University of Tennessee Athletics
Danny White's UCF Highlights
Achievements from White's tenure as Director of Athletics at UCF
Danny White was named vice president and director of athletics at UCF on Nov. 18, 2015, and he began his tenure in Orlando on Dec. 14, 2015.Prior to White's transition to Knoxville, UCF was the only NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision program that saw each of its sports produce winning records (among the 10 Knights programs with win-loss records) in 2017-18, 2018-19 and the COVID-shortened 2019-20 athletic year.
That over-arching success led to a 29th place finish for UCF in the final 2019 fall sports standings of the Directors’ Cup, the last release of those standings before the coronavirus hit.
During White’s tenure there, UCF’s football success included a record 25-game win streak through the 2018 regular season, a second straight American Athletic Conference title-game victory that same year and a second consecutive New Year’s Six bowl appearance. The Knights finished eighth in the final 2018 College Football Playoff standings.
In 2019 the Knights followed that up with a 10-3 campaign, capped by a 48-25 Gasparilla Bowl victory over Marshall—in UCF’s record fourth straight season playing in a bowl game—to land at No. 24 in the final Associated Press and Amway coaches polls.
Both the UCF men’s and women’s basketball teams completed stunning turnarounds under head coaches White hired shortly after his arrival at UCF. Johnny Dawkins and Katie Abrahamson-Henderson both led their teams to 20-win seasons in 2016-17 and the best AAC finish in both programs’ history. Abrahamson-Henderson followed that with another improvement in conference finish and the first back-to-back postseason berths in program history.
The UCF baseball program also turned in a stellar 2017 season, winning the AAC regular-season title and advancing to the NCAA Championship for the first time since 2012—all under another White hire, Greg Lovelady.
In 2018-19, both UCF basketball teams earned NCAA Tournament berths—with Dawkins’ men defeating VCU and then nearly upsetting No. 1-seed Duke in the second round. CBS Sports ranked the Knights’ 2018-19 across-the-board athletic performance 17th best in the country.
The 2019-20 athletic year at UCF also included an AAC regular-season crown and NCAA Round of 16 appearance by men’s soccer, an ACC title in volleyball (and second-round NCAA appearance)—as well as impressive starts in baseball (15-3 record, No. 8 in the RPI) and softball (21-5-1, No. 7 in the RPI) before the pandemic cut those seasons short.
Under White’s leadership, UCF teams combined for 25 consecutive semesters (through the 2020 spring semester) with a 3.0 GPA or better. A school-record 253 Knights student-athletes earned spots on the 2019 AAC All-Academic Team—and the volleyball and rowing squads were designated as the top-performing academic teams in their sports by the league.
A perfect 1000 score for women’s soccer led the way in another impressive performance by Knights athletic squads in the 2020 NCAA Academic Progress Rate data. The women’s soccer program also earned an NCAA Public Recognition Award for ranking in the top 10 percent of APR in its sport. Five UCF programs—men’s golf, women’s golf, women’s soccer, women's tennis and volleyball—had single-year scores of 1000 for 2017-18. A record nine Knight programs had single-year 1000 APR scores from the previous year and 10 produced all-time highs for that sport at UCF.
White’s UCF student-athletes also continued to set annual records for community engagement in the greater Orlando area, in great part through various UCF Student-Athlete Welfare and Development programs.
In fiscal year 2020, UCF produced record numbers of gifts received and overall commitments. The $35.5 million in 2020 commitments was more than four times what UCF raised just four years earlier.
During his tenure at UCF, White orchestrated a complete makeover of the university’s athletics footprint. In February 2017, Ken Dixon committed more than $5 million to UCF athletics, representing the largest cash pledge in history to UCF by an alumnus. In recognition of that gift, UCF named the 95-acre area that houses most of UCF’s athletics facilities the Kenneth G. Dixon Athletics Village.
White also was instrumental in a $1.5 million gift that helped fund a renovation of the UCF baseball complex. He secured a separate gift of $1 million toward the development of a student-athlete nutrition center. The Knights in 2020-21 began use of the Roth Athletics Center, housing athletics administration, new team space for men’s and women’s soccer and expanded football team and operational space.
In addition, White established the UCF Football Excellence Fund in 2017. That initiative raised more than $5 million in commitments pledged over five years in an effort to sustain and continue to improve upon the success of the Knights’ program. Following that success came the UCF Basketball Excellence Fund in 2018 and the Shareholders Society, a new major gifts program, established in 2018.
Under White’s leadership, UCF established a unique relationship with Walt Disney World Resort that provided annual access to Disney for all Knights’ student-athletes. White also developed plans for McNamara Cove, an aquatic recovery facility, lazy river and pool adjacent to Spectrum Stadium that will double as a year-round hospitality venue.
UCF secured football host-site privileges for an ESPN College GameDay broadcast—an honor traditionally reserved for football’s fraternity of powerhouse programs—in 2018, and 247Sports rated Knights’ home games fourth nationally in terms of home stadium experiences. Meanwhile, the Knights’ Fiesta Bowl meeting with LSU marked the 13th most-watched college game (8.471 million viewers) in 2018. White also played a key role in the marketing campaign to advance UCF as “Orlando’s Hometown Team.”
Other highlights of White’s UCF tenure included the athletics department bringing its multimedia rights and corporate partnerships in-house and an extended and improved apparel and shoe agreement with Nike. He also secured naming-rights deals for both the UCF football field and basketball court. The Knights in 2019 (for the first time) sold out their allotment of football season tickets at Spectrum Stadium, creating a waiting list and prompting potential stadium expansion plans.
RETURN TO WHITE'S TENNESSEE BIO
