Tennessee introduced Danny White as its athletics director Friday.
White comes to Tennessee from the University of Central Florida.
During White’s introductory press conference, he discussed his process in searching for Tennessee’s next football head coach.
“Ideally, in the age of social media and everything, it starts and it ends with the student-athletes,” White said. “I’ve been able to accomplish that in all three of my football searches.”
As athletics director at Buffalo, White hired Lance Leipold away from his alma mater, Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he won six NCAA Division III national championships (2007, 2009–2011, 2013–2014).
White hired Scott Frost as head coach at UCF.
When Frost departed for the same position at his alma mater, Nebraska, after a 13-0 2017 season, White hired Josh Heupel. Heupel came to UCF from Missouri as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
White mentioned he wants to be in communication with his student-athletes first when it comes to hiring a head coach.
“I want them to be the first ones to find out who their new coach is,” White said. “What happens in between, there is a whole lot going on there. I’m going to do a lot of homework. I’ve spent a lot of time researching and calling. I’m fortunate to have a pretty significant network in intercollegiate athletics and I realize it is probably because of the way I grew up. I can get a candidate’s opinion from folks and really understand who they are from a character standpoint. I don’t want to even be interviewing someone if I have questions about that.
“We need to make sure the person we’re bringing in to run our program is going to do it the right way, is going to do right by these kids and is going to have an aggressive vision to get us highly competitive — so I don’t know if I can offer any more detail than that because it’s a pretty fluid situation.”
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