Tennessee introduced Danny White as its athletics director on Friday.
White comes to Tennessee from the University of Central Florida.
During White’s introductory press conference, he discussed his search process for the next Tennessee football coach.
“Ideally, in the age of social media and everything, everything starts and ends with student-athletes,” said White. “I was able to do that in all of my three football surveys.”
As athletics director in 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 head coach of UCF.
When Frost left for the same position in his alma mater, Nebraska, after a 13-0 season of 2017, White hired Josh Heupel. Heupel came from Missouri to UCF as an offensive coordinator and quarterback coach for Tigers.
White mentioned that he wants to communicate 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 the middle, there is a lot going on there. I’m going to do a lot of homework. I spent a lot of time researching and calling. I am fortunate to have a very significant network in intercollegiate athletics and I realize that this is probably due to the way I grew up. I can get a candidate’s opinion from people and really understand who they are from a character standpoint. I don’t even want to interview someone if I have questions about it.
“We need to make sure that the person we’re hiring to run our program will do it right, do what’s right for these kids and have an aggressive outlook to make us highly competitive – so I don’t know if I can offer more details of that because it is a very fluid situation. “