Club Trillion

Wearing The Pants

2010-01-02T12:03:00.002-05:00

I originally planned on writing a new blog entry the day after we beat Cleveland State last week, but I didn’t because of one reason and one reason only – the Sony PSP. Every player on our team received a PSP as a gift for the Big Ten/ACC Challenge when we played Florida State in early December. I spent the better part of my Christmas break playing my PSP, including back-to-back nights in which I played until 4:30 a.m., which is why I didn’t get around to writing a blog. Needless to say, I love my PSP and completely understand why Cartman wanted one so badly. It’s refreshing to think that I get awesome gifts for basically doing minimal work. It’s like I’m Preston from Blank Check, only instead of getting cool stuff because I got hit by a car while riding my bike, I get cool stuff because I take a Dallas Lauderdale elbow to the face every now and then. It’s a perfectly fair trade the way I see it.

As far as the actual game action, we lost to the Wisconsin Buzzcuts on New Year’s Eve mostly because our offense had the continuity of an LFO song. Wisconsin’s Kohl Center is the only Big Ten arena I have never won in and this year’s version of the Buzzcuts is a talented one, so going into the game I knew that I was most likely not going to play. Walk-ons at Ohio State only play in blowout wins and based on previous visits to Wisconsin, I knew a blowout win was highly unlikely. This is why I designated the game to be what is referred to in the walk-on community at tOSU as a “pants game.”

At first thought, “pants game” sounds like something the Michigan football team plays during their training camp as a way to get to know each other better, which very well could be the case. (I’m guessing it starts when Rich Rod walks into the meeting room on the first day of camp, turns off the lights, and says “I wanna play a game” in Jigsaw’s voice from Saw.) For the Ohio State basketball walk-ons, though, a pants game refers to a game in which we believe we aren’t going to play and therefore wear full length pants over our game shorts while we sit on the bench. By doing this, we accomplish two things. First, we stay warm, which is surprisingly hard to do. Even though the games are usually close enough to make us nervously sweat, we still find ourselves getting pretty chilly on the bench for whatever reason. This was certainly the case at Wisconsin, where (in case you hadn’t heard) it tends to get cold during the winter months. The second thing we accomplish by wearing pants is that we make it easier for us to be spotted on TV. It’s like we’re that guy sitting courtside who is on his cell phone and is frantically waving his arms because he’s being told by whoever is on the other end of the phone that every time they show LeBron dunk, he can be seen in the background. Only we’re slightly less annoying.

These are just the external reasons for wearing pants, though. Wearing long pants on the bench isn’t just a way to keep warm and try to get spotted on TV. The wearing of pants is also a state of mind. It tells everyone watching that I’m comfortable with my role in not playing in this particular game and there’s really no need for you to waste your time chanting for me to get in. If I were a little more ballsy, I’d mimic walk-ons at some other programs by not wearing my jersey under my warm-ups during the first half or even the entire game. Perhaps I’ll try to pull this move off in the future, but as it stands I’m a little too soft to pull off something as daring as that.

Over the years, I’ve come to find that predicting pants games is far from a perfect science. Sometimes games that are labeled as pants games actually end up being games that I play in (the most notable of which is the 2007 Big Ten Tournament Championship against Wisconsin), which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that I have to hurriedly rip my pants off as I walk towards midcourt to check in. Having to quickly remove my pants sometimes makes me feel like I’m working in the adult entertainment industry, with the obvious exception being that when I take my pants off I usually don’t come anywhere close to scoring.

Today we are traveling up to Ann Arbor to get ready for our game tomorrow with Michigan. We will be looking to get back on the winning track in what could be our last game without Evan “The Villain” Turner. For those who don’t remember, The Villain broke his back a couple weeks ago and our team has struggled at times without him. He was projected to be out another month, but his rehab is going well and he could be back within the next couple games. I’m excited for The Villain’s return, mostly because I want to see if these past couple weeks will go down as the “Brokeback Era” of his career. Either way, I’m bombarding him with Brokeback jokes and will continue to do so even when his back is fully healed. ___________________________________________________

Our last game against Wisconsin served as the beginning of the Club Trillion Farewell Tour. Club Trillion is making its last stop at Big Ten schools all over the Midwest throughout January, February, and March and as a way to say thank you to the Trillion Man March, I just set a Club Trillion record for most capital letters in a single sentence. As another way to say thank you, I am re-instituting the One Armed Embrace counter that I had going last year for the remainder of the season. The Buzzcuts reciprocated four of my one-armed embrace attempts, which isn’t a surprise to me at all considering how willing they were to give me a half hug last year. One of the embracers on the Buzzcuts was Mike Bruesewitz who gets a shout-out because he not only helped with my counter but also took the time to introduce himself as a fan of this blog.

One Armed Embraces: 4 to date (4 last game)

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Don’t forget that Club Trillion t-shirts are now available by clicking here. 100% of the proceeds benefit A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. I’m happy to report that we have now distributed over 1,000 t-shirts to the Trillion Man March, which is mind-blowingly awesome to me. In fact, my sources tell me that Coach Matta’s wife placed an order for four shirts, one of which served as the official 1,000th shirt. I’m not going to tell you how to dress, but if the shirts are good enough for Mrs. Matta, there’s really no reason in the world why they wouldn’t be good enough for you too. ___________________________________________________

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Joe M. I had no idea that Rob Dyrdek was making basketball videos until Joe sent this in. I also had no idea that you are supposed to cough when you crossover. This could have been my problem all along. Anyway, there’s your shout-out, Joe. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Taking Time Out

2009-01-27T01:17:00.002-05:00

We lost to Michigan State Sunday to drop our record to 13-5. While Michigan State has a team full of talented basketball players, I am much more impressed with the fact that they have by far the most unique first names of any team in the country. Of the guys who get significant minutes, only Travis Walton and Chris Allen have names that don't look like they were conceived while eating Alpha-Bits. The awesome first names include Marquise, Draymond, Idong, Kalin, Korie, Raymar, Delvon, Durrell, and Goran. I'm seriously jealous that Tom Izzo gets to say these names out loud on a daily basis and not get the People's Eyebrow from onlookers.

It was during a timeout Sunday that I discovered something that makes me more upset than when I found out that the plot from "Blank Check" is more unrealistic than Chris Andersen opening a successful daycare business. This is a discovery that could win you an absurd amount of money slash respect, provided the people you bet against don't read this blog. Let me explain.

There's a promotion that Ohio State does that features bobble-head versions of a cheerleader, Brutus, and a drum major virtually racing through campus. You are encouraged to pick who you think is going to win by texting a corresponding code for your respective choice to some five or six digit number that's supposed to be easy to remember but isn't at all. Apparently if you win, AT&T won't send you spam messages to the number you just provided them with. Brilliant marketing, really.

