The interview process to become the Giants’ next manager wasn’t easy for Tony Vitello.
Tennessee’s long-time coach had his hands full running offseason practices and scrimmages with his team in Knoxville when news broke on Oct. 18 that the Giants were closing in on hiring him as their next manager, which caught him by surprise, as he explained in a recent appearance on the “Bussin’ With The Boys” podcast.
“How this thing broke was very unconventional, and it’s the day and age we live in,” Vitello told co-hosts Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. “We were not even at a point where I was going to make a decision and this news broke on a football Saturday in the middle of one of our scrimmages that I was going to do this … I had kept any of the conversations out of the locker room, because it can only be a distraction, especially with recruiting.
“Now if it was going to get to a point where this is something I’ve really got to decide on, I was going to involve everybody. Well, that all got skipped over by a tweet or [report]. I think Ken Rosenthal or somebody. And I’ve had a couple people apologize to me, like, ‘I just have a job to do.'”
Vitello shared that he quickly received text messages from people either congratulating him or wishing him luck, but he didn’t know how to respond, because he had not made up his mind at that point.
“Yeah, I was,” Vitello said when asked if he initially was “pissed off” by the report. “I was trying to watch Alabama-Tennessee and I had thought about going to the game with a donor after our scrimmage, and when this popped, I was like ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere.’ I just sat and was watching the game and [the report] is on the [news ticker at the bottom of the screen] and I even kind of quit watching the game a little bit to be honest with you. For the night I kind of shut it down.”
Vitello then had a series of conversations with his players and coaches about his decision the following day, and appreciated the input and honesty he received from the team.
“And then the next day some things picked up, and then ironically, instead of it being one conversation with the team and being like ‘this sucks’ and crying and everything, it was a three-parter,” Vitello said. “And it gave those guys time to share their thoughts on it a little bit with me, including our coaching staff.
“I will forever be grateful for the way those kids texted me, talked to me in person and the way the coaches basically said ‘Do what you got to do.’ That really opened up the freedom to think about it selfishly, like ‘What do I want to do?’ as opposed to ‘How is this going to impact other people?'”
San Francisco officially announced Vitello as its next manager on Oct. 22 before he was formally introduced in a press conference one week later at Oracle Park.
While the news surrounding his candidacy did not play out the way he had hoped, Vitello quickly is learning that rumors spread fast in the big leagues.
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