Volquest sits down with Tennessee AD Danny White, part 1
For Tennessee athletics director Danny White, the first 2+ years on the job have been interesting and certainly successful.
There was an NCAA investigation on going, a football program broken, and the start of White’s favorite challenge — a rebuild.
Volquest had the opportunity to sit down with White to discuss the resolution with the NCAA investigation, his working relationship with Chancellor Donde Plowman, and just how good is the job White accepted on January 21, 2021.
Here’s part one of our sit-down with Tennessee’s Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics.
Volquest: Simple question: have you slept better the last 10 days?
Danny White: “Yeah, relieved to get the outcome that we thought was fair and just all along. Now, we can kind of put it behind us and move forward.”
VQ: You always publicly called it a “speed bump” or a “bump in the road”, where there ever times where you felt like, ‘This is a bigger hill than a speed bump’ or was what you said publicly true to what you felt all the way through it?
White: “When I first got here we didn’t know everything, and nobody could have because the investigation was just starting. Probably in my first six months, my understanding of how big the case was grew as we learned what that was. But after that, and once I kind of got an understanding of everything that was happening, along with our position and what we thought was a realistic outcome, I have been pretty confident we would get to this place. I would be extremely disappointed if we didn’t. I think we landed right were we should have based on the bad actions that occurred here. We are taking accountability for that.”
VQ: When you interviewed for the job with (Chancellor) Donde (Plowman), did you ask a lot of questions? Did she have many answers? Could she be very transparent with you?
White: “She didn’t know nearly as much as we all learned and the same would be true of my conversation with Josh (Heupel, in hiring him). She was as transparent with me as I was with Josh that we don’t know everything, but here’s what we do know and here’s how we are going to handle it. So coming into it what was attractive to me was not necessarily that there were major violations, but the way the leadership was approaching it and they way they wanted to rebuild an athletic department. You and I have talked about this before. I’m way more attracted to building something. So the fact that the NCAA challenge created a bigger hole you gotta build out of, for me, I’m kind of weirdly competitive and I like that stuff. It didn’t scare me.”
VQ: On the outside it feels like and sounds like you and Chancellor Plowman are kind of a perfect marriage. Why is it such a good fit with you two?
White: “She’s a great leader. I have learned a lot from her just in terms of her management style. Obviously, I had heard really positive things from everyone I spoke with before I signed up to be here. The conversations she and I had went really well or obviously I wouldn’t have come. She just does a really good job of being supportive at the right times and empowering me to do my job. She understands her job is different than my job and we all have things we need to focus on. That’s her. That’s Randy (Boyd). That’s John (Compton, head of board of trustees). You have a lot of seasoned people with business experience and success. She’s a former dean of a business school. Before that she was a professor of business management. She literally wrote the book on this stuff and you have really successful business people in the positions above her. We just have a really good thing going. People use the buzzword ‘alignment’ a lot. But here it’s as much about empowerment and letting people do their jobs. That’s what I try to do here within the athletic department.”
VQ: To wrap up a couple more things on the investigation, you said on radio last week that the fine would not come out of the donor pool. How will the fine be paid?
White: “We are working through that right now. One of the things I dislike about our profession right now is people listen to a radio interview and they write an article and they don’t pay attention to the conversation that was happening. I think Jimmy (Hyams) asked me about the capital projects and would the fine slow them down. That was the context of how I answered that. No, it’s not going to slow down the capital projects because those donor dollars are restricted to those projects. The business models and the reason we have had confidence in those projects supporting themselves is in part because of the donations to those projects so all of that is fine. As far as how we are paying the fine and the schedule to pay it, we are still working through that.”
VQ: The five-year probation period, for fans it’s ok all this is over we are moving forward, for an administrator does anything change in how you manage or have to do your job while you are under a probationary period?
White: “It should be we do it the right way, let’s do business as usual. I think maybe it’s an extra word of caution as I remind our coaches as I do all the time about we want to be highly competitive here, but not at the expense of winning with integrity. That’s not just being pollyanna about NCAA rules. To me, it doesn’t really matter if it’s an NCAA rule, a state law or if you and I are sitting around playing monopoly. If I beat you and I cheated to do it, then I didn’t really beat you. I think we should be too competitive to cheat. We should want to win and know we won playing by the rules we all agreed upon. So that’s kind of how we talk about playing within the rules and doing things the right way. So being on probation should not change the way that we operate. We should act like we are on probation for the next 100 years. Don’t knowingly break a rule. If you mistakenly break a rule and that’s ok, we will deal with that, but don’t knowingly break a rule.”
VQ: You and I have talked about deregulation before with the NCAA. How important was this ‘win’ so to speak for the student- athlete, that the innocent guys weren’t punished? You have made it very clear for thirty months that rest of it will sort itself out and we will deal with it, but the innocent student-athlete needs to win in these cases. How important do you think it is moving forward that the student-athletes were punished not just for Tennessee but for future cases around the country?
White: “We said that, and Donde supported me on it very quickly. We said that before it was en vogue. Thirty months ago, and I didn’t realize it had been that long, people were still getting post-season bans, but we saw what was coming. At that point in time, I think it was the spring that we had just set the new transfer portal rules which is why we lost 35 guys to the portal and NIL was coming on….I don’t know that it was all that of a calculated position. It was more I just met with the leadership council of the team and they rallied around they want to win right away. They embraced a new coaching staff and as the coming weeks are going I’m seeing all this. The more I saw how it was playing out, those were fourth- and fifth-year guys who are working their tail off to rebuild a football program at a University the care about. We are not taking a bowl game away from them. That’s B.S. That’s not the right thing to do.