I was under the impression that the texts serve as votes and the lowest vote getter would end up winning, so that way AT&T could beef up their spam list as much as possible. However, the cheerleader has won on five consecutive occasions, meaning either my theory on making the lowest vote getter win is correct and everyone hates our cheerleaders or more likely whoever put the promotion together thought that their audience was comprised of a bunch of monkeys who don't understand the concept of a pattern. Well I'm not going to let this blatant lack of effort go on any longer. I'm sick of picking Brutus, fully convinced that they HAVE to let someone else win this time, only to have a feeling of dejection analogous to cheering for my beloved Cubbies in the playoffs. The fact that whoever is responsible for the video is too lazy to make a different outcome is ripping the integrity of the game to shreds and leaves me wondering whether timeout games can ever be trusted again. The ball is in your court, promotion video maker guy. Make me a believer again.

There's a solid chance whoever does make the video will hear about me writing this and will ultimately either sack the entire promotion or will actually come up with a different winner and make me look like a liar in the process. But until then, pick the cheerleader every time. They will get the hint when they get 19,000 winners and are left with the six people who are too cool for conformity to add to their spam list. You could even use this information to steal money from your unsuspecting friends who gamble or impress your boss and break those chains that bind you at work. Just a suggestion.

While I'm on the topic of timeout promotions, I feel like I should address the epidemic that seems to have spread to every school in the Big Ten. I'm talking of course of the incessant and unwavering desire of fans to get a t-shirt during the t-shirt toss. I'm not sure if it's the fact that you are getting something for free or if it provides you a perfect opportunity to show your date how much of a man you are because you can catch a wrapped up t-shirt thrown by a mascot with an oversized nut for a head, but something about the t-shirt toss gets you going. And I respect that, even if I don't fully understand it. It's just strange to me to see people who are otherwise quiet and reserved suddenly want a t-shirt so badly that they don't care if they push over that seven year old kid who's got those Pokemon shoes that light up when he walks. Eventually that guy gets booed by the crowd because he has no regard for human life while trying to obtain his t-shirt and is ultimately forced to give the t-shirt back to the kid he pushed over, even though the look on his face suggests it's a moronic idea to reward a loser.

The t-shirt toss is when people's character really shines through, which is probably why I love it so much. I'm convinced it's the pride of winning that makes people crazy for the t-shirt rather than the five dollar t-shirt they are getting. The cheerleaders could throw out bags of human feces and the fans would still probably fight over it. It's terrifying to consider that we currently live in a world where a legitimate threat is that terrorists could infiltrate cheerleading squads all over America and throw hand grenades into the overzealous crowds during the t-shirt toss. History shows us that people will more than likely be fighting over the chance to catch a hand grenade, ignoring the fact that they are about to have a face that looks like a marshmallow that fell into a campfire. I can only pray I won't ever have to say I told you so.
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Bone-Crushing Screens: 1 to date (0 last game)
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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Intramural Softball Champion Rawley D. There's your shout-out, Rawley. And here's your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus
Club Trillion Founder

Long Live The King

2009-12-20T23:54:00.003-05:00

After dropping a game to Butler last week, we’ve bounced back and won our last two games by 30 and 16 points. Our first victory came against the Presbyterian Blue Hose and even though they might have the single greatest team nickname in sports today, I think everyone can agree that their nickname would be much cooler if “hose” was spelled differently. Maybe it’s just me, but the thought of a prostitution ring being the backbone of the Smurf Village economy is much more interesting than some blue tube your grandmother uses in her garden to water her geraniums. Tell me you wouldn’t have found The Smurfs more interesting if the secondary plot featured Papa Smurf pimping out Smurfette to the entire village. Hint: You can’t.

Pimpin’ ain’t easy

After we beat up some Hose, we defeated the Delaware State Hornets by 16 on Saturday. Delaware State had no white guys on their team, but they decided to play at an incredibly slow pace which seems pretty counterintuitive to me. The game turned out to be rather boring because of this slow-paced brand of basketball. In fact, most of the people I talked to said they changed the channel to PBS to watch Antiques Roadshow because they were so bored. I’m not an expert on how the human brain reacts to boredom, but I think it’s safe to say that anybody who voluntarily watches Antiques Roadshow is practically bored to insanity. (I’m just kidding, Grandma! I’m not suggesting that you lead a boring life. Ok, so maybe I am, but I still love you and any food you might want to send my way.)

Even though our past two games featured a blowout (in which we actually scored fewer points than Presbyterian did in the second half) and a snoozefest, a nice little side story has developed during the hours leading up to each of our games. Five hours before every game our team goes to the gym for shoot-around, or as I like to call it, “just another reason I have to get out of bed”. Our coaches believe (and rightfully so) that if there was no shoot-around, we would just lay around watching a Mythbusters marathon all day, which would cause us to play lethargically come game time. At the conclusion of each shoot-around, a free throw contest is conducted with all the players on the team. The contest rules are simple—each guy shoots one free throw per round and if they miss, they’re out. If after a reasonable amount of time there are still a handful of guys left, the “swishes rule” is put in place by Coach Matta. This rule treats a made shot that touches any part of the rim as a miss, forcing us to hit nothing-but-net shots or “swishes” as they are sometimes called. That is absolutely all there is to the game.

My freshman year, when I was at least 20 pounds overweight, I was clawing to establish a reputation on a team full of future professional players and therefore took the free throw contest more seriously than my first marriage. I wanted so badly to be labeled as a good shooter and I thought that winning the free throw contests would help make this happen. I won seemingly every other time during my first year and considered it to be a bigger deal than it probably was. But as my career wore on, I took on a larger role in practice and started spraying my wet jumpshot all over the faces of my teammates on a daily basis. I no longer needed the free throw contest to prove that I had superior shooting ability which is why I kind of just stopped caring about free throws. After all, why would I care about making shots from 15 feet away with no defense when I consistently got buckets from 25 feet away with a hand in my face? It just didn’t make sense to me. Because of this developed lack of motivation, I didn’t win a free throw contest my entire sophomore and junior years. This year, though, is a completely different story.

During the previous two seasons when I simply wasn’t caring, Jon Diebler won his fair share of free throw contests and has since done his fair share of reminding me about this. Like me, Jon prides himself on being a good shooter but he takes the free throw contests infinitely more serious than I do. He loves to rub it in my face that he is dominating the free throw contests, but what he fails to realize is that I’m giving Randy Moss effort while he’s giving Daniel Ruettiger effort (I like to think that the comparisons hold true in another fashion in that my shooting ability is like Randy Moss’ talent and his is like Rudy’s talent). It’s kind of like the David Kalb vs. LeBron H-O-R-S-E game every time Jon wins. Sure Kalb and Jon might get the victory, but LeBron and I are focused on figuring out why AT&T decided to make those awful Luke Wilson commercials (more importantly, why Luke Wilson is so fat) and could care less about winning some juvenile shooting contest. But after hearing Jon continuously smack talk about free throws (free throws? really?) for the past two years or so, I decided to shut Jon up by taking the contest a little bit more seriously the past two shoot-arounds. Spoiler alert: I won both times.

