Clearing up a misconception about Tennessee athletic director Danny White and Coastal Carolina baseball coach Kevin Schnall

The Tennessee Vols are moving quickly in their search for a new head baseball coach

Zach Ragan — Tennessee Volunteers News Writer
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The Tennessee Vols are expected to move quickly in their search for a new baseball coach.

Tony Vitello, who was hired by Tennessee in 2017, resigned as the Vols’ baseball coach this week to become the new manager of the San Francisco Giants.

Numerous former Tennessee baseball players have voiced their support for longtime Tennessee assistant Josh Elander for the job.

Vols athletic director Danny White said this week that Elander will be a candidate, but Tennessee is still going to conduct a nation-wide search.

One coach that we know Tennessee will be interviewing is Coastal Carolina head coach Kevin Schnall.

(VolQuest and the Knoxville News Sentinel reported on Friday that Schnall will interview with Tennessee.)

Clearing up a misconception about Tennessee athletic director Danny White and Coastal Carolina baseball coach Kevin Schnall

When the news of Schnall interviewing with Tennessee was first reported, fans quickly noticed that he was at UCF around the same time as White.

White and Schnall, however, didn’t actually overlap at UCF.

Schnall served as an assistant coach at UCF from 2013 t0 2015. He returned to Coastal Carolina in July, 2015.

White wasn’t hired at UCF until November, 2015.

Of course, even if they had overlapped, it’s unlikely that White would’ve had much of a relationship with Schnall. White admitted this week that he doesn’t make it a habit to form relationships with assistant coaches.

“I don’t make a common practice of becoming chummy with our assistant coaches,” said White. “I think that there’s a change of command that that would be inappropriate. To have social relationships with them.”

Schnall has a long history at Coastal Carolina. He played there from 1995 to 1999 before joining the staff as a coach in 2001. He left in 2013 for the stint with UCF before returning to Coastal. Schnall took over as the Chanticleers’ head coach ahead of the 2025 season. CCU was the runner-up in last season’s College World Series.

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