College Sports Information Directors of America

Steve White – Western Carolina University, Associate Athletic Director and Sports Information Director (retired)

By Daniel Hooker, Western Carolina University, Associate Athletics Director for Media Relations
 

“I am well into my retirement after 40 years with Western Carolina University Athletics, but I vividly remember electric typewriters, spirit master and mimeograph duplicating machines, and dial-up telephones in the 1970s and 80s. I will never forget my hall of fame mentors - Clemson's Bob Bradley, South Carolina's Tom Price, Georgia's Claude Felton, Florida's Norm Carlson, and Tennessee's Bud Ford - to name a few that impacted my career. Those (CoSIDA) pioneers taught me that one-on-one personal communication with the media was paramount. Also, they emphasized that the 'student-athlete' was why you had a job. I hope that I had the same kind of impact on my assistants, student workers, and student-athletes. The sports information/communication profession is underrated in the world of college athletics, but all of us are proud to be a part of it.” — Steve White, CSC Hall of Fame Class of 2026

No one has told the story of Western Carolina Athletics longer and better than 2026 College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame inductee, Steve White. And quite honestly, no one has MORE stories about Catamount Athletics than Steve White.

A 1967 graduate from WCU with degrees in history and political science, White began a four-decade career with Catamount Athletics in 1970 – though his love affair with the Catamounts began as a student in 1962. And though he officially retired from campus in 1998, he has never strayed too far from where the Catamounts roam. He and his wife, Elaine – perhaps the trupe MVP – continue to live just off the backside of the Cullowhee campus, overlooking many of the academic buildings and the University library – site of the old football stadium, White would remind you.

White’s involvement with Western Carolina and Catamount Athletics can be traced back to his time as the sports editor at the student-run Western Carolinian newspaper while an undergraduate. He also moonlighted with the sports information office as a student assistant. White returned as the Sports Information Director at WCU in 1970, serving for 28 years (1970-1998) before his official retirement from the State of North Carolina.

White remained active, taking on the Catamount Sports Network in both selling and broadcasting as a radio announcer from 1998 to 2014, bringing the zeal, passion, and institutional knowledge to each broadcast that Catamount fans loved to hear. He has since returned to the mic to assist with the “Tracking the Cats” podcast centering around WCU Athletics.

His contributions continue today as he is a staple at each home athletics event – and even some on the road, depending on the travel arrangements with the media relations and broadcast crew. He serves on the Western Carolina Athletics Hall of Fame committee and as the Athletics Historian, a title bestowed upon him by a former university chancellor at the time of White’s official retirement.

Steve White held several titles and executed many job duties during his Catamount career. He served as associate athletic director, sports information director, and the executive director of Big Cat Club – now the Catamount Club. He fondly recalls stories about administrators and coaches, university officials and events – but most of all, about the student-athletes who wore the Purple & Gold as Catamounts during his time with the university.

He was also instrumental in creating one of the most unique rivalry-game trophies in the history of intercollegiate athletics. The “Old Mountain Jug,” likened to the days of moonshining in the mountains of western North Carolina, was up for grabs annually in the gridiron grudge match between Western Carolina and Appalachian State, in what Sports Illustrated in the 1980s called “the best football rivalry you’ve never heard of.” It served as the face of the rivalry for many years, spanning the 1970s through the mid-2000s when the Mountaineers moved away from the Southern Conference to the Sun Belt Conference.

Among his numerous career honors, White was a 1999 inductee into the Western Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame as an athletic administrator. He received a Distinguished Service Award from WCU (1998) and the Southern Conference Distinguished Service Award in 2010. He was the Western North Carolina Mountain Amateur Athletic Club's Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2016 for contributions to sports in the region. A CSC (CoSIDA) Lifetime Achievement Award winner in 1996, White was a long-time member of the organization's writing committee and publications committee.

White also served on the USA Olympic Festival and NCAA championship media staffs and received numerous national and regional publication awards during his tenure. He successfully helped 35 football, basketball, and baseball players attain All-America honors and mentored nine student and full-time assistants who became media relations/communications directors on the collegiate and professional sports levels.

From 1970 until 2011, White had a string of 499 consecutive Catamount football game attendances (including retirement) and was an eight-time recipient of the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) awards for "outstanding press box service." He and Elaine have an endowed scholarship that supports WCU student-athletes.
 