Since I’m the back-to-back defending free throw contest champion heading into our game against Cleveland State on Tuesday, I have decided to let just about everyone affiliated with the team know about my free throw shooting prowess. I refer to myself as the free throw king and can be heard saying things such as “long live the king” with each made free throw in practice. As the king, I rule with an iron fist and taunt inferior free throw shooters (like Jon) whenever possible. What’s interesting about my current reign as free throw king is that I actually missed a free throw during the Presbyterian game, but this had less to do with my ability and more to do with the fact that I couldn’t feel my left arm after I got clotheslined by a Presbyterian player and landed on it. There’s a good chance that I’m jinxing myself with this post, but I’m not going to use the jinx as an excuse should I lose the upcoming contest (note: I’m going to use the jinx as an excuse should I lose the upcoming contest). I plan on focusing all my efforts towards this next free throw contest so I can make myself a three-peat champion heading into Christmas break. If I’m able to pull off another win and extend my reign as free throw king at least one more game, it will undoubtedly supplant the time I scored 19 points in a practice last year as the crowning (pun absolutely intended) achievement in my career.

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Don’t forget that Club Trillion t-shirts are now available by clicking here. 100% of the proceeds benefit A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. So far over 800 shirts have been sent all over the world, which translates into 200+ kids being sponsored this holiday season, solely because of the Trillion Man March. When I say “get your shirt now”, I’m doing so not as a marketer trying to get you to spend money but instead as a friend giving you advice on how to dress much better and do something to make you feel good about yourself. Get your shirt now! ___________________________________________________

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Matt F. There’s your shout-out, Matt. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

The Battle of The Burg

2009-12-14T19:52:00.002-05:00

It’s good to be back after taking some time off for finals last week. My philosophy for finals week is to not study because if I don’t know the material by the last week of the quarter, I’m certainly not going to be able to cram almost three months of material into my brain in a few hours. Still, just about everyone in my life assumes that since it’s finals week I must be spending so much time at the library that I know that the librarian’s middle name is Eunice, her husband played bass guitar for an 80s rock band, and her youngest grandson made the B team this year. This is definitely not the case, but my family and friends feel sorry for me and pamper me all week, so please don’t let my secret out.

On Saturday, our record dropped to 7-2 as we lost to Butler in what many people were calling “The Battle of The Burg”. By many people, I mean that absolutely nobody referred to it as that until I typed it out a few seconds ago. The reason the game was dubbed as such is because it featured two alums (err…featured one alum and involved another) of Brownsburg High School in Gordon Hayward of Butler and yours truly. Gordon is quickly becoming a household name in college basketball and I’m…well, I’m not. I swooned about Gordon on my blog last year after we played Butler because of the way he dismantled our zone defense in very impressive fashion. This year, he essentially picked up where he left off as he scored 24 points and had 8 rebounds. For those who have watched him play in the past two years, his rise to stardom comes as no surprise. But to those of us who remember Gordon when he was a sophomore in high school (my senior year of high school), his unbelievable success thus far isn’t exactly a shock but was certainly unforeseen because of a fairly obvious reason.

If you’re like me and the start of your day consists of watching at least three hours of Sportscenter, chances are you’ve seen or heard about a countless number of what I call “go-to stories”. I call them that because they are stories that journalists can always fall back on when they have nothing else to say about an athlete. For example, how many times have you recently watched an Arizona Cardinals game and not heard the announcers say something about how Kurt Warner used to stock shelves at a grocery store in Iowa? I’m not sure it’s ever happened. Announcers always tell this story partly because it highlights the long road to the NFL that a Pro Bowl quarterback had to take, but also because it is Warner’s go-to story and the announcers feel an obligation to bring it up. Other go-to stories include Chris Andersen and Josh Hamilton battling drug addictions, Tom Brady being a late round draft pick, Brett Favre’s inability to make up his mind, Tim Tebow being homeschooled, Tim Tebow taking a knife to Filipino genitals, and Michael Jordan getting cut from his high school team. (My go-to story when I eventually make it to the NBA will either be that I got kicked out of the draft or that I sat down and took my shoes off at half court during a 6th grade basketball game because the refs were conspiring against me) Journalists always look for interesting facts about players that people might not know about, but what inevitably ends up happening is that they all tell the same story over and over again and annoy the Michigan out of the general public. With that being said, let me introduce you to what will surely be Gordon’s go-to story for the rest of his college career and beyond.

Leading up to our game against Butler last year, some of the guys on the team asked me to give them tips on how to effectively guard Gordon. Obviously we watched film on Butler, but my teammates wanted me to help them out with the nuances that can’t really be picked up on film. I told them everything that I could, but I followed up my inside info with a disclaimer—Gordon had grown 10 inches since we played together in high school. I remembered him as a 5’11”, 150-pound kid who looked more like he would hide inside his locker if he went to Bayside High and had curly hair, and less like he was destined to be a college basketball star. My information obviously wasn’t of much help, because Gordon’s growth spurt turned him into one of the most versatile players in college basketball and also provided commentators and columnists with a go-to story for the rest of his career. Despite the success he is having and is sure to have in the future, I still feel bad for Gordon because his go-to story will prompt people to ask him if he ever got made fun of in high school and if his high school teammates ever hazed him in his younger years. I also feel bad for Gordon because I made fun of him in high school and I hazed him in his younger years. (I’m kidding. Sort of. I never actually hazed Gordon or made fun of him all that much but I was quite possibly the worst teammate in the history of high school basketball. I might start podcasting again just so I can have a high school teammate on to talk about my antics. There are some good stories that need to be told.) I guess there are worse go-to stories out there (Ray Lewis’ comes to mind), but it still has to suck for Gordon to know that ten years from now when he’s scoring 25 points against the Sacramento Kings on ESPN, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson will be debating whether or not he was the victim of atomic wedgies in 9th grade.

In all seriousness, I really look forward to watching Gordon’s career progress not only because he’s incredibly talented, but because he’s a great person as well. Being a nice guy is apparently something that they stress at Butler because their head coach, Brad Stevens, also happens to to be a class act (and also happens to have a go-to story of his own—he’s only 33, which makes him one of the youngest coaches in college basketball). Even if Coach Stevens wasn’t a good guy, I still would have said that he was simply because he’s the first head coach of any team I’ve ever played against at Ohio State to stop me during the postgame handshake line and say something other than “good game” or “good luck”. I don’t remember his exact choice of words, but he said something about how he enjoys reading this blog and how he was unbelievably nervous at the thought of me checking into the game and making it rain (I might have made that last part up). Nevermind that I’ve known Coach Stevens since I was in 3rd grade and actually job shadowed him when I was in middle school. The fact remains that the head coach at a top 25 college basketball team not only acknowledged me as more than a walk-on, but also praised my blog in the process. Here’s to hoping that Coach Matta will be the next coach to do the same.

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Don’t forget that Club Trillion t-shirts are now available by clicking here. 100% of the proceeds benefit A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. Through the donations from the Trillion Man March alone, over 175 kids will be sponsored this Christmas. Plus, you get an awesome shirt that is sure to make you look a little better than you did before. It will instantly become the most comfortable shirt you own and (if you’re smart) the shirt you wear on all your first dates (your “go-to shirt” if you will). Christmas and all sorts of other holidays that I don’t celebrate and therefore don’t know a whole lot about are right around the corner. What I do know, though, is that a Club Trillion shirt would make a perfect gift for anybody or any holiday. ___________________________________________________

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Marty N. There’s your shout-out, Marty. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Abhor More Than Four

2009-12-05T17:45:00.005-05:00

A lot has happened since you last heard from me including a big victory for our team against a good Florida State team, a career-high five minutes of playing time for me in a game against St. Francis (PA), and Tiger Woods apparently doing something important (I overheard a conversation but surprisingly can’t find anything on the internet or TV). Clearly the most shocking of these three events was that I played five minutes in a game, considering that my career high for minutes played before then was three. As I checked into the game, the crowd was noticeably anxious and rightfully so. I did, after all, have a chance to record a five trillion which would have more than doubled my previous personal best of two trillion. What the fans failed to realize, though, is that I wasn’t all that excited because a five trillion is actually not a good thing. I know that intuitively that makes no sense to you whatsoever, but I think you’ll ultimately understand where I’m coming from.

