Benedict College fires its football coach
Benedict College has parted ways with head football coach Mike White, the school announced Tuesday in a statement.
The Tigers are “immediately starting a national search for his replacement,” the school said.
White, a longtime head coach at Albany State who was hired in early 2014 to replace James Woody, went 19-30 with the Tigers. The 2019 season began with high hopes after a 6-3 run in 2018, but Benedict’s offense sputtered throughout the year and the Tigers finished 1-9.
“They just said they were going in another direction,” White said. “It’s just a result-type business, and I appreciate the opportunity that I had there.”
White coached at Albany State, his alma mater, for 30 years before joining Benedict. As head coach of the Rams from 2000-2014, he posted 13 straight winning seasons, and has an overall coaching record of 130-72.
With Benedict, White went 0-10 in 2015, then posted a 5-6 record in 2016. The Tigers won the last five games of the season in 2017 to finish 7-2 and 5-1 in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Benedict’s best season since an 8-3 run in 2009 and the Tigers’ second-best finish since the football program was restarted in 1995.
Budget cuts to the football program in recent years, which bottlenecked the possibility of more coaching staff positions, made remaining competitive difficult.
“That’s been the way it was for a couple of years,” White said. “I had two full-time assistants and in college football, that’s kind of hard to compete with only two full-time guys. Again, it’s just a result-type business.”
An email seeking comment on the school’s head-coaching search was sent to Athletic Director Willie Washington.
As for White, the longtime head coach said he isn’t looking toward coaching opportunities in the near future.
“No plans. The plan for right now is to get myself together,” he said. “I don’t plan on doing anything, just trying to sit back and concentrate on me for a little while.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 8:43 PM.