Ranking The Top 10 Tennessee Wins Of The Danny White Era

By Cody McClure

Danny White was hired as Tennessee’s athletic director on January 21, 2021.

Since that day, Tennessee Athletics has been in good hands. The Vols have done a lot of winning in a lot of different sports.

As it is list season, today we are ranking the top 10 wins of the Danny White AD era at UT.

Football is weighted a little heavier than the other sports, with men’s basketball, baseball, and women’s basketball also making appearances on the list.

Think of it as an athletic department budget. Football is most important, but that doesn’t lessen the importance of the other sports.

After all, we are the “everything” school.

Here you go:

10. 2025 Regular Season vs. Alabama — Men’s Basketball

Jahmai Mashack’s buzzer beater. The moment alone makes this one top 10-worthy. This list won’t be all about “moments.” It’s about moments combined with results, combined with lasting impact, combined with whatever I’ve come up with in my own head. But this moment seemed like it had to be included. Tennessee was down by nine points late in the second half before pushing back in front of the home crowd.

With just 30 seconds remaining, and still down four, Mashack put the team on his shoulders. With the game tied at 76 in the final seconds, Mashack dribbled up the court and launched a 35-foot desperation heave. It landed right in the hole. The ending couldn’t have possibly been any sweeter in the first AP top-six matchup ever between the teams. It was especially sweet that Mashack was the one who made the shot after the senior guard had been criticized by some nerds in the media throughout the season for not adding enough to the team offensively.

9. 2025 Regular Season vs. UConn — Women’s Basketball

The Lady Vols finally broke through for a big win earlier this year. They had been close to notching a key win in Kim Caldwell’s first season as head coach but came up just short against four top 10 opponents before this one. Then the ladies won the biggest one possible. They beat Pat Summitt’s oldest rival, Geno Auriemma, and the UConn Huskies 80-76 in Knoxville. It was an epic battle in front of a sold out Food City Center. The win snapped a four-game losing streak to UConn.

It was the first time the Lady Vols had beaten Geno and the gals since 2007. This one felt like a major step for the program as Caldwell continues to bring in top recruits. It also apparently inspired UConn, who went on to win the national championship. It’s just nice to know that when those UConn ladies look down the list of all those accomplishments last season and when they see all those Ws etched into the side of the trophy… that massive L at Tennessee will still be there.

8. 2022 Orange Bowl vs. Clemson — Football

The culmination of the Vols’ 2022 football season ended with an all-orange Orange Bowl between Tennessee and Clemson. Tennessee had already won double-digit games for the first time since 2007 before notching its eleventh win of the year in convincing fashion. With Joe Milton at quarterback, the Vols were able to win a New Year’s Six Bowl — a truly meaningful bowl — for the first time in a long time.

It felt cool to beat Dabo Swinney’s Tigers en route to doing so after Dabo stole several of our top recruits in years past. Felt good to give him one right on the chin. With the win Tennessee was able to knock off their third recent national championship winning-school of the season. This one capped off one of the most special, most fun Tennessee football seasons of all time.

Image: The Tennessean

7. 2022 Regular Season at LSU — Football

This was the first true “we’re back” moment of the new era of Tennessee Football. Tennessee beat Florida at home the week before, and of course we can’t take beating the Gators for granted, but that win was expected. The Vols were the favorite at home and everyone knew we were due that W. A blowout road win at Baton Rouge though — at big, bad, scary Death Valley — felt huge at the time.

It felt like we had finally arrived with a real championship contender. A lot of us thought going in that we had a good chance to win but not many people would have predicted 40-13. The Vols jumped all over the Tigers early and took over the stadium. Boy, was that a fun day.

6. 2025 NCAA Tournament vs. Kentucky — Men’s Basketball

The Wildcats had Tennessee’s number in year one of the Mark Pope era. “It’s just a bad matchup” we all said when referring to the 2025 Vols against Kentucky. Tennessee had success against pretty much everyone else on the schedule, but just couldn’t figure out Kentucky. They had swept us in the regular season after winning a fluky game in Knoxville that saw us miss 34 three-pointers and following that up with a comfortable win in Lexington. No surprise then that fans were nervous when Tennessee got matched up with Kentucky in the Sweet 16.

But the third time, as they say, was the charm. Tennessee won 78-65 to advance to their second-straight Elite 8. And pretty much just straight up dominated Kentucky this time around. As soon as the ball was tipped, it was never a question on which team was going to win. Beating the ‘Cats for the first time ever in the NCAA Tournament had to make this list.