Simply because I write a blog about being a benchwarmer and trying to achieve the coveted trillion, people seem to have given me more authority on all things trillion than David Bowie had during the walk-off in Zoolander. The Trillion Man March e-mails me all the time asking if a two trillion is better or worse than a one trillion (it’s better) and whether the trillion is lost when a foul is committed (it is). I never thought of myself as the person who should be making these judgment calls, but you all did so I guess I’ll embrace my role as the trillion authority and set the rules once and for all. My first order of business is explaining why a four trillion is the best possible trillion anyone can ever achieve.

You remember when you were a freshman in college and you thought that it would be a good idea to go back to your high school for homecoming because the high school chicks were easy and would obviously swoon over the fact that you grew your hair out and learned how to play guitar? And then do you remember how instead of wanting you to use your fake ID to score them booze, the high school chicks just kind of looked at you funny and tried to figure out what exactly you were doing still sitting in the student section during the game? Well, as it turns out (and I hate to be the bearer of bad news here), high schoolers don’t really think you’re all that cool once you graduate, no matter how many yards you may have rushed for your junior year or how many homers you hit your senior year (a lesson I learned the hard way). Once you walk across the stage to get your diploma on graduation day, you are essentially crossing a coolness threshold at your high school in which there’s no turning back. In the same way, the four minute mark is the coolness threshold for getting a trillion.

The fact is that no matter how cool or uncool you were in high school, you reached your optimal coolness (from here on out, “coolness” refers to how accepted you’d be by the current high school student body if you tried hanging out with them) during the spring of your senior year (if you were still a dweeb, well, that kinda sucks for you). It was at this time that a serious dose of senioritis kicked in, which basically resulted in you going to school every day just to make one last ditch effort at getting Jenny Peterson to look your way. Up until this point, your coolness slowly escalated over the course of your four years in high school and as I already said, it began declining after graduation and will continue its decline forever. When you’re a senior in college, it’s much more uncool to hang around your high school than if you just graduated from your high school a month ago. And if you’re 42, married, and have three kids, it’s much more uncool (and probably illegal) for you to hang around your high school than a senior in college. Make sense? Good.

With that whole scenario in mind, now let’s investigate the levels of obtaining a trillion from the perspective of a high school senior girl looking for a date (don’t ask me why, just go with it). Getting a one trillion is like being a freshman in high school. Sure the one trillion is cute, but it still can’t even drive, which means it can’t take you out for lobster and therefore doesn’t impress you all that much. A two trillion just started getting a little facial hair but can’t even bench 135 more than twice, so you can’t honestly expect it to keep you warm at night. A three trillion is intriguing cause he’s got a lot of patches on his letter jacket and dunked in a varsity game, but he’s lacking the confidence that you need in a man. A four trillion, though, uses the perfect amount of hair gel, will pay for your movie and popcorn, and once beat up three guys from Jefferson High by himself. A four trillion is perfect for you (still playing the role of high school senior girl) because any younger and you’re robbing the cradle and any older you are associating yourself with that guy who just can’t let the glory days of high school go.

For those of you who couldn’t follow along with my awful analogy, what I’m trying to say is that a trillion becomes more impressive as more minutes are added onto it (3 tril > 2 tril > 1 tril) until the four trillion threshold is crossed, at which point the five trillion plays the role of college freshman and is both unimpressive and undesirable. But why four trillion? Did I just pick four because that’s how many levels of high school there are and I really wanted to use that analogy so I could give subtle hints about my high school experience? Yes. Did I pick four just so I could make excuses as to why I let a five trillion slip away against St. Francis? Absolutely. Do I think it’s mildly racist that both Hey Arnold and Recess had black characters who were much better at sports than the rest of their friends? Of course I do (but I also think that if the black characters weren’t good at sports I would have been confused). Still, even with my ulterior motives for choosing four trillion as the best possible trillion, I do have a sliver of logic to back my sentiment.

The reason a five trillion is actually worse than a four trillion is because there has to be a point in which the player is no longer playing the role of benchwarmer soaking up the scrub time, but is instead playing the role of “guy who could make his way into the rotation if he didn’t choose to do absolutely nothing with his opportunity”. Someone who is playing five minutes in a game and isn’t doing anything of importance is basically just wasting everyone’s time. The fact that they’ve managed to get more than four minutes means that they shouldn’t be treated as a scrub for that particular game, because scrub time officially starts with four minutes left and a 20 point lead. As such, because they haven’t been dubbed a “scrub” (“dub a scrub” is a fun phrase) they have an obligation to entertain the crowd with their play instead of trying to be inefficient by getting a trillion. When scrubs get trillions, it’s riveting stuff. When guys playing five or more minutes get trillions, it’s borderline depressing.

As far as why four minutes is the designated scrub time, it’s pretty simple – the last media timeout takes place at the four minute mark. In case you don’t know what that last sentence means, college basketball games are broken into segments of four minutes so that the broadcast companies can take breaks to show commercials and keep their sponsors happy. The last media timeout is the last guaranteed time in which teams will huddle around each other and discuss strategy, which is why it signifies the start of scrub time. Coaches don’t want to have to talk over the offense and defense with scrubs (or look us in the eye for that matter), so they wait until the last media timeout to sub us in, and expect us to run out the clock. If a coach puts a player in before the last media timeout (like Coach Matta did with me against St. Francis), he is saying that he wouldn’t mind discussing strategy with said player and is basically taking away the player’s status as a scrub for that game. It’s a complicated science that few people fully understand.

Because I checked into the St. Francis game with five minutes left to play, my title of scrub had been forfeited. I was no longer eligible for a good trillion (that is, a four trillion or less), so I was forced to change my style of play accordingly. This is why I took two shots (that would have gone down if I wasn’t robbed), had an assist, and talked an inordinate amount of smack while I was playing. It was the first time in my career that I was a “normal” player and had to change my attitude to accommodate my label change. I was now playing the role of “guy who could make his way into the rotation” and I felt all sorts of pressure as a result. According to my new label, I had a chance of parlaying my five minutes into a permanent stripping of the scrub label with a solid performance. I put forth a good deal of effort to be as efficient as possible and make the most of my opportunity. Instead, I went 0-for-2 in five uninspiring minutes and returned to my role as walk-on benchwarmer the following game. Order in the universe has been restored.

