University of Tennessee Athletics
Staff Directory
- Title:
- Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics
- Email:
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 (14)
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
2026 - Women's Golf Tournament
2026 - Rowing
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
2025-26 Tennessee Year in Review
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.
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 has 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. Tennessee added two more SEC championships under White’s leadership in 2025-26 as women’s golf and rowing captured conference titles for the first time. With the SEC Championships in rowing and women’s golf, UT has had 14 SEC Championships since White’s arrival in 2021. In the six years prior to 2021, Tennessee combined for three SEC Titles.
Tennessee is just one of three schools nationally to reach the postseason in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball, baseball and softball during the 2025-26 academic year. UT has gone to the postseason in those six sports for five straight academic years, the longest current streak in the nation.
A total of seven sports finished in the Top 10 nationally in 2025-26. Men’s basketball was one of just two schools in the Elite Eight for the third year in a row, alongside Duke, and is the only one with four consecutive Sweet 16 trips and three straight Elite Eight bids.
Men’s and women’s swimming both finished in the top five nationally for the second consecutive year, becoming only one of two schools nationally to accomplish two straight top-five finishes.
Rowing finished third nationally – which tied the best finish in school history – for the second time in three years. Softball reached the National Semifinals for the third time in four years.
In the final LEARFIELD Directors’ Cup Standings, Tennessee secured its fifth-straight year with a Top-15 finish, the longest such streak in UT history.
The success continued in the classroom under White’s leadership. Tennessee's student-athletes recorded the best spring semester in school history in the Spring of 2026, with a cumulative GPA of 3.47. This followed the best semester in school history, with a Fall 2025 GPA of 3.49.
281 student-athletes were recognized on their respective Dean's List, the most ever in a spring semester.
The record-setting spring metrics marked the 27th consecutive semester in which the Vols and Lady Vols combined to post a GPA of 3.0 or higher. For the seventh straight semester, every team in every sport had a GPA above 3.0.
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."
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 made Tennessee the only Power Four school in the nation to accomplish it 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.
Tennessee's top three finishes in the Directors' Cup have occurred from 2022-25. It has continued at a torrid pace since White was named AD. The Big Orange has steadily ascended in the Directors' Cup standings since the competition was canceled in 2019-20. Tennessee finished 26th in 2020-21, 13th in 2021-22, sixth in 2022-23, and reached a high-water mark of No. 3 in 2023-24.
Before UT's three consecutive top-10 rankings, Tennessee last achieved a top-10 Directors' Cup finish in 2006-07, when it reached a previous best of 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 momentum wave 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.
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 FY26. For the fiscal year that ended on June 30 (FY26), the Tennessee Fund team set a new fundraising record ($175.5M), and the annual fund eclipsed $70 million for the second straight year ($71.6M). Since White's arrival, UT has seen 117 percent growth in fundraising dollars, 115 percent growth in the annual fund, and a 40 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 $904 million, far exceeding the campaign's goal of raising $500 million by the summer of 2026. The new campaign goal is set for $1 billion by the summer of 2027.
For the first time in 2024-25, Tennessee became a CLC No. 1 school nationally, selling more licensed products than any other school.
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 four 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 over 30,000.
Knoxville has again proven why it is America's College Sports City, as evidenced by its success over the last three years. Tennessee posted the highest overall attendance of any school in the nation across football, men's basketball, and women's basketball in 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26.
The remarkable success at home included four sports selling out of season ticket inventory – football, men’s basketball, softball, and baseball for three consecutive years. It marked the first time in Tennessee's history that four different sports had completely sold out their season-ticket inventory in the same year.
For the fourth consecutive year, the department eclipsed a program revenue record. The cumulative effect of the initiatives above led Tennessee Athletics to its highest-ever operating revenue, exceeding $300 million in FY25.
The $304 million in total operating revenue was a new high watermark in UT Athletics history, eclipsing last year's record total of just over $230 million.
White has grown the budget by nearly $175 million since his arrival on Rocky Top.
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 exceeded $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 the school's long-standing basketball home being renamed 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.
White helped spearhead a transformative partnership between adidas and the University of Tennessee, inspired by a mutual ambition to usher in a new era of Tennessee Athletics. Effective July 1, 2026, adidas became the official footwear, uniform, apparel and sideline partner of UT Athletics.
Reuniting as partners for the first time since 2014, adidas and UT's new 10-year agreement promises to uphold the rich traditions of the University of Tennessee's athletic history while bringing new energy and industry-leading resources to the storied UT brand.
The remarkable success of Tennessee Athletics since White joined in 2021 has positioned the school as a flagship university among adidas' substantial roster of partner universities.
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 director of athletics at Virginia Tech
Danny and his wife, Shawn, have four children: Aidan, Molly, Caitlin and James.
