The LSU-Tennessee baseball rivalry, a heated one in recent years, is missing something this weekend.

That would be Tony Vitello, the coach with a knack for getting under LSU fans’ collective skin.

LSU head coach Jay Johnson always seemed to get along fine with him.

Vols fans loved Vitello — he’s basically the father of Tennessee baseball. He’s the basic reason the Tigers and Vols are playing in a state of the art stadium this weekend after tip-toeing around re-construction when LSU visited two years ago (during UT’s national championship run).

Johnson is trying to win back-to-back College World Series titles this season, which would make it three out of four.

Vitello, on the other hand, is doing something really unprecedented.

He’s managing the San Francisco Giants — yes, the Major League Giants.

The National League was founded in 1876. The American League (or “Junior Circuit” as my late, great friend Danny Dunnehoo used to call it) came along in 1901.

The first college baseball game was played in 1859 between Williams and Amherst, neither of which, by the way, have ever been to the CWS in Omaha.

Anyway, in all of those years, 150 by my count, Vitello is the first to go straight from the college game to Major League manager with no prior professional experience.

All of these years that Skip Bertman has been smartest baseball mind alive and, even in his prime, he never got so much as a whiff from the big leagues.

Not that it bothered him, you understand.

But you can bet Vitello’s arrival has ruffled a few feathers among the big leaguers. They like to believe that their game is brain surgery, and somebody just skipped med school.

Vitello just might be carrying the torch for all the talented college coaches out there, of which there are many, who were “branded” by being on a campus of higher learning.

It’s at this point of our story that Leslie Nielsen sticks his head into the Giants’ cockpit and tells Vitello, “Good luck, we’re all counting on you.”

So, naturally, with his old rival Vitello not going to be in Knoxville this weekend, Johnson was asked if he might ever be interesting in taking the giant leap to the “Big Leagues.”

Johnson already has the lingo down pretty good — to him it’s always “the Big Leagues,” not “Major Leagues,” which is a clear tip-off that his baseball savvy comes naturally.

Johnson had a sort of interesting answer about his interest in the pros.

Basically, he said “Right now, I have zero interest in that.”

But after a pregnant pause, he added, “… at this time. Now that’s at this time, again, I haven’t been, offered an MLB job, is what I will say.”

Mmmmm.

After a careful analysis of voice inflections, body language, facial expressions, etc., here’s what I make of it:

He’s not interested. Really. For now. And probably won’t ever be.

He likes the college game a whole lot better, probably for no other reason than the college lads still run out ground balls at full speed, no matter the odds against them.

“It’s a completely different game … it’s a different world,” he said. “If people think college football and the NFL are different … what goes on (in baseball), it’s the moon.”

Pro ball, he said, “is an individual sport. It’s not a team sport until the postseason.

“I like to being a part of a team, so that’s, that’s where my head and my heart is.”

And, he said that egg heads are taking over the Major League front offices.

“The Ivy League guys at the top,” Johnson said, “a lot of times make the lineup, make the pitching decisions, this and that. Ask (LSU leading hitter) Jake Brown how Coach Johnson would feel if somebody was telling him what lineup we were playing.”

No, it doesn’t sound like something that would ever interest Johnson. So why would he at least keep a small crack in the door if he changes his mind down the road?

Maybe he’s thinking the college boys are still feeling their way through NIL (big money) and the transfer portal (unlimited free agency).

The college game is moving closer and closer to the pros, which is not necessarily a good thing. Who wants that headache with kids when you can at least get them as grown-ups?

Meanwhile, Johnson is wishing Vitello and good luck.

They talked not long after Vitello got the job. Johnson told Vitello how much he enjoyed competing against him. Vitello told Johnson he was “not going to miss seeing you” to do battle with him and LSU.

To which Johnson replied, “Well, you just traded us for the Dodgers…”

But … “I wished him well.”

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the American Press. Contact him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com