For what I assume was the first time ever, the Tennessee Vols’ football program was overshadowed by the baseball program in the middle of October.

That’s because UT baseball coach Tony Vitello resigned this week to become the San Francisco Giants’ new manager.

On Saturday, Tennessee announced that longtime assistant coach Josh Elander will take over for Vitello as the Vols’ head baseball coach.

Elander has been on staff at Tennessee since 2017 (he came with Vitello from Arkansas).

Tennessee AD Danny White drops important quote about decision to hire Josh Elander

Numerous former players and current players (and current UT commits) endorsed Elander for the job immediately after Vitello made the decision to leave for San Francisco.

Vols athletic director Danny White, however, did his due diligence by conducting a nation-wide coaching search.

White quickly settled on Elander as the best option — and not just because he’s the option that fans and players wanted.

“The culture of the program, how that has been built, and how he would continue to lead that,” said White to the Vol Network on Saturday when asked what makes Elander a good choice to replace Vitello. “The elite recruiting we have been fortunate to enjoy. How he could continue to lead that. How he portrayed himself as the CEO of a program and managing his staff. We talked about transitioning from the role of being an assistant to being a head coach. I have been through a lot of these — I was thoroughly impressed.”

“We had some hard decisions to make because there’s some other really good candidates and good options,” continued White. “All of those conversations with the candidates [combined] with also what I learned from our leadership group with our players — they were phenomenal and really helped me understand what is happening with the program. I really feel like my job is to match those things up, and I feel like we did that today with Josh.”

As White noted in the conversation with the Vol Network, he’s been through a ton of coaching searches in his career, and he’s conducted a litany of interviews — which should make fans even more confident that Elander is the right guy for the job.

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