There’s a lot of speculation that former Tennessee Vols baseball coach Tony Vitello, who is in his first season as the manager of the San Francisco Giants, will eventually return to the college game.

Thanks to the San Francisco Giants’ tough start to the season, there’s already speculation that Tony Vitello will soon return to the college game.

Vitello, who is in his first season as the Giants’ manager after spending eight seasons as the head coach of the Tennessee Vols, has had a rocky start to his MLB career.

The Giants are 10 games under .500 on May 24 and they’ve scored the fewest runs in the league.

Some folks in San Francisco are already speculating that Vitello’s stint in the Bay Area won’t last long.

With plenty of outside noise swirling, Giants President of Baseball Operations Buster Posey, the man who hired Vitello, gave the former Tennessee coach a vote of confidence this week.

"Tony's been solid," said Posey during an appearance on KNBR. "You talk about frustration or anybody that's wearing this hard, I don't think there's anybody out there that's wearing it harder than him… Nobody's happy about where we started. And I can promise you Tony's wearing it harder than anybody is."

If you’ve been following pro sports any length of time, you know the “vote of confidence” doesn’t mean much. In fact, it’s usually the first sign that it’s the beginning of the end for a coach.

If things don’t work out for Tony Vitello in MLB, then a return to college seems likely

If things don’t work out for Vitello in San Francisco, then it seems likely he’d return to the college game. It’s hard to imagine Vitello grinding it out in the big leagues as a third base coach if he’s eventually fired by the Giants — especially when numerous high profile programs would go out of their way to hire him.

One program that’s already been mentioned as a possible destination for Vitello is Arkansas, where he served as an assistant for four seasons before landing the Tennessee job.

Another SEC program, however, has put itself in a very strong position to hire Vitello if he becomes available in the next year or so.

And it’s a program Vitello knows very, very well: The Missouri Tigers.

Vitello, a St. Louis native, played college baseball at Missouri before joining the Tigers’ coaching staff from 2003 to 2010. It goes without saying that Missouri is a massive part of Vitello’s baseball identity.

Mizzou hasn’t fared very well the last three seasons under head coach Kerrick Jackson (63-102 over the last three years, including a 24-31 record in 2026).

But despite the lack of success, Missouri is planning to bring Jackson back for a fourth season.

It’s possible the program truly believes in Jackson. It’s also possible that Missouri realizes that if they fire Jackson right now, they have no shot at landing Vitello.

There’s just little to no chance that Vitello would leave the Giants in the middle of his first season because the Missouri job comes open. You never say never, but it’s highly unlikely that Vitello would abandon ship in the middle of the season. That’s just not who he is as a person.

Bringing Jackson back for another season, however, puts the Tigers in a position where they could choose to move on from the embattled coach at any time if Vitello becomes available (which, realistically, could be as soon as next spring/summer, depending on how things with the Giants go).

Let’s say the Giants miss the playoffs and finish the 2026 season with a worse record than last season. And then let’s say the Giants get off to another dreadful start in 2027 (assuming there’s no MLB lockout, but that’s a story for another day). Could San Francisco push the eject button and move on early next season if it’s not working out with Vitello? It sure seems possible.

At that point, Mizzou could easily move on from Jackson and make their pitch to Vitello.

There’s no guarantee, though, that Vitello would take the job — I don’t think it’s automatic that he’d return to his alma mater. Remember, he was passed over for the Mizzou job in 2017 (and Vitello was not a fan of the coach who got the job over him).

But while there are no guarantees on what Vitello would do if offered the Missouri job, I do think it’s a very real scenario that could be in play in 2027 depending on how things work out in San Francisco.

For now, I truly believe Vitello is focused on the job he has. I think he is still determined to be a successful MLB manager. And maybe he will be. None of us have any clue how his run with the Giants will play out.

But there’s no denying that Missouri has put itself in a strong position to bring Vitello home if the opportunity arises.