The San Francisco Giants will wait until Thursday to introduce Tony Vitello, the former University of Tennessee head coach, as the 40th manager in franchise history. At that time, they will present him with the first professional baseball jersey he’s ever buttoned up, and explain what compelled them to venture so far off the traditional grid while selecting their next dugout leader.

But Vitello couldn’t leave Knoxville in silence. Before he took the unprecedented step from college campus to major-league dugout, he had to tell the Tennessee baseball community how much the past eight years meant to him. So he summoned a selection of local media members on Thursday, recited a lengthy statement from pages of handwritten notes, took a few Tennessee-related questions, and offered a glimpse into the timeline as he weighed the difficult decision to leave.

It was not a decision he made by himself.

“It truly was a thing that went all the way up until (Wednesday, when the news became official),” said Vitello, according to Mike Wilson of the Knoxville News Sentinel. “I did not fully decide what I wanted to do. … But in order to get across the finish line of what was right for me, I had to get the support from the coaches and the players. I got it in a couple different meetings, and quite frankly, was blown away. I don’t really have anything written down or intelligent to say about how mind-blowingly awesome the guys that are now representing Tennessee baseball were to me, and I’m forever appreciative of that.”

Vitello said he was floored by how much his decision mattered to Volunteers fans, “which blows my mind as a scrub walk-on at the University of Missouri” and lamented that he won’t get to benefit from coaching at Lindsey Nelson Stadium, which is in the final phase of a $100 million renovation.

So why leave?

“It was selfish,” Vitello said. “It was personal reasons. Again, I’ve always tried to be a good teammate, but I feel like I made a selfish decision that was one I needed to make. It’s the right decision and I just hope it doesn’t give me Lane Kiffin status around here, because I feel like I’m a VFL. I think if someone truly invests in being a VFL for any amount of time, they’re just that — a Vol For Life. That’s what I am in my mind.”

Kiffin, of course, is a reviled figure in Knoxville who coached Tennessee’s football program for one season in 2009 before bolting for USC. There’s little chance that will be Vitello’s legacy after he took over a downtrodden program eight years ago and transformed it into a juggernaut that dominated the Southeastern Conference, pumped out first-round draft picks, advanced to the College World Series three times in the past five years (winning it in 2024) and did it all with saucy and at times outlandish bat-flipping confidence.

Vitello celebrates with fans at the parade for the Tennessee College World Series win. (Hannah Mattix / News Sentinel / USA Today)

Vitello, who is signing a three-year contract with an option year to manage the Giants, said he doesn’t plan on selling his home in Knoxville.

“I don’t know if this will get me in trouble, but in my mind, a goal is to come back to Tennessee in some capacity,” he said. “Whether it’s part-time living or some other job way down the road or maybe I go back to Nashville and become a country singer or something like that. But that’s something that stuck out in my head because obviously I feel like this was a great place for me.”

Maybe he’ll have a job waiting at the Knoxville chamber of commerce. Vitello spoke at length about his admiration for Tennessee, praising everything from the friendly and loyal people to a music scene that includes “the biggest male and female performer in the world in … Morgan (Wallen) and then the gal (Taylor Swift) that dates the tight end (Travis Kelce).”

Vitello said he would wait until his introductory press conference in San Francisco to talk about the future. So he didn’t address the challenges that will face him as he transitions to manage an ambitious major-league franchise that just fired his predecessor, Bob Melvin, for having a 161-163 record over the previous two seasons. But Vitello made it clear that coaching in the SEC “prepares you for anything and everything.”

“Forget the European soccer hooligans,” Vitello said. “The SEC fans are the rowdiest, the loudest, the meanest, the best cookers, the most involved, the most invested and they are at the core of what makes this conference. But also the reason they’re so invested is the competition on the athletic fields — whether it’s a baseball field or others — is literally the best amateur competition in the world.”

Vitello said he hadn’t reached a decision last Saturday when The Athletic broke the news that the Giants had offered him the job. He apologized to reporters for not returning messages, saying, “Hopefully, people don’t think I’m a diva because that’s kind of how it seemed to play out. But I got into a position where I couldn’t respond to anybody just because I didn’t know.”

Vitello was still going back and forth on Tuesday when he led an intrasquad scrimmage that turned into a shower of admiration from fans who chanted his name and hung banners pleading him to stay.

“If that is the last time I ever stepped foot on this campus or this field as an employee or as a Vol wearing our orange, I’m just so thankful for the people that showed up,” Vitello said. “It mattered. It made a difference. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do at the moment, but the bottom line is — if they feel like it was a waste of time because they were here to sway me or something like that, it’s not, because it will forever be ingrained in my memory. It made what was the last day on the job technically, very, very special.”

Vitello will inherit several of his former players who are in San Francisco’s system, including outfielder Drew Gilbert, who was an emotional leader during his time in Knoxville and brought his over-the-top, kid-brother energy to the Giants dugout as a rookie this past season. That fact gave Vitello the perfect laugh line to break the ice Thursday.

“By now,” said Vitello, “you all know I officially accepted a position to babysit Drew Gilbert.”