SOUTH BEND — In a reign at Notre Dame pock-marked by startling twists, athletic director Kevin White saved the most stunning for last.

His own exit.

First reported by the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer late Friday night and confirmed anonymously by an ND athletic department official, White’s eight-year run at ND is apparently about to be over. He is expected to be named athletic director at Duke University, although, the deal has not been finalized.

The 57-year-old White, appointed to succeed Mike Wadsworth on March 13, 2000, could not be reached for comment, nor could senior associate athletic director John Heisler.

Duke has been searching for a replacement for Joe Alleva, who left Duke for the same post at Louisiana State in April.

White came to Notre Dame from Arizona State, a far different athletic/academic model. Yet he was able to take the pragmatic business side from that experience and push out some of ND’s outdated logic, particularly when it came to coaching salaries, coaching contracts and facilities.

White survived O’Leary-gate — George O’Leary’s less-than-a-week run as Notre Dame’s head football coach in December of 2001 — and coach Tyrone Willingham’s messy ouster and the power struggle that surrounded that change. He championed progress in Notre Dame’s Olympic sports programs and took pride in ND’s annual high standing in the national all-sports standings. He wasn’t afraid of controversy, but preferred to blend into the background.

Born Sept. 25, 1950, in Amityville, N.Y., White earned his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in 1983 with an emphasis on higher education administration (his dissertation title was “An Appraisal of the Women’s Intercollegiate Athletic Programs, and the Relationship to Men’s Athletics at the Big Ten Conference Institutions Before and After Title IX Implementation”).

In 1985 he completed postdoctoral work at Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Management. He earned his master’s degree in athletics administration from Central Michigan University in 1976 and his bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1972 from St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Ind., where he also competed as a sprinter in track and field.

He was awarded St. Joseph’s Alumni Achievement Award in 1997, and he’s currently a member of the Loras College Board of Regents. He was a 2006 inductee into the Suffolk County (Long Island, N.Y.) Sports Hall of Fame.

White also attended the University of South Florida and St. Leo College in Tampa, Fla., between 1972 and ‘76 — and he took 60 hours of advanced graduate courses in higher education administration at Michigan State University between 1977 and ‘80.

He received an honorary doctorate in 2007 from the United States Sports Academy.