Kendall Rogers reveals Texas A&M made 'furious run' at Tennessee's Tony Vitello, UVA's Brian O'Connor

The Texas A&M Aggies coaching search has come to an end with reports that Michael Earley will be the program’s next head coach. Prior to that, though, the Aggies seemed to want to make a splash hire with Tennessee‘s Tony Vitello or Virginia‘s Brian O’Connor.

According to Kendall Rogers, the Aggies made what he described as a “furious run” at Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello and Virginia head coach Brian O’Connor prior to going with Michael Earley.

“A&M made a very furious run ($$) for Tony Vitello. It shot its shot, but TV stayed put and loyal to a program that has given him the keys to the castle,” Rogers posted.

Tony Vitello has been the head coach at Tennessee since 2018. During that time, he’s turned the Volunteers into one of the premier baseball programs in the country. That culminated with a national championship win over Texas A&M in the 2024 College World Series.

Vitello has an overall record of 295–112 at Tennessee and with stops at Arkansas and TCU as an assistant would have made plenty of sense for Texas A&M to want to hire him. It’s also notable that while at TCU he was an assistant coach under Jim Schlossnagle. However, he chose to stick with the Volunteers where he has built the program up.

In the case of Brian O’Connor, he’s been at Virginia since 2004 and has a record of 885–370–2 there. He’s taken the team to the College World Series seven times and won the national championship in 2015. So, while hiring him would make sense for Texas A&M, he proved too difficult to get away from the Cavaliers.

“A&M also went after UVA’s Brian O’Connor, but very difficult to get him out of CVil,” Rogers noted.

Kendall Rogers also noted that Link Jarrett was never an option for Texas A&M because he wouldn’t leave Florida State. Alabama head coach Rob Vaughn was also not strongly considered for the role. Then, when Michael Earley became an option, Skip Johnson and Tom Walter came off Texas A&M’s list.

Michael Earley is replacing Jim Schlossnagle at Texas A&M. He had previously been Schlossnagle’s hitting coach in College Station and was set to follow Schlossnagle to the Texas Longhorns prior to getting the job as the Aggies’ head coach. It was behind his tutelage that the Aggies offense was able to power the team to the College World Series, where they lost to Tony Vitello and Tennessee.