Tennessee Athletics has a plan to be the best in the land

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - Recently Tennessee Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Danny White unveiled a new five-year plan designed to ultimately make the University of Tennessee Athletics department one of, if not the best, program in the country.

“I want our fans to know that our entire administration is incredibly competitive. Our coaches are incredibly competitive. They don’t want to lose. Our student athletes are competitive. I think for us to all rally around that is going to help this athletic department become what we all want it to be a lot faster,” said White.

The plan, called Rise Glorius, features five core values highlighted by resources and competitive excellence. Competitive is the key, with winning being the priority in all varsity sports.

White’s goal is for Tennessee to win a national championship in at least one sport every four years and for each sport to achieve at least one national top 16 finish every four years.

As is the case with any aggressive athletics plan, fundraising is key and that is no different with this plan at Tennessee.

The 5-year plan states the budget goal is to go from 170 million to over 200 million by 2026-2027.

In 2022-23, the goal for unrestricted annual donations is $34 million a significant jump from the $25-30 million average over the last five years. The Shareholders Society’s goal is $25 million. Then, there is the corporate sponsorship goal of $18 million.

The other piece to the goal of increased resources is season ticket sales. Below are the season ticket goals for the next five years:

Making no bones about it, White added that it is football that will drive the overall growth of his department saying, “The reality is generate the vast majority of revenue in two of them and football generates the line share so it’s the rising tide that carries all ships we have to be successful.”

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