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Don’t forget that Club Trillion t-shirts are now available by clicking here. 100% of the proceeds benefit A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. As of right now, over 550 shirts have been sold which translates into over 120 kids getting sponsored this Christmas, simply because of the contributions from the Trillion Man March. I’m truly blown away by the success of the t-shirt deal and how much money its raised for a great cause. Keep up the good work. ___________________________________________________

Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse (streak of 15 wins)

Streak for the Cash Group Losers: R. DeCeglio, C. Heller, B. Aldrich, J. Zelek, D. Gerdeman, T. Read, K. Schomaker, and A. Victory (streak of 9)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Rick W. With Jimmy V week happening right now on ESPN, chances are you’ve seen this 100 times. Make it 101. There’s your shout-out, Rick. And here's your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Naming The Villain

2009-11-29T16:31:00.003-05:00

Those of you who are anxiously awaiting the return of Lost and have recently found yourself doing a lot of channel surfing might have noticed that college basketball is in full swing. Even if you haven’t seen a game yet, you surely know that every year around this time Dick Vitale thinks that people care about his stupid little terms, pretty much everyone in America disagrees with everything Doug Gottlieb has to say, and some of the biggest programs in college basketball play in those tournaments that take place in gyms that hold 200 people. Ah yes, it’s college basketball season alright. But along with preseason tournaments and ESPN personalities making America collectively change the channel, something else is becoming a constant in the college basketball world—Evan Turner is basically dominating his opponents. With that in mind, I think it’s a perfect time to outline what could very well be the coolest thing I’ll ever do with my life.

Last season I wrote a blog entry briefly explaining how Evan Turner gave himself the nickname “The Kid” for reasons unknown to just about everyone. My guess is that he’s just a big Bruce Willis fan and felt like “The Kid” made more sense than “Die Hard”. (More nicknames based on titles of Bruce Willis movies could include “The Jackal”, “Armageddon”, “The Siege”, “Apocalypse”, “Unbreakable”, “Grand Champion”, “Alpha Dog”, and “The Astronaut Farmer”. Ok, so maybe the last one isn’t all that great.) Whatever the case, I thought that the concept of him nicknaming himself was pretty lame (so much so that I nicknamed myself as a way of mocking him) which is why I decided that I would intercede and give him a much better nickname. My choice was “The Villain” simply because, at the time, I had been commenting on my blog about his Facebook status updates and most of them mentioned how he was “chillin”. It was admittedly a pathetic nickname, but the Trillion Man March responded favorably to it and now it’s easy to see why. “The Villain” is the absolute perfect nickname for Evan Turner for a variety of reasons.

He Wreaks Havoc on Other Teams

If you’ve watched any of our games so far this year, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that Evan Turner is good at basketball. Like, really good. So far he has recorded two triple-doubles, which is impressive considering that that is twice the number of triple-doubles of every other tOSU player in history combined. Evan and I have had and continue to have our differences (more on this in a little bit), but even I have to admit that The Villain is clearly one of the best players in all of America (including Central and South America). He’s the most versatile player in college basketball and has to be a match-up nightmare for coaches. Plus, he has a killer mentality, so much so that he’d probably put your puppy in a figure four leg lock if given the chance. Evan should be a shoo-in for the All-American team (which means Doug Gottlieb will have him as honorable mention all-conference) if he keeps up his current level of play, making it easy to see how he will basically be playing the role of villain for opposing teams all season.

Every Hero Needs A Villain

I’ve already made it perfectly clear with the links I’ve provided in some of my earlier posts, that I’m not afraid to admit that I know the words to more Enrique Iglesias songs than I probably should. More importantly, I’ve made it perfectly clear that I can be your hero, baby. Most of you didn’t take me up on that offer, which makes sense considering you probably want your heroes to be able to do more than belch the ABC’s and give phenomenal karaoke performances of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” (maybe you don’t, in which case I will gladly be your hero). For argument’s sake, though, let’s just call me the hero so this whole scenario works out.

Evan initiated his role as the villain of my life pretty much the day he stepped on campus. He came to Ohio State with an enormous chip on his shoulder and was, by his own admission, pretty irritable in those early days. Since I take pride in getting under people’s skin, Evan presented a prime opportunity for me to have a little fun. Unfortunately, he took my playful jabs personally and would retort with the kind of insults that suggest that maybe he was taking the verbal debate a little too far. Basically, my comments prompted an “Oh no he di-unt!” response from onlookers whereas Evan’s comments prompted an “Umm…Evan…you can’t say things like that to people and still be accepted by society” response from onlookers. A better way of putting it for all the Super Troopers fans out there would be that my shenanigans were cheeky and fun but his shenanigans were cruel and tragic…which makes them not shenanigans at all really. He has loosened up a great deal in the few years he’s been here, but we still have altercations in which he calls me “walk-on” or “manager” more than he calls me by my name and I return the favor by explaining that even though I am a walk-on, I still have a better jumpshot than him (even though our game against St. Francis would suggest otherwise—I’ll discuss this in the next post). It’s an ongoing battle in which one of us has to be labeled the good guy and one of us has to be labeled the bad guy. My style of insulting is similar to how all the superheroes never try to actually kill their nemeses, but instead just try to beat them up so badly that they want to give up their life of destruction and mayhem. Evan’s style of insulting, on the other hand, can be likened to how villains always try to kill the heroes and the heroes’ families. With that in mind, it’s pretty easy to see which one of us deserves the hero label and which one deserves the villain label.

Not Every Blog Needs A Villain, But Mine Clearly Has One

I like to think that there are two different people inside of Evan Turner—the one who attacks me personally and the one who attacks my blog and the Trillion Man March. I wrote about the first Evan in the segment above. The second Evan is a little bit different in his approach. He still tries to terrorize my life and those around me, but he does it as if he is playing along with the character I have made him out to be. I portray Evan as an elaborate adversary of mine, when really the only reason we ever butted heads is because he was maybe a little too weak-minded and I was maybe a little too antagonistic. Still, he seems to have embraced his role as the villain of my blog as he makes snide remarks about how all of you who regularly read need to get a life (attacking me is one thing, but attacking the TMM is completely unacceptable). The anger he directs toward me about something I wrote or something one of you said to him about my blog comes from a completely different source than when he tells me that the only reason females have ever talked to me is because I know him and the only reason I’ll ever get anywhere in life is because I ride the coattails of others (both of which could very well be true). It’s a different type of anger because it’s a completely different person. Instead of the normal Evan, he is embracing the role of a character, making him a villain in both my personal and public life. He takes pride in playing the character that I portray him to be on the blog mostly because….

He Actually Likes Being Called “The Villain”

Despite Evan consistently complaining about my blog and really just me in general, the one thing that he has definitely become a fan of is the nickname I gave him. Proof of this is that on several occasions he has referred to himself by the nickname saying things like “The Villain is killin” while he’s having a good practice (is it still third person when it’s a nickname?). I’ve also overheard him introduce himself as The Villain to people who are familiar with my blog. He initially hated the nickname simply because I came up with it, but just like I have to set personal matters aside and admit that he’s a great basketball player, he has to set personal matters aside and admit that “The Villain” is a great nickname. When your greatest enemy approves of a nickname you gave him, it’s a safe bet that the nickname is pretty awesome. This case is no different.