During his tenure, White had a hand in designing the press box facilities at E.J. Whitmire Stadium – home of Catamount football – ahead of its christening and dedication in the 1974 season. That venue has remained the media home at the stadium over the past 51 seasons, with very few alterations or little done in the way of modernization or improvements from the original structure. That changes this fall as Western Carolina opens the “Western Skybox” facility, which includes a new press box opposite the outdated 1974 structure that still casts its gaze upon the field, squinting on those sun-splashed Saturdays in the fall because of its east-side location.

White will remain a part of the new “Western Skybox” facility scheduled to open in August 2026, as a group of donors raised the funds to dedicate a portion of the building as the “Steve White Media Center,” in honor of his legacy and his dedication to the school.

Among those former students White mentored who remain active in collegiate athletics are Lindy Brown, Senior Associate Director of Communications at Duke University; KC Culler, Assistant Athletic Director for Communications at Pfeiffer University; Joseph Marvin, Sports Information Director at Brevard College, and Daniel Hooker, Associate Athletics Director for Media Relations, currently with the Catamounts. Each of those former Steve White protégés had a hand in White’s deserved CSC Hall of Fame selection this year.
 

Annabelle Myers, NC State University Associate AD for Communications: “Everybody knows how phenomenal Steve White was at his job, but it was how he treated others that made him legendary in our business. I will never forget how he went out of his way to welcome and support a young know-it-all when I took my first director's position at East Tennessee State in 1994. If you traveled to Cullowhee for any type of competition, it was going to be run as well as anywhere in the country. I've never met anyone in all my years in this business who didn't love and admire 'Whitey.' That's his legacy.”

Hunter Reid, Furman University Associate AD/Communications: "It has been a distinct honor to have known Steve for the last 41 years, including two decades when we both served as sports information directors in the Southern Conference.  Steve was well established in the profession as the long-time SID at Western Carolina University when I took the SID job at Furman in 1985 as a 24-year-old with much to learn.  From day one, he graciously welcomed me to the league and, over the years, was very supportive, friendly, complimentary, and engaging, as well as always quick to share his legendary wit that is greatly appreciated by all who know him. Steve was easy to work with while executing his duties, and his vast knowledge, instincts, professionalism, and commitment to excellence were evident in all that he undertook — all delivered with absolute thoroughness and that most cherished of qualities: consistency. Steve was held in the highest esteem as a SID by his colleagues in the profession, media, and college/conference administrators across the spectrum, both regionally and nationally.  His immense talent and skill as a communicator, coupled with his vast knowledge of sports, served him, Western Carolina, the Southern Conference, and our profession exceptionally well. One of the best testaments I can offer on Steve’s profound impact on our profession is the number of outstanding college SIDs who developed under his tutelage.  Among them are Mike Cawood, Craig Wells, and Daniel Hooker — a trifecta of superb college SIDs with whom I have had the pleasure to work and who I rank among the best in our business. As the product of a one-man SID shop as an undergraduate at Presbyterian College, I made it a priority as a young SID to observe the work of highly respected veterans in the profession.  Lucky me that Steve White, along with the likes of Rick Covington (Furman, Appalachian State), Bob Bradley and Tim Bourret (Clemson), Tom Price (South Carolina), Andy Solomon (Winthrop), Bill Hamilton (South Carolina State), Bob Dickinson (The Citadel), were stalwarts who proved to be towers of influence from whom I could observe and learn."

Douglas Mead, Asheville Citizen-Times Sports Editor: “I covered every football game at Western Carolina from 1981 through 1995, and I wish I had a nickel for every time I was the last one out of the football press box because I had to write both a lede and a column. I would often say, "Sorry to keep you waiting Whitey." And Steve would always respond, "That's my job." But it wasn't a job for Steve. It was a true calling. Steve never saw his job as work. It was a labor of love. And no one loved Western Carolina more than Steve White.  He was literally Mr. Catamount, and no one deserves this honor more that Whitey."

Lindy Brown, Duke University Senior Associate Communications Director: “As a freshman at Western Carolina University, Steve White gave me my start in Sports Information, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without him. Steve set the standard for professionalism, integrity, and service, and he took great care in teaching those values to everyone who worked alongside him. I am so grateful for his mentorship and friendship all these years. His induction into the College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame is a well-deserved honor, and I am thrilled to see him recognized for a career that has had such a lasting impact on our profession and on so many of us who were fortunate to learn from him.”

Craig Wells, City and County of Denver (CO) Public Information Officer: “Among the most important things I learned from Steve White was the value of attitude and humor -- of always being positive no matter how poorly your team is doing, of treating people respectfully and enthusiastically no matter how slanted their reporting may have been (because ultimately, they're just doing their jobs as we all are), and the ever-present understanding that there are things in this world that are far more serious than sports to get upset about.”