Vanderbilt baseball coach says scheduling forced team to skip White House visit with Trump

NASHVILLE — Vanderbilt baseball’s 2019 national championship team declined an invitation to the White House because of a scheduling conflict and not politics, coach Tim Corbin said.

He said a “Trump” Vanderbilt jersey was even created for such a visit.

“It had nothing to do with politics,” Corbin said. “It was just tough to turn around. No one is shunning anything. That’s for sure.”

The Washington Post first reported that the Commodores turned down an invitation to attend the Nov. 22 "College Champions Event" with other NCAA title teams. Instead, Oregon State's baseball team, the 2018 national champion, went to the White House in the Commodores’ place.

Vanderbilt is the latest championship team to decline an invitation to the White House during Trump’s presidency. But Corbin said the date conflicted with longstanding holiday travel plans. Vanderbilt students are off for one full week for Thanksgiving, so baseball players leave Nashville no later than Nov. 22, depending on their class schedules the preceding week.

Most of Vanderbilt’s players are from out of state -- only seven of 35 players are from Tennessee. 

“We wanted to go, but the date that we were told that we were invited, we couldn’t work it out,” Corbin said. “It was right on top of us. (The invitation) was (given) within a month, and it’s tough to turn around 35 to 50 bodies (including coaches and support staff) of travel when things have been in place for three months. Our players always go home during that time.”

This was Vanderbilt’s second national championship. In 2014, the Commodores hoped to visit President Barack Obama, but an invitation never came. That year, Vanderbilt had a jersey made for Obama just in case. Corbin said the same was done for Trump this year.

“We would have loved to have gone. That was something that we wanted to do back in 2014,” Corbin said. “We had two jerseys made up for two presidents.”

Reach Adam Sparks at asparks@tennessean.com and on Twitter @AdamSparks.