The individuals that were involved in the violations aren’t here any more. In fact a lot of them are playing for teams we are going against or they are playing in the playoffs or a big bowl game. So we felt like that’s what we were going to fight for. Then I think we were fortunate in the coming months when kind of the world changed and college sports has pivoted to a better place. I would like to think we played a role in that because we weren’t silent in our opinion on that. I hope that the way we handled this both from a Chancellor and University leadership to doing the right thing for the right reasons and holding ourselves accountable standpoint, there should be a path where we can go faster through these things if schools are incentivized to do that like we just did. But also the concept of stopping the punishment of innocent student athletes. I feel like we were a leader in that nationally and I feel like that was important.”
VQ: Two years removed, how much appreciation to you have for those that stayed to turn things around?
White: “It’s phenomenal. Everybody is excited about 11 wins and the Orange Bowl, but to win seven games in year one with that group and the way they embraced all the changes given what they had just going through. Not just the NCAA scandal and all of that but you had COVID. They had a really rough experience. And the culture they described to me that was happening here wasn’t a positive one. They embraced a ton of change with a whole new staff. Every time I saw those guys when they came back last year for games, I reminded them of that. It’s pretty phenomenal.”
VQ: Shifting gears here, you put out your five-year plan a year ago. You have sold more season tickets than you expected. You had a great year athletically, are you accelerated in your plan after year one? And if so, how much?
White: “We are way ahead of schedule. We spent a couple of hours on it this week as a staff. We want to do a yearly update on the strategic plan. It’s taking us longer to do it because we have to figure out where we are raising the goals to. Season tickets, we can’t raise the goal because we are sold out. The remaining four years of the plan are going to say keep it sold out, but I like to raise goals. If you beat that goal then raise it for next year. Fundraising numbers, and we will be announcing it soon, are across the board in all three metrics I care about number of donors, cash received, total commitments, all three are records. Last year they were records by a huge margin and the cash received would be really hard to top, but we did. The Tennessee fund staff has done a phenomenal job. Academically, we have had a record GPA all five semesters. I don’t know how it could have gone better. Our coaches have really raised the bar competitively. I didn’t expect, just based on our history I think we have have averaged in the 30’s in the last 10 years in the Learfield Cup. I didn’t think we would have our best year ever in our second year here and in the first year of our strategic plan. That’s ahead of schedule.”
VQ: So how do you ensure that you sustain? It was a great year, 11 wins, to play for championships is what everyone wants, but there are years where things happen and it’s not great. How do you ensure that you aren’t riding the wave of wins and losses to grow the budget and the department?
White: “At the risk of sounding a little coach speak, but it’s true, the things that I focus on in our strategic plan and our staff is focused on are the goals that we have. The plan is more of an internal document than an external document. It’s a management document. The reason we make it so external is I want our fans to understand what we care about and what we are focused on. I kind of like that level of accountability and the transparency of it. If we just focus on the process, the outcomes of this year were great. The outcomes next year might be better, might be worse or might be the same, I don’t know. But if we keep on focusing on the things that I know are going to lead to competitive advantages here over a 5-10 year run, we are gong to really like what we see. That’s what our coaches are doing. We have so many of our sport programs that are very early in the process of building how good they can be. All of them can win SEC championships and national championships. I can’t find a sport where I think ‘oh that was a great year, but that’s probably going to be a peak. That’s going to be tough to recreate that.’
All the sports I see them growing and continuing to get better and I know that we have put in place competitive advantages that some of the coaches who have been here a long time didn’t have before. We did that two years ago. To give an Olympic sport coach competitive advantages in recruiting that helps get higher level athletes and helps them compete at a higher level, without giving away trade secrets, the first kids that they have recruited to take advantage of those things might be hitting campus next week. There’s a lag from when we put things in place to when you are going to see it really help you win games and championships.
I really believe we are going to keep getting better. I would have said that if we finished 6th in the Learfield Cup like we did or we we finished 21st or 16th. I’m not as focused early on about what the outcomes are. I think it’s more about what we are doing to build it.”
VQ: Is this a better job than you thought it was when you took it?
White: “Yeah, it is. I thought it was a good job or I wouldn’t have come. I was really interested in the rebuild as I said and was excited about the prospect of building it with the tradition and all of that. A lot of what we have done, I could’ve told you we were going to do it before I got here. I couldn’t have told you though how strong the fan base would respond to it. For us to be sold out in baseball, softball. To be sold out in Neyland Stadium when everyone around the country is talking about downsizing. That’s just crazy. The fan support and the scale of our fan base is bigger and more powerful than I realized.”
VQ: Was there a moment when you realized that?
White: “This year there have been more moments. Obviously you go to a game and it’s packed and it’s loud. We all see how great that is. National television celebrated our stadium environment and how many people were there. For me it’s more about sitting in a board room and getting reports back from our CFO that we are going to hit a budget number this year that we thought it would take five years to get to. We talked about when I first got here we were in the $140’s (millions) in budget and we are going to try and chase the $200-million budget schools and there’s only a handful of them in the country and we are catching them very, very quickly. When I see the season ticket sales, the fund raising numbers, the amount of new donors we have been able to get in such a quick time period. Doing almost identical things that we did at my last stop which worked there and is why we are doing it. But it’s pretty impressive.”
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