5. 2022 SEC Tournament Championship vs. Texas A&M — Men’s Basketball

Rick Barnes has had some major wins at Tennessee. The wins… we’ve probably taken those for granted. I mean, Barnes’ Tennessee teams have beaten Gonzaga, Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, Arizona, North Carolina, UCLA… some real blue bloods. All the big dogs. Sometimes those wins get lost in the shuffle because of how successful this program is. These days we can just casually beat like a No. 1 team in the country on a Tuesday and it’s pretty much just another Tuesday.

We’ve been spoiled with Barnes. Three straight Sweet 16s. Back-to-back Elite 8s. You know. But of all those great wins, the biggest one to me, at least since White has been AD which is the point of this top 10 post, was the 2022 SEC Tournament Championship Game. Not the game vs. Texas A&M specifically in itself, but winning the whole tournament. Tennessee hadn’t won that thing since the 1970s. And sure, we’ve won some SEC regular season titles over the years, but something about winning that conference tournament just inspired more excitement. Interesting that A&M has been on the other side of a couple of our biggest wins this decade. Losers.

4. 2024 College World Series vs. Florida State — Baseball

If not for this win, there likely would never have been a baseball national championship. Tennessee took down Florida State 12-11 in the first game of the College World Series. Trailing 11-8 in the bottom of the ninth inning, it felt like the magical season we’d hoped for may have been on the brink of not happening. It took everything Tennessee had, including a Dylan Dreiling walk-off single, a historic performance from Christian Moore who hit for the cycle, and a controversial check swing call involving Blake Burke, for UT to pull this one off.

But pull it off, we did. The electric ending of this game, you might say, energized the fellas. The momentum from the win helped carry them easily past North Carolina a couple days later. They followed that up with a much-less-dramatic second win over Florida State to lock up a berth in the championship series. Everyone remembers what happened from there.

3. 2024 Regular Season vs. Alabama — Football

Beating ‘24 Alabama didn’t feel as big as beating ‘22 Alabama, but by golly we still rushed the field. As someone who wasn’t able to attend the ‘22 game but did attend this one, I really soaked it in. It still felt pretty special. Especially winning the game on the back of our defense and proving to ourselves that we could win big games in multiple ways. We didn’t have to score 52 in this one.

It was only the second time Tennessee had beaten the Tide since 2006. Now of course we can say we’ve beaten Alabama two of the last three. That feels good. Josh Heupel is undefeated against Kalen DeBoer. That feels good. I still cough from all the cigar smoke I inhaled into my lungs even though I know you’re not supposed to inhale cigars. That feels good. We made the College Football Playoff as a result of winning this game. That felt good.

2. 2024 National Championship Game — Baseball

Tennessee hadn’t won a national title in a major team sport since the Lady Vols won back-to-back nattys in 2007 and 2008. The men hadn’t won one since the 1998 football season. After losing game one to Texas A&M and stumbling through half of game two, it felt like the Vols were going to come up short with the ultimate prize on the line.

Then the magic happened. It was pure elation when the Vols pulled off the second game and followed that up with their biggest win in program history the following day. It was a moment that defined the summer. Defined a year of Tennessee Athletics. Defined the era of Danny White, in a way. Made us all feel vindicated as a team finally brought home some major hardware and justified how good Tony Vitello is — and how good of a job that White had done as AD. It was a Tennessee Family affair. Heupel was there. Barnes was there. Peyton was there. It was a win for the athletic department.

The parade was fun, too. RIP to driving on the Gay Street Bridge.

1. 2022 Regular Season vs. Alabama — Football

Is it controversial to say that the ‘22 football win over Alabama was bigger than the baseball national championship? Is that a hot take? I will never take a national championship in a major sport for granted. With that said, football is still king. And the ‘22 win over Alabama was arguably the greatest home football win in the history of Tennessee Football. Despite the fact that November brought disappointment and we didn’t make the playoff, this win will always stand the test of time.

We finally cut the head off Nick Saban, figuratively, who had whipped our ass for 15 years. It happened in the most dramatic fashion, as we won 52-49 on a walk-off field goal after Hendon Hooker led us perfectly down the field in a matter of seconds. People kept all the newspaper clippings. They pulled up pieces of the field turf. Carried the goal posts to the river. Dads got all kinds of Christmas gifts of the framed photos and commemorative cigars, etc. You know the story.

More than that, it had a lasting impact. Part of the reason for all that current-day construction on the UT campus can be attributed to this win. Admissions skyrocketed after this game. More admissions = need for more housing = more jobs and more people good for the economy? Idk, I’m not an economist but that sounds right to me. Our acceptance rate went down, too, meaning this win helped improve our academic standing. Again maybe that’s not exactly factually true but it sounded right to me when some guy told me that. Plus we claimed an entire hit song from the band Alabama after winning this game.

Truly, a Dixieland Delight.