Tennessee introduced Danny White as athletic director on Friday.
White is coming to Tennessee from the University of Central Florida.
During White’s introductory press conference, he discussed his process in search of the next head coach of football in Tennessee.
“Ideally, in the age of social media and everything, it starts and ends with student-athletes,” White said. “I managed to do this in all three football searches.”
As athletics director at Buffalo, White hired Lance Leipold away from the 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 left for the same position at the 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 defenders’ coach.
White mentioned that he wants to be in communication with 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,” White said. “What happens between them, a lot of things happen there. I will do a lot of homework. I spent a lot of time researching and calling. I’m lucky to have a pretty significant network in intercollegiate athletics and I realize it’s probably because of the way I grew up. I can get a candidate’s opinion from people and even understand who they are in terms of the character. I don’t even want to interview anyone if I have questions about that.
“We need to make sure that the person we bring in to run our program will do it right, do good for these children, and have an aggressive vision to make us extremely competitive – so I don’t know if I can give more details than that, because it’s a pretty fluid situation. ”