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O’Gara: Zander Sechrist was right. Tennessee needs to get Tony Vitello a lifetime contract
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A lot can be said in the heat of the moment after an emotional, championship-clinching win. After all, you’re on top of the world.
A marriage proposal? Sure. A promise to go to Disney World? You bet.
One can also look into the future while being present in those moments. That was the case for Tennessee southpaw Zander Sechrist, who earned the win in Tennessee’s first baseball national title in program history. Sechrist made the post-title declaration that Vols fans far and wide could support.
Zander Sechrist on @Vol_Baseball‘s Tony Vitello: “I see Danny White back there. I hope there’s lifetime contract coming soon.”
— Kendall Rogers (@KendallRogers) June 25, 2024
Heat of the moment? Nah. That’s spot on. Vitello deserves a lifetime contract to stay at Tennessee.
It’s not enough that Vitello got a 40% bump in base pay for winning the College World Series. His entire annual salary — not just the base pay — is $1.5 million per year. That current contract was agreed upon after the 2021 season in which the Vols broke through and reached the College World Series for the first time since 2005. Vitello made good on that deal by leading Tennessee back to Omaha twice in the past 3 years, as well as the 2022 season when the Vols earned the No. 1 overall seed but got bounced by Notre Dame in the Super Regional.
That’s ancient history. So is Vitello having just 1 win in Omaha. The 2024 run for the ages changed that.
More relevant is that nobody has won more games than Tennessee in the past 4 years. A program that entered the decade just trying to become relevant in the SEC is now in the best position of anyone to be the team of the 2020s. That’s Vitello. A 4-year run like the one the Vols are on is among the most impressive of any team in the 21st century (South Carolina repeating in 2010-11 and following with a runner-up season would still top the Vols).
Vitello didn’t catch lightning in a bottle with this 2024 team. Nothing about it was a Cinderella run except for it being the program’s first national title. In a sport like this, all one can hope for is to be an annual threat to get to Omaha and let the chips fall where they may. Florida has that with Kevin O’Sullivan. Vanderbilt has that with Tim Corbin. Arkansas has that with Dave Van Horn and Texas A&M has that with Jim Schlossnagle, even though both are still trying to break through and get their first title like Vitello just did.
All of those coaches are on the other side of 50. Well, not Vitello. He’s 45 with seemingly decades in front of him as one of the faces of the sport.
Of course, the elephant in the room is whether that’ll all be spent in Knoxville. Rumors on Monday swirled that Vitello could be the target of Texas’ vacancy with essentially a blank check on the way. If Van Horn steps down at Arkansas anytime soon, you can guarantee that Vitello would be at the top of that list because of his time spent in Fayetteville as his top assistant.
Why would Vitello ever leave Tennessee, you ask? Only Vitello could truly entertain that thought. The commitment to a $100 million upgrade of Lindsey Nelson Stadium will certainly help Tennessee be seen as a destination job. The commitment of a potential lifetime contract would absolutely help Tennessee be seen as a destination job.
A “lifetime contract” could essentially be a 10-year deal that gets a year added to it with every trip to Omaha. A 10-year, $25 million contract would pay Vitello an average of $2.5 million, which would push him past Corbin ($2.45 million) as the highest-paid coach in the sport. That would send as loud a message as any that nobody is poaching Vitello.
Everything Vitello has done over the past 4-plus years has been a loud message to the outside world. The man who made “Daddy” hats and fur coat home run celebrations part of the college baseball vernacular will forever be a Tennessee legend even if 2024 is never topped again.
Tennessee knows all too well that there are no guarantees in baseball. Dynasties don’t really exist. Paying a coach a lifetime contract won’t guarantee that, either, but it would give the Vols the best chance possible to capitalize on the 9-figure investment that was made to create one of the premier venues in the sport.
What’s next for Vitello and the Vols remains to be seen. All we know is that he wildly surpassed any expectations when he signed on the dotted line back in 2017.
Seven years later, all Tennessee fans can hope for is that Vitello will soon have an even more significant contract to sign.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
