Tennessee is launching a nationwide search to find its new baseball coach, Director of Athletics Danny White announced on Wednesday afternoon.
White is tasked with replacing Tony Vitello, who is leaving his perch atop the Tennessee program following a highly successful eight years as head coach. During that time, the Vols won four total SEC Championships, made the College World Series three times and won their first national championship in program history.
“We are going to conduct a national search and expect a ton of interest because of what Tony and his staff and our fan base and everyone has built here,” White said. “I think it’s an extremely attractive position. Obviously, a little bit unique time with year. I’m going to work as fast as I can to get through this process to eliminate the uncertainty that our players are feeling right now as quickly as possible. We have a lot of talent here and expect to have an extremely competitive baseball team this spring.”
Veteran pitching coach Frank Anderson is Tennessee’s interim head coach while associate head coach Josh Elander will be a candidate for the job.
White will meet with Tennessee’s team later this afternoon and they will choose a “leadership team” that White will communicate with throughout the search. From early indications, Tennessee’s current team will likely back Elander as their candidate to become the head coach.
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The coaching vacancy coming open in late October also makes it an incredibly unique time to make a hire. Most schools are either going through fall practice or have already wrapped up fall practice. Despite this, White believes that Tennessee will not have an issue finding its new head coach.
“I’m going into this with open eyes,” White said. “Like I’ve said to you guys before, and relative to coaching searches, interviews matter. I won’t ultimately know what the right decision is until I go through that process and get an opportunity to compare candidates against each other and hear from our student athletes, all that stuff. But I expect that there’s, even though it’s a difficult time of year, I expect there’s going to be a ton of interest because of what Tony’s built here, what we’ve all collectively built here, our players, our fans, our donors, everybody contributing to that awesome new facility that will open up this season.”
White always likes to work quickly in coaching searches and this search needs to be all the quicker. Tennessee is in the midst of fall practice and is scheduled to play an intrasquad scrimmage at First Horizon Park in Nashville on Sunday afternoon.
The fall signing day is also in three weeks with Tennessee again boasting one of the best classes in the country. That would be difficult to do without a permanent head coach in place. However, White did not commit to having a head coach in place by the start of the 2026 season, saying that he would not back himself into a corner.
“I’m not putting myself in a box with anything right now,” White said. “This is kind of unprecedented to have a coaching transition this time of year.”
