Sad Day, Bad Day: Tony Vitello Officially Leaves Tennessee To Become the Next Manager of the San Francisco Giants

It's finally over. After days of deliberation, Tony Vitello has finally decided he will leave Knoxville to become the first-ever MLB manager to make the jump from college baseball with no prior professional experience.

I held out a very small sliver of hope that the longer this went on, maybe Vitello was having second thoughts and power players at Tennessee were making a strong push to keep him, but in the end the appeal of a Major League manager job was just too much to ignore.

It's hard to have any ill will towards Vitello — though I do wish he'd have just delivered a bullet to the head on Saturday rather than drag this out for nearly a week — for leaving for the San Francisco Giants. If he had left for Arkansas or LSU, I don't think I'd have ever forgiven him. But there are only 30 of these jobs out there and he has an opportunity to build a legacy at the highest level of baseball. This will only sting and turn sour if he gets fired in a few years and ends up in another SEC dugout.

It's also much easier to swallow since Vitello leaves having delivered a national championship. This would be quite a depressing day if the Vols had gotten to Omaha three times under Vitello — plus the 2022 team that was one of the best college baseball teams in history but blew it in a Super Regional — and never been able to get it done. This guy took over the worst baseball program in the SEC and turned it into the best in the country. You just have to say thank you and best of luck.

And even if any Vols fans are mad at Vitello for leaving, we really need to be rooting for his success in San Francisco to prevent the aforementioned scenario of him returning to college baseball. I hope he leads the Giants on another run like they had from 2010-14 and ends up in the Hall of Fame.

Thanks for the memories, Tony. We will always have 2024.