Tennessee's Tony Vitello, fresh off the Vols' first national championship in school history, has received a new five-year contract that will pay him $3 million annually and make him the highest-paid coach in college baseball, the school announced Friday.
Since arriving in Knoxville in 2018, Vitello has transformed Tennessee into a baseball powerhouse. The Vols became the first SEC team in history to win 60 games this season on their way to the national title with a 6-5 victory over Texas A&M in the deciding game.
Vitello has led Tennessee to the Men's College World Series in three of the past four seasons and to the super regionals all four seasons. During that span, Tennessee ranks first nationally with 211 wins and a .773 winning percentage.
“Tony and his staff have built the best baseball program in the country and we are excited to announce this long-term extension to keep Tony at Rocky Top,” Tennessee athletic director Danny White said in a statement. “As an athletic department, our goal is to lead the way in college sports and Tony has built a baseball program that sets the standard across the sport.”
This new deal replaces one Tennessee and Vitello agreed to that took effect May 31, 2024, though that deal was never announced. Previously, Vitello was set to make $1.8 million annually. He received a $200,000 bonus for winning the MCWS, and part of the new deal includes an increase in the salary pool for his assistant coaches and support staff.
“With the new hires we made this summer, we wanted to be careful to solidify what we knew was inevitable, that our athletic department and coaching staff wanted to be teammates for a long time,” Vitello said in a statement. “Our staff and our program rely on the fact that our administration is more committed to our sport than anywhere else in the country when you consider resources, their commitment to our staff and the stadium project. At the end of the day, we know our Vol fans are the source of these resources and we look forward to continuing to work hard to make them proud to be a part of Vol Nation.”
Tennessee’s success under Vitello has also been a hit with fans. Record crowds have flocked to Lindsey Nelson Stadium, which is undergoing a multi-year, $98.5 million renovation project that will increase seating capacity to 8,000 and include personal suites, more premium seating options, an expanded concourse space and a new concourse connecting the left-field porches to the right-field student area.
Other schools have aggressively pursued Vitello in recent years, including Texas A&M in 2021 and again this year after Jim Schlossnagle left for Texas.
Vitello becomes the first college baseball coach to reach the $3 million mark. Schlossnagle's new contract at Texas will pay him an average of $2.2 million annually, while Vanderbilt's Tim Corbin makes $2 million annually.
Vitello's new deal runs through June 30, 2029, and his $3 million annual salary would put him among the top 10 highest-paid managers in MLB, according to Major League Baseball sources.
If Vitello were to leave Tennessee to find another job before June 30, 2025, he would owe the university $4 million. That severance package reduces to $3 million in 2026, $2 million in 2027 and up to $400,000 in the final year of the contract in 2029. If Tennessee fires Vitello without cause during the term of the contract, he would be owed the full remainder of his contract. Additionally, if White is no longer Tennessee's athletic director, Vitello's severance package would be cut in half if he left to find another job.
When Vitello was hired in 2018, his original contract paid him $493,000 annually. He has led the Vols to five NCAA tournaments and won two of the last three SEC tournaments. They became the first No. 1 overall seed to win the national championship this season since Miami in 1999. Tennessee had four players selected in the first two rounds of the MLB draft this year, a program record, and two were first-rounders: Christian Moore and Blake Burke.
