Under the direction of Tennessee Athletic Director Danny White, he’s touted UT as an ‘Everything School’. While there’s been some extraordinary success under his watch, including the 2024 baseball national title, three-straight Elite Eights in men’s basketball, a College Football Playoff appearance and multiple SEC titles, this past year wasn’t up to standard.
White wants to be the first to tell you that he and the rest of the athletic department are not happy with the results. During the Big Orange Caravan stop on Wednesday, he met with the media and described his thoughts on where the university’s athletics are.
“Nobody hates losing more than I do,” White said. “I hate losing more than I like winning. I feel really good in the foundation we’ve built to build the best athletic department in the country. I think growth sometimes isn’t completely linear and we set some pretty high expectations in the three years prior to this year. We still got a lot to play for with spring sports going on. Still some championships we’re in the hunt for.
“But I’ll be the first to say, nobody is happy with our across the board level of competitiveness this year. We want to get back to our winning ways. We’re not even happy or satisfied with the three years prior going into this year. We did some really special things and set a bunch of records and did some things Tennessee hasn’t done before in terms of competitiveness across the board, but it’s not what we want. We want to compete for SEC and national championships in every single sport, and we think we can.”
Tennessee AD Danny White at tonight’s Big Orange Caravan:
Disappointing year by UT standards, want to win championships every year
Still believes in Caldwell
Wants 24-team CFP
Doing everything to get Barnes, Vols to Final Four. @NC5 pic.twitter.com/A2WfZtRXg0
— Steve Layman (@SteveLayman) April 30, 2026
More From RTI: Why Tennessee AD Danny White Decided to Keep Lady Vols HC Kim Caldwell After Rough Season
The top focus at Tennessee will always be football. That’s one of the main areas that came up short a year ago. Josh Heupel’s squad finished 8-5 (4-4 SEC) with a loss in the Music City Bowl to cap off the year. The defense performed so poorly that it forced Heupel to fire Tim Banks and his strength coach and go out and replace both with top available candidates.
The other weak point was women’s basketball. After a successful first year under Kim Caldwell, the Lady Vols fell apart down the stretch in year two and were eliminated in the Round of 64 of the NCAA Tournament. As a result, Caldwell has a completely new 15-player roster and a pair of new assistant coaches.
The other top frustration is baseball. While likely an unavoidable loss given the opportunity, the program lost its national champion head coach, Tony Vitello, to the MLB’s San Francisco Giants. UT promoted Josh Elander to head coach afterward, who has had an up-and-down first year, but just won a massive series vs. Alabama.
The two strongest programs have been men’s basketball and softball. Men’s basketball reached a third-straight Elite Eight this season and is reloading through the portal in an attempt at a Final Four and more. Softball reached No. 1 in the country early this year and is still a top-10 program in the hunt for a national title.
Despite being able to boast much more success across the athletic department this athletic calendar than a large number of schools, White is looking to compete for SEC and national titles across the board, and clearly isn’t satisfied with this past year.
