For the last month, one man has had a front-row seat for the San Francisco Giants’ journey to the unprecedented hiring of Tony Vitello.
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Mike Wilson has been a reporter at the Knoxville News Sentinel for more than eight years now, covering Tennessee Volunteers athletics for the entirety of Vitello’s successful run on Rocky Top (which included three trips to the College World Series in Omaha and winning the 2024 national championship). In a phone interview with SFGATE from his San Francisco hotel on Thursday, Wilson said tracking the process that led to Vitello being the first college head coach to get hired as an MLB manager without any professional experience has been “a whirlwind.”
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“It’s two full weeks, at this point, of all-out coverage,” Wilson told SFGATE. “This is when you’re waking up at 3 a.m. and tapping your phone to make sure you didn’t miss something. It’s the mayhem season. It’s been a crazy two weeks.”
Wilson said he first started to cover the possibility a month ago, when the Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly mentioned Vitello as an “out-of-the-box” candidate on the final day of the San Francisco regular season, before they officially had fired Bob Melvin.
The following weekend, Wilson followed the Vols down the road to Chattanooga for a scrimmage and asked Vitello about the report for a story. Wilson spoke to sources he had for a few weeks, but was not hearing anything serious. Then suddenly, two weeks ago, Wilson said his conversations with sources took enough of a turn that he spent Friday, Oct. 17, staying up until 3 a.m. Eastern prewriting a variety of different angles because Vitello’s hiring “seemed very real at that point.”
The next day was the famous “Third Saturday in October,” when Tennessee football plays its annual rivalry game with the University of Alabama. The game was set for a Vols road game in Tuscaloosa this year, and Wilson normally would’ve been there. But with his pregnant wife in her third trimester, he got permission to stay back in Knoxville to be with her and cover the game from home.
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It meant Wilson was effectively the only Tennessee athletics reporter in town for a baseball scrimmage on that Saturday. He was sitting in the stands in right field, near the spot where Vitello holds his typical post-practice meeting with his players, when the Athletic’s Oct. 18 story on the Giants “closing in” on Vitello was first published. Wilson watched Vitello address the team, then got Vitello to comment on the story and say, “Nothing is done.”
“A perfectly normal day in covering the University of Tennessee athletics,” Wilson said with a laugh.
That kicked off four days of what Wilson called “Tony Watch,” as he tracked Vitello throughout the negotiation dance with the Giants. Vitello continued to coach Volunteers baseball practices on Sunday and Monday and was a guest at a charity golf event in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Monday. (Wilson said he went out there hoping to speak to Vitello but was told the event had no media access.)
There was still no decision on Tuesday, when Tennessee fans came out to a scrimmage and pleaded with Vitello to stay. But Wilson said he began hearing chatter that the deal was being finalized on Monday night and said it “felt inevitable” as he watched the scene on Tuesday play out.
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The Giants officially announced Vitello’s hiring on Wednesday, Oct. 22, but the end of the search in San Francisco meant the start of one in Knoxville. Wilson covered Tennessee’s quick process, reporting on possible candidates before the Vols promoted Vitello’s assistant Josh Elander to head coach. He’s continued to report on Tennessee’s baseball moves, which included an assistant coach hiring on Thursday.
He wouldn’t necessarily rank this story as the top one he’s ever reported on — coaching searches at Tennessee have gone haywire before, and he especially loved his story after Tennessee upset Alabama in 2022, when he followed Vols fans as they took the goal posts out of Neyland Stadium and into greater Knoxville. But he’s had a blast with these last two weeks.
“It’s been absolutely crazy, but it’s so fun,” Wilson said. “This is what makes journalism fun, right? Chasing the story, chasing the news.”
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That chase finally ended on Thursday, when Wilson came out to San Francisco to cover Vitello’s introductory press conference both for his paper and for their national affiliate, USA Today. He did text Vitello ahead of his arrival, not wanting to completely surprise the coach with his presence (“You can’t get away from me yet,” he quipped to the coach). He was also effusive in his praise of Vitello, saying the coach has been “an absolute hoot” to cover this whole time.
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“We’ve all gotten to cover Omaha three times, a national championship — our newspaper put out a book for the national championship” in 2024, Wilson said. “So it’s been an absolute riot covering him to begin with, and this is just kind of the fitting end to that in a lot of ways.
“It’s been a wild ride covering Tony Vitello, so why wouldn’t it end in San Francisco?”
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