What I really want from this whole nicknaming business is to take “The Villain” from a Club Trillion thing to a worldwide thing. As of now, the only people that call him “The Villain” are those who either read my blog or are familiar with my blog. While I take great satisfaction in knowing that you all have embraced the nickname, the fact remains that the rest of the world that is yet to discover my blog (it must suck to be them) has no idea about the nickname of “The Villain” for Evan Turner. That’s where you come in and help execute what is essentially an enormous prank I’m playing on Evan.

As I said, most of you already refer to Evan as “The Villain” which is exactly what needs to happen for the nickname to stick, but along with that I’m counting on you to spread the word to non-Trillion Man Marchers. If you know people who work in media-related fields, tell them about the nickname so they can drop it in their articles/reports involving The Villain. If your friends are tOSU fans and say something like “Ohio State will go as far as Evan Turner takes them”, ask them who Evan Turner is and/or tell them that they meant to say “The Villain”.

There’s no denying that a solid number of you are on board with the nickname, but Malcolm Gladwell would point out that it is yet to reach the tipping point in which “The Villain” is one of the great nicknames in sports. Do your part and eliminate “Evan Turner” from your vocabulary and replace it with “The Villain”. If people start asking questions, send them to the blog for their answers and then treat them as inferior people for not knowing about my blog or The Villain’s nickname. I fully expect us to get Sportscenter anchors to call him “The Villain” by the end of the season and really for the rest of his career in both college and the NBA. If the Trillion Man March can make this happen, you will all be heroes of mine (and as such, I will stop linking to Enrique and stop trying to be your hero). Batman claims that you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. But if everything goes according to plan, in my mind you are a hero if you live long enough to see Evan become “The Villain”.

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This is my last post of Movember, which means it’s time for me to thank all of you for taking part in this fantastic charity event. According to my Movember team page, 56 of you were willing to grow out your stache for a great cause. In reality there was at least 57 of you because my dad also grew out his mustache but was too cool to join my team (thanks for killing my chances at the “biggest Movember team” award, dad). I promised shout-outs to all of you throughout the month and to nobody’s surprise, I failed to deliver. So now I’m going to do my best to make amends by showing off all the mustaches of the people who took the time to upload their picture to the Movember team page. Here you go.

Brian Dascenzo

Brian Francis

Ryan Harmanis

Jake Rice

Mark McCain

And of course, my final product…

I’m available to babysit your kids just about any weeknight

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Don’t forget that Club Trillion t-shirts are now available here. 100% of the proceeds benefit A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. Plus, you get a high quality shirt that will make you look a little bit better than you currently do.

LEGAL NOTICE: Club Trillion and A Kid Again assume no liability if you are ugly. Some ugliness can’t be masked, no matter how awesome the shirt may be. ___________________________________________________

Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse (streak of 15 wins)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: S. Kornblau (streak of 9)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Brian T. and is absolutely fake but I’m way too lazy to care. There’s your shout-out, Brian. And here's your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Tees, Please

2009-11-19T00:30:00.002-05:00

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy with this blog complaining about how our compliance office wants nothing more than for me to go away and how I’m not exactly a huge fan of theirs either. For the most part this was just a charade, as the rules compliance were enforcing really weren’t their rules at all but were instead those of the NCAA. And the truth is I knew that most of the stuff I was doing was going to be frowned upon, but I did it anyway just to be an antagonist (shocking, I know). Still, I enjoyed complaining about how compliance was out to get me (they weren’t) and how I had so many great ideas that I could execute if compliance wasn’t so strict (I didn’t). As any high school girl who starts “drama” will tell you (more like all girls, amirite fellas?), it’s sort of fun to complain from time to time. But if I’m going to falsely complain about compliance when it’s really the NCAA’s fault, I think it’s only fair to give compliance credit when they come through for me. And, man, did they ever come through for me.

Since the latter part of the summer, I’ve been bugging our compliance office about a way to let me get t-shirts to the Trillion Man March. You guys were (and still are) flooding my inbox with t-shirt requests and my only solution was to send you to the Cafepress site that had been set up by another member of the TMM. I wasn’t a huge fan of this because it seemed like a sketchy way to get you shirts, but it was really the only solution I had so I sent people there. I even ordered a few shirts from the Cafepress site for myself and while the quality isn’t terrible, they aren’t exactly the nicest t-shirts I own. I wasn’t satisfied with the Cafepress route, so I decided to investigate a better way to get Club Trillion shirts on the backs of those of you who wanted them so badly. Thanks to the efforts of the compliance office, a better way has been discovered. The good news is that I now have a way to get you high quality shirts from a reliable source. The bad news is that the shirts are so awesome they might blow your mind.

The deal that was made that puts Club Trillion shirts in your possession is really a perfect situation as far as I’m concerned. Since the NCAA hates it when student-athletes make money (but loves it when they make money off the student-athletes), I obviously cannot profit from this venture. However, I can have the money donated to a charity which is exactly what’s going to happen. Most of you probably think that the “charity” that the money is going to is the “Mark Titus Chipotle Fund” and while you certainly can donate money there if you so choose, I’ve actually decided to give the money to a more legitimate charity. I chose to give the money to A Kid Again, which is a local charity that benefits children with life threatening illnesses. Two years ago the basketball team helped out with a clinic-type thing that was put on for kids from A Kid Again and I immediately fell in love with the charity. The people are full of energy and the smiles that they put on the faces of the kids is truly something special to see. Upon finding out that I would have to give money from the t-shirts to a charity, I immediately knew I would choose A Kid Again because spending five minutes with the kids exposed me to more bravery than I had been exposed to throughout the rest of my life combined. I can confidently assure you that the money couldn’t go to a more enthusiastic charity than A Kid Again.

As you might have noticed, there is now a link in the upper right hand corner of this website that will take you to A Kid Again’s website, which is where you can get your t-shirt (for those who don’t feel like scrolling up, you can just click here). I got a local clothing manufacturer (whose business I’d love to plug but can’t because of the NCAA) to jump on board and take care of processing all the orders. After his cost of making the shirts has been reimbursed, 100% of the remaining money goes towards A Kid Again’s efforts. I’m not exactly a clothing expert, but in my humble opinion the shirts couldn’t be a higher quality and are really kind of a steal considering you get free shipping too. Plus, your money is going to a great cause. If you have even a slight interest in helping kids out and/or getting a Club Trillion t-shirt, I beg you to make a donation and get a shirt. I’ve put a good deal of work (along with a lot of other people) into getting this set up and really think that it could turn out to be a pretty cool fundraising opportunity for A Kid Again. And let’s not forget that you’ll be getting an undeniably awesome t-shirt in the deal. It’s really too bad that there isn’t a time of year quickly approaching in which people get presents for the ones they love, cause these shirts would make for a perfect gift…

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If you want to read more about A Kid Again, you can do so by visiting their website and reading their mission statement.

