Tennessee introduced Danny White as its athletics director on Friday.
White comes to Tennessee from the University of Central Florida.
At White’s introductory press conference, he discussed his process in finding Tennessee’s next football head coach.
“Ideally, in the age of social media and stuff, it starts and ends with the student athletes,” White said. “I’ve been able to achieve that in all three of my football searches.”
As an athletics director at Buffalo, White hired Lance Leipold 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 the head coach at UCF.
When Frost moved to the same position at his alma mater, Nebraska after a 13-0 2017 season, White hired Josh Heupel. Hipel came to UCF from Missouri as the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach of the Tigers.
White said 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 to find out who their new coach is,” said White. “What happens in between, a lot happens. I’m going to do a lot of homework. I’ve spent a lot of time researching and calling. I am fortunate to have quite a significant network in peer athletics and I realize this is probably because of the way I grew up. I can get a candidate’s opinion from people and really understand who they are from a character point of view. I don’t even want to interview someone if I have any questions about that.
“We have to make sure that the person we bring in to run our program does it the right way, does well with these kids and has an aggressive vision to make us very competitive – so I don’t know if I need more details than that, because it’s a free-flowing situation. “