While Tony Vitello built Tennessee into a national college baseball power, the Volunteers were at the forefront of a new era in college sports. NIL arrived in 2021, just three years after he took over on Rocky Top, and he navigated while taking the program to its first-ever national championship.
Now, Vitello is off to the next level as the next San Francisco Giants. He is the first-ever sitting college baseball coach to become an MLB manager without any professional coaching experience.
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During an appearance with Bussin’ With The Boys, Vitello not only looked back on his time at Tennessee, but also the impact NIL had on college sports. He cited the lack of consistent rules as a reason it’s “a mess.”
“It’s a disaster,” Vitello told Taylor Lewan and Will Compton. “We all have thoughts that you dream a little bigger. I kind of have this weird fantasy or vision of, okay, can college and MLB merge together a little bit and help each other? I certainly shouldn’t be the patron of either. But I can connect the right people and get this thing where it’s a little more fluid. But the one part MLB can’t affect is where NCAA sports are in general.
“It’s just a mess. … It’s like you’re driving in the fog and you can’t really see but about 100 or 200 feet in front of you. You’re grasping for what’s real, what you can do, what you can’t do. I’m sure someone will throw out that I did something wrong or I didn’t do this. But overall, it’s very frustrating when you don’t know the rules to the game.”
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Tony Vitello: ‘Let’s find out who can do it better’
While walking through the disparity between college baseball programs, Tony Vitello pointed out the impact the current rules have on power conferences. That disparity is why he drew comparisons to UFC or boxing, which see two people fight it out to see who comes out on top.
Vitello also argued the whole point of sports is to find out who the best team will be. In the NIL era, he argued the playing field isn’t necessarily level.
“I hate to keep beating up the topic, of course there’s judges in UFC or boxing, but I love those two sports because it’s two guys locked in one spot – or it could be gals – and just, who’s better?” Vitello said. “That’s what I like more about anything. I almost wish, too, like Oregon, you should only be allowed to have a certain amount of uniform combinations. You should only have certain square footage in a locker room.
“That’s the whole point of athletics or competition is, let’s find out who can do it better. But when you really don’t know what the rules of the game are or they’re so lopsided in favor of Tennessee over Middle Tennessee State, it’s kind of hard to have that nose-to-nose competition.”