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I’m not really counting this as a blog entry because it’s only real purpose was to introduce the shirts. Therefore, I neglected to include a certain link that many of you look forward to so much (see what I did there?). I’m also not throwing a YouTube or Streak for the Cash shout-outs at the end of this because I’m in New York City right now and would rather spend my time getting flipped off by Yankee fans with road rage than sifting through e-mails containing YouTube links. Sorry to disappoint the five of you who love how I end each blog entry. I’ll write a recap of NYC when I get back to Columbus and normalcy will be restored.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Pursuing Perfection

2009-11-14T01:10:00.002-05:00

On Thursday night we finished the first week of our season by beating James Madison by 28 points. I personally thought that James should have brought at least four other teammates along with him, but he must have been confident that he could take our entire team on by himself. Seems like a lot to ask of a guy that’s been dead for over 150 years, but then again if he can father something as magnificent as the Constitution, I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be able to hold his own against us. As it stands, I can just about guarantee that Madison now wishes that he focused his Federalist Paper No. 10 on how to contain The Villain in pick-and-roll situations instead of how to contain political factions, but that’s sort of stating the obvious.

As for what happened on the court, most people who watched would agree that the first 38:53 had its moments, but the action really didn’t pick up until the final 1:07 of the game. Strangely enough that happened to be right around the time that I checked into the game (note: it was the exact time I checked into the game) and recorded what was probably the first perfect game of the season in all of college basketball. For those who don’t remember, a perfect game consists of not only registering a trillion (if you don’t know what a trillion is, you have a lot of catching up to do), but doing it without even touching the ball. This perfect game is especially important to me because it marked the first trillion I have recorded in a game since I started writing this blog (I also had a perfect game in our exhibition against Walsh, but it didn’t count because it wasn’t a real game). There has been a lot of pressure on me to practice what I preach and for the most part I had been failing to live up to said pressure, which is why it feels good to finally get that trillion pound monkey off my back.

Our victory against James Madison came three days after we beat Alcorn State 100-60 and The Villain recorded the second triple-double in Ohio State history (the only previous one occurred sometime in the 80’s). Despite our differences through the years, I will admit that I was slightly impressed with The Villain’s performance and I’m anticipating great things from him all year. But don’t expect me to kiss his feet just yet. Sure he got a triple-double, but as I already said, so has someone else in Ohio State history. If he really wants to stand out and gain my respect, he needs to stop getting triple-doubles and start getting some double-triples. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

I checked into the Alcorn State game with more than 2:30 to play, which was the most I have played at Ohio State since the very first game of my career. To put it into perspective, I played more in the Alcorn State game than I did in all of last year’s games combined, so it goes without saying that I was borderline exhausted at the end of the game. Still, I saw a perfect opportunity to record a three trillion (which was unprecedented for me) and knew that I had to put the pain from my burning lungs out of my mind if I were to see it through. After playing for about two minutes, the trillion was still intact, but with around 40 seconds remaining, an Alcorn State shot caromed off the rim and came directly at me. None of my teammates were anywhere close to me, which meant that I had no choice but to grab the ball. Since I absolutely had to get the rebound, I thought I’d execute one of those emphatic-smacking-of-the-ball rebounds that all the cool kids do. I don’t want to get too cocky but based on what I remember, the ball-slap rebound (some great jokes could be made with that term) was performed pretty perfectly, to the point that even the three fans in the upper deck could hear it. I would never condone losing a trillion, but if it absolutely must happen, I think it’s pretty clear that a ball-slap rebound is the best possible consolation prize.

Altogether, it was a pretty successful week for both Club Trillion and the Ohio State Buckeyes. We are 2-0, The Villain put up a triple-double, and I was dangerously close to pulling off back-to-back trillions. More importantly, the mustache I’m growing out for Movember made two appearances on high definition television. It might be too soon to tell, but it seems like this could be a pretty successful senior year for me. We play North Carolina and either Syracuse or Cal next week in Madison Square Garden, which means I basically get an off week to gear up for the remainder of our nonconference schedule, yet still get the opportunity to pull off some serious warm-up board slaps in the Mecca of basketball. It might be cliché to say that I’m “living the dream”, but until someone comes up with a better way to explain what it’s like to get a perfect game, make it rain during warm-ups in basketball’s most famous arena, and consistently win verbal altercations with The Villain, I’m going to continue to describe my experiences in such a manner. Scratch that. On second thought, I’m really not living the dream at all. Not even close, actually. I’m more accurately living the opposite of “the dream”. No dream of mine would ever have The Villain play a predominant role in it.

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse (streak of 15 wins)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: J. Beer who has the best last name (even though it’s absolutely fake) in the history of Streak(streak of 9)

Your awesome YouTube, which happens to be one of my favorite commercials from back in the day, was sent in to me by Ed B. There’s your shout-out, Ed. And here's your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Walking The Mile

2009-11-09T13:48:00.004-05:00

I’m not exactly sure how elementary school physical education programs are run these days and frankly I don’t care. I’ve heard rumors that today’s P.E. programs have taken dodgeball out of their curriculum because fat kids kept getting the Twinkies in their pockets smashed or something like that, but I could be wrong. Even if I am off with my assessment, the fact remains that today’s P.E. is turning the future of America into wusses who cry when they’re told by the cool kids to “just stay out of the way” during class basketball games. It’s a shame that this is what it’s come to because you and I can distinctly remember that P.E. taught us how to be men during those times when cable TV and an angry dad with a leather belt simply weren’t enough.

P.E. class was always a way for me to get revenge on all the nerds who wouldn’t let me look at their homework because they thought it was cheating (and it absolutely was). The structure of the class awarded those who were men and punished those who knew how many damage points the Savannah Lions were capable of dishing out in Magic: The Gathering (shame on you if you still know). The entire year of P.E. always made me feel like I was taking part in a whole season of a sport called manliness, with dodgeball day being the equivalent of a big rivalry game and badminton day being the equivalent of a game in which the walk-ons know that they are going to see some playing time. Of course, every season has to have playoffs of some sort and the sport of manliness in elementary P.E. was no exception. It consisted of 5,280 feet of track and one disinterested teacher with a stopwatch.

What made the mile such an important thing in the lives of a bunch of nine-year-olds is that it was the one sporting event in which everyone could effectively gauge levels of success. Even though you could probably tell the difference between a good and bad nine-year-old basketball player, the fact remains that most elementary rec league games end up with a final score of 21-15 with the best player pouring in seven points. Sure he might have dribbled between his legs once or twice, but the ladies want to see the ball go in the basket and putting up seven points isn’t making that happen for them. What makes a good basketball player at nine-years-old is simply being able to throw the ball ten feet in the air, but hitting the bottom of the rim is worth just as many points as picking your nose and eating it on the bench, which is why there is such parity in elementary basketball. Some kids are better than others, but they aren’t that much better. The mile, however, offered an opportunity for athletic disparity as a few kids would run it in under seven minutes while others would take over 12 or 13 minutes. Simply put, the mile was the only athletic endeavor that could impress the ladies, which is why it was the most important thing in the world to elementary guys.

But a funny thing happened between elementary school and high school, provided you think puberty is a funny thing (and who doesn’t think cracking voices and pimply faced kids with braces are hilarious?). Mother Nature made us all bigger, faster, and stronger, which in turn made us better at sports. Because of this I no longer wanted to be the best mile runner in the school but instead shifted my focus on being the best basketball player in the school. Most other kids agreed that running the mile had lost its luster and high school P.E. teachers knew this, which is why they made the mile a pass/fail test that had to be completed in ten minutes instead of the ultimate test of manliness that it used to be. Basically, by the time I got to high school my mile running days were over because a ten minute mile is laughably easy, which meant I would just cruise through high school P.E. and never run another timed mile the rest of my life. Until I decided to play college basketball for Coach Matta and his slight obsession with players who can run 1600 meters faster than what I thought was humanly possible.

