Vice Chancellor/Director of Athletics Danny White has released a five-year strategic plan for Vol athletics that is all encompassing to enhance both the student athlete and fan experience.

The plan entitled 'Rise Glorious' features five core values highlighted by resources and competitive excellence.

The five-year plan that was created over the last 18 months by not just White, but his administrative team, as well as coaches and student athletes states publicly a goal for winning.

Tennessee will win a national championship in at least one sport every four years; and each sport will achieve at least one national top 16 finish every four years

Each sport will in a conference championship at least once every five years; Tennessee Athletics aims to capture five conference championships in one academic year while averaging at least three conference championships per year over the next five years.

“You build a brand from the inside out,” White said when asked why he publicly announced championship goals. “As much as this document has a pretty picture and is glossy, this is an internal document. I think the level of accountability it places on our entire organization is enhanced. We aren’t hiding behind it. We aren’t shying away from it. We want to be highly, highly competitive. I think competitive people want to be a part of competitive organizations. We want student athletes and coaches to come here and be energized by these things and not intimidated by it.”

“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. I think the vast majority of our fans are of that mindset. That’s why I like to be transparent in all these things. Do we want to win? Yea, we aren’t going to talk around that. We are going to be pretty specific. We want to win badly just as the fans do.”

While the expectation is to win championships on the field, winning off the field is key as well. For White, who’s background is in fund raising, it’s about increasing the resources.

“It would be like worrying how fast a car is without being concerned about how big the engine is. The revenue is our engine,” White offered. “For us to be as consistently competitive as we want to be then we better have the might behind it which is operating budget to be about to do what our competition is doing or create competitive advantages and facilities. Those things have always been and will always be important in college athletics.”

The 5-year plan states the budget goal is to go from 170 million to over 200 million by 2026-2027. In order to do that, raising money must increase.

“I knew what the top of the SEC and the top of the country looked like and I knew where Tennessee was when I got here,” White said. “I knew we needed to figure a way to close that gap if we are going to do what we all want to do here. After being here and getting to know this fanbase, I’m more confident that we can get there as quickly as we have laid out at this point.”

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 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.

Currently, Tennessee is over 54,000 in football season ticket sales for the 2022 season after selling 52,236 in Josh Heupel’s first year. Men’s basketball sold 13,562 a season ago. It will be interesting to see where basketball ticket sales end up this year. In White’s ticket restructuring plan last year, football donations no longer include basketball tickets as some did for years. A basketball season ticket now requires its own donation.

“We looked at a lot of historical stuff. In terms of the goal for season tickets in football we have hit 70,000 before and it wasn’t that long ago (2016),” White explained. “I know that attendance is an issue nationally. What I’m learning about this fanbase and what I saw last fall coming out of a pandemic and all the challenges we have had competitively, I’m not sure some of the trends nationally apply to Vol Nation,” White said. “The way we packed the arena, the baseball stadium, and obviously Neyland Stadium, we feel very confident that we can get the season ticket base back to where we want it to be. I don’t know that we ever want to be sold out on season tickets because I want to make sure we are accessible to every family in Tennessee to be able to come watch the Vols at some point. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to have a season ticket either geographically or financially so having a single game offering important too.”

Of course with NIL (name, image, likeness) now in place, the question for the last year has been how much does NIL fund raising affect fund raising for athletic departments. White said he doesn’t see it as battling for dollars.

“I have been asked if I look at that as a source of competition and we don’t,” White said. “I think that there are plenty of generous, passionate Vol fans. Some that chose to contribute to both because they can and some that chose one or the other. I don’t lose sleep over the competition around NIL from a fund raising stand point. That’s not something that’s on my radar at all. What we can’t do is ignore the fact that there are schools in our conference that we are trying to beat that have the facilities that we are talking about building. They already have them. To have the budget we are talking about, those things matter. We can’t just say we have NIL now, the rest of this stuff is on the back burner. It’s not. It’s still very real and very much a factor when it comes to winning and losing.”

With a five year plan now in place, the focus centers around growth on and off the field for all sports and the the entire department. Growth starts with the sport that kicks off on September 1st.

“We have 20 sports and we want to win in every single one of them. 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,” White said. “And successful is on the field but it’s also in how we monetize our program, how we connect with our fanbase and create a great fan experience. That’s why we have spent so much time on what the future of Neyland Stadium looks like.”

Here's the link to the full strategic plan