEC All-Sports Trophy while becoming only the second school to sweep the men's and women's all-sports standings.
Equally as impressive, Tennessee followed up a 13th-place finish in the 2021-22 LEARFIELD Directors' Cup standings with a sixth-place national finish in the 2022-23 Directors' Cup race.
Tennessee's robust improvement in the Directors' Cup standings was noteworthy. Before finishing 13th, UT had not placed in the top 15 nationally since 2006-07.
After the baseball program swept the SEC regular-season and tournament titles in 2022, softball did the same in 2023. UT also became the only school to win a New Year's Six bowl game, advance both its men's and women's basketball teams to the Sweet Sixteen and send both its softball and baseball teams to the College World Series in the same academic year.
Leading The Way Off The Field
Led by a leadership team handpicked by White, the Tennessee Fund reported its third consecutive record year across multiple fundraising metrics in FY25. For the fiscal year that ended on June 30 (FY25), the Tennessee Fund team set records for fundraising total ($169.5M) and annual fund ($72.4M). Since White's arrival, UT has seen a 110 percent growth in fundraising dollars raised, a 117.4 percent growth in the annual fund, and a 42 percent increase in total donors.
Since White launched the My All Campaign in the summer of 2021, the Tennessee Fund has secured commitments totaling over $728 million, far exceeding the campaign's goal of raising $500 million by the summer of 2026.
For the first time in 2024-25, Tennessee became CLC No. 1 school nationally, selling more licensed products than any other school in the country.
White also moved Tennessee's outbound ticket sales efforts in-house, generating more than $26 million in ticket revenue in 2022 and growing the football season ticket base by 17 percent in one year. The following three seasons saw UT sell out all 70,500 season tickets in Neyland Stadium before the start of the summer. The Volunteers now have a season ticket waitlist of nearly 25,000.
Knoxville has again proven why it is America's College Sports City, as evidenced by its success in each of the last two years. Tennessee posted the highest overall attendance of any school in the nation across football, men's, and women's basketball in both the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons.
The remarkable success at home included four sports selling out of season ticket inventory – football, men’s basketball, softball, and baseball for two consecutive years. It marked the first time in Tennessee's history that four different sports had completely sold out of their season ticket inventory in the same year.
For the third consecutive year, the department eclipsed a program record in revenue generation. The cumulative effect of the initiatives above led Tennessee Athletics to its highest-ever operating revenue of over $234 million in FY24.
The $234 million in total operating revenue was a new high watermark in UT Athletics history, eclipsing last year's record total of just over $202 million.
The historic total was due to impressive levels of self-generated income for Tennessee Athletics. Ticket sales increased over 16 percent from $39.7 million in FY 2023 to $46.6 million in FY 2024. It marked the best year of ticket revenue in Tennessee Athletics history. The top two years of ticket revenue on Rocky Top have occurred over the last two fiscal years.
Contributions soared to new levels for the third straight year, with $72.7 million coming in FY 2024. It marks a staggering 233 percent increase since FY 2021.
White has grown the budget by over $150 million since his arrival on Rocky Top.
One of the top priorities in "Rise Glorious" was to intentionally grow the annual operating budget as part of a relentless commitment to resource all Tennessee Athletics programs and departments at an elite, championship level. UT is already outpacing the 2026-27 goal of a 200+ million-dollar budget.
White has made substantial investments in Tennessee's athletics facilities, including the modernization of two iconic venues: Neyland Stadium and Lindsey Nelson Stadium. The budget for Phase 1 of the Neyland Stadium renovation is $337 million, while the total budget for the Lindsey Nelson Stadium project exceeds $100 million.
White and his leadership team partnered with Pilot, designating it as the presenting partner of the $337 million Neyland Stadium renovation project, which commenced in 2022. Additionally, Pilot became the official travel stop for Tennessee athletics. In 2023, Tennessee secured a 10-year naming rights deal worth $20 million with Food City, which resulted in rebranding the school's long-standing basketball home to Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center.
UT is undertaking major renovations and additions to six venues: Neyland Stadium, Lindsey Nelson Stadium, Sherri Parker Lee Stadium, Anderson Training Center, Food City Center, and the Neyland Entertainment District.
A former college basketball student-athlete at Towson and Notre Dame, White quickly ascended in the ranks of college athletics leadership. Before his first opportunity as athletics director at Buffalo, he served as senior associate athletics director at Ole Miss from 2009 to 2012. He previously served two years as associate athletics director for development at Fresno State (2007-09) and one as assistant athletics director for development at Northern Illinois (2006-07).
Prior to pivoting to athletics administration, White spent one year as the director of basketball operations and another year as an assistant coach with the Ohio University men's basketball program.
White graduated from Notre Dame in 2002 with a bachelor's degree in business administration. He earned master's degrees in business administration and sports administration from Ohio University and completed a Ph.D. in higher education leadership from Ole Miss in 2016.
White comes from a family deeply involved in intercollegiate athletics. His father, Kevin, was the longtime vice president and director of athletics at Duke (and previously held that same role at Notre Dame, Arizona State, Tulane, Maine and Loras College). His brother, Michael, is the head men's basketball coach at Georgia. His brother, Brian, is the vice president and director of athletics at Florida Atlantic.
Danny and his wife, Shawn, have four children: Aidan, Molly, Caitlin and James.
