Memo to University of Tennessee athletic director Danny White: Better get that Brinks truck ready if you expect to keep baseball coach Tony Vitello around for long.
Time to quit paying football coaches not to coach. Time to start paying a baseball coach who can win you a national championship what he’s worth, which is assuredly a good deal more than his current annual paycheck of $600,000.
Beyond that, he just might pay for himself in ticket sales, given the crowds of more than 4,000 that jammed Lindsey Nelson Stadium on both Saturday and Sunday to see the Vols sweep LSU in their Super Regional to advance to the College World Series for the first time since 2005. And if the stadium had been bigger, there could have been a lot more tickets sold, judging from the hundreds, if not thousands gathered outside LNS watching the games on big screens.
As for that $600,000 being among the lowest salaries in the Southeastern Conference, it’s actually worse than that. According to USA Today, a total of six SEC coaches – led by Vanderbilt skipper Tim Corbin’s $1.239 million a year – make a cool $1 million or more annually. Heck, LSU’s retiring Paul Mainieri was making over $1.2 mil, and look how his final games turned out against Vitello’s Vols.
Now, I’d like to have to struggle to get by on $600,000 a year, and you probably would too, but as White hopefully knows, Vitello doesn’t have to settle for that kind of pay and won’t.