Danny White says Lady Vols coach owed apology for rumors about NIL share leading to Tony Vitello’s exit
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Tony Vitello’s departure from Tennessee to take over as manager of the San Francisco Giants stirred up the college baseball community, as the former Vols’ leader became the first college coach to make the direct jump to leading an MLB club.
Tennessee fans were predictably upset that they were losing the services of the man who revitalized their baseball program and delivered them its first National Championship in 2024. That led to a variety of rumors catching fire on social media, and one of them involved the Lady Vols basketball program.
Head coach Kim Caldwell has made headlines with her recent recruiting and transfer portal success, but a narrative had been created recently that funds being shifted from the baseball program to the women’s basketball team prompted Vitello’s departure.
During a Wednesday press conference to address the Vitello news, Tennessee Athletic Director Danny White made sure to quickly diminish that claim and challenge whoever created the rumor.
“Did anybody report that in here? So who reported it? Somebody had to make up something that’s not true for it to become a rumor, right?” White said to the room of reporters, per The Tennesseean. “I think we should all collectively apologize to Kim Caldwell and our women’s basketball program, because that’s factually incorrect. Never happened.”
White went on to delve into how Tennessee spreads funding across its athletic programs, and he was very open about how the numbers work hand-in-hand.
“Our rev share numbers are consistent with the house settlement: 5% for women’s basketball, 15% for men’s basketball, 75% for football, 5% for other. With that ‘other’ bucket, which is $900,000, we distributed $750,000 to our baseball program,” White said. “That is far from what we do for baseball or for any sport. Like all the most competitive programs in the country, we participated in front-loading last spring. Baseball was a beneficiary of that.”
White finished by explaining that the Volunteer baseball program is competitive financially with the top programs in the nation, and he emphasized that NIL also comes into play frequently with the team.
“That was about a $1.2 million new investment this year that a sport like women’s basketball wouldn’t have gotten,” White said. “We do more with rev share and with NIL packages for baseball on top of their rev share. So I know what the competitive space is in the SEC and across of the country, and I know our baseball program is extremely well-equipped.”
More from White’s presser can be heard below:
Parker is currently the sports editor with the Enterprise-Journal in McComb, Mississippi. He's a graduate from Mizzou who has experience covering the Tiger football and basketball beats for SB Nation, and he's worked for a variety of sports news outlets in the past.