It was brought to my attention during the tail end of our autumn workout session that Coach Matta wanted all guards to run a 5:30 mile, and all big guys to run a 6:00 mile. Coach Matta has a reputation of being a fun guy with a great sense of humor (which I think is why he hasn’t castrated me for writing my blog) so I naturally assumed he was messing with us. Unfortunately, this was not the case. He was set on us running a mile until we got our designated times. As a 6’4” (relatively short) white guy with an above average jumpshot, I have been assigned the role of shooting guard, basically because it’s the only position that makes any sense for me whatsoever. This meant that I had to run my mile in 5:30, which was over an entire minute faster than the fastest mile I had ever ran in my life. Eff.

I’m guessing that you have a pretty good idea how this story is going to play out, but I’ll insult your intelligence and tell you anyway. The first time we ran the mile, a handful of guys got their times while the rest of us basically just felt sorry for ourselves. It took almost a week of running before anyone else even came close. I had been running around 6:00 flat just about every day for that week, but on the same day that most of the other guys decided to get their times, I figured I’d bust my (insert inappropriate body part here) and go for a 5:30. And go for it I did. After essentially sprinting the entire mile, I triumphantly dove across the finish line and let the sweet taste of victory mask the pain of tearing the skin off of my shins and knee caps. The guys who finished 10 yards ahead of me were celebrating their victory and I would have joined them, only I was so exhausted that my entire body was pretty much numb and I couldn’t get up from laying on the ground. Oh, and I also didn’t join them because our strength coach informed me that I ran my mile in 5:35.

After I found out that I missed my time by five seconds, I could almost feel my soul drain out of my body. The next few days, I gave pretty much no effort when I ran because I felt much better about myself when I simply didn’t try than when I gave it everything I had and failed (I don’t endorse this mindset, kids). We ran every weekday morning for another two weeks and I’d estimate that I ran a sub 7:30 maybe once or twice. I made up my mind that it was literally impossible for me to ever run a 5:30 mile. After all, I ran a 5:35 and then sat there helplessly as my body convulsed for a half hour. I honestly couldn’t have run any harder and yet it still wasn’t enough. I decided to stop trying because I didn’t want another reminder that not only was I a short, slow, and untalented basketball player, I was also completely out of shape. But even though I wasn’t really trying all that hard, the fact remained that I still had to run the mile every morning which meant I still had to partake in what was easily becoming the most annoying thing in the world.

Nevermind the fact that I had to show up to practice 30 minutes before the majority of the team. That’s not what was annoying. Nevermind the fact that we often ran the mile in 40 degree weather with strong wind and rain. That’s not what was annoying. Nevermind the fact that The Villain would make snarky comments about how he was done with the mile but I wasn’t. That’s not what was annoying (ok, so that absolutely was annoying). What really got to me was how our coaches would refer to the four of us who were yet to make it as the “Mile Guys”. At least once a day during some sort of team meeting, a coach would reduce my identity to “mile guy” even though I politely asked them to call me either “The Shark” or simply “Chief Pumpfake” instead. Not surprisingly, they never listened. When a coach would send a text message regarding what time practice was to start the following day, they would always say something like, “Practice – 3:00, Mile Guys – 2:30”. Jeremie Simmons, who was included in the group of four of us who hadn’t made it (along with Dallas Lauderdale and Walter Offutt), likened the “mile guy” tag to a splinter. I don’t exactly see how being called “mile guy” has anything to do with an elderly rat that teaches martial arts to talking turtles, but Jeremie saw the connection so I guess that’s good enough. Anyway, even though it sounds trivial and dumb (just like everything else I complain about), being called “mile guy” was eating away at me and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Except run a 5:30 mile, of course.

As October wore on, the weather in central Ohio became worse and worse which, in turn, made the chances of any of us making our mile time worse and worse. I ran my 5:35 when it was warm and sunny so there was no chance of me making 5:30 in the freezing rain. Eventually the coaches figured this out and decided to move our mile run to inside our arena, where we would run around the hallway in the club level. This was exciting news to me because I now considered the possibility of giving some sort of effort. On the eve of our first run indoors, I watched YouTubes of Steve Prefontaine and tried to make mental notes on how awesome his mustache and hair were. I would later find out that he was a pretty good distance runner too, which upset me because I failed to even consider making a mental note on his running form. As it turned out, I definitely could have used a little help because after giving it everything I had, I came up short again and ran a 5:40. To make matters worse, our strength coach informed me that when he measured out how many laps around the arena made up a mile, he was slightly off which meant that I ran farther than I had to. He then assured me that he was off by only twenty yards or so and I wouldn’t have made it anyway. Oh, well that certainly helps ease the pain.

After running twenty yards too far yet still getting incredibly close, I made up my mind to just go for the 5:30 every day. The annoyance level of everything about the mile was at an all-time high and I really didn’t know how much more I could take. Every time I was called a “mile guy” I gritted my teeth a little bit harder than I did the time before. I was reaching my boiling point and wanted to get the mile more than anything in the world. Since I mostly just stand around and wait to sub in during practice, the mile was the only physically demanding activity I did every day. It was the one thing standing in between me and the lazy lifestyle that so many Americans strive for. In other words, I decided to work as hard as humanly possible so that I could be lazy. Makes sense to me.

By now you’ve probably figured out that I eventually made my mile time. I ran a handful of 5:45’s and 5:50’s before finally getting it about a week ago. I won’t get too theatrical with my description of how it all happened, but I will say that everyone who saw my mile performance shed a single tear because of how inspirational it was, and then immediately made a vow to themselves to try and be a better person. But making the mile isn’t the important part of the story. It’s the struggle I had to go through before finally making it that is. The “mile guy” references. The 6:30 a.m. alarms. The Villain punking me as I sat there in silence. It was quite a journey, but in the words of Miley Cyrus (appropriate first name for this particular post), “Ain't about how fast I get there...it's the climb.” Then again, Miley Cyrus also once said “I'm noddin' my head like ‘yeah’, movin' my hips like ‘yeah’”, so I don’t really know if she’s the best person to take advice from. Either way, I made my mile time and have now been set free of the chains that bind me. An interesting development in the story is that since I’ve finished my mile, the only position I’ve played in practice is power forward (out of necessity). Sure the power forwards only had to run a 6:00 mile, which is what I did the first time I ran it, but I’m not going to get too worked up over that. What’s happened has happened. Besides, no matter what position I’m forced to play, the fact remains that I will never run another timed mile the rest of my life. Unless, of course, my NBA coach wants me to.

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Movember is proving to be the coolest charity event I’ve ever done in my life. So far, I’ve received a handful of comments about the development of my mustache and even had a dad pull his daughter closer to him to protect her from me as I passed them in the grocery store. Some of you think that you’re too cool to grow out your mustache because “I’ll get fired” or “I’m only 12-years-old”. Yeah, well as long as you can live with yourself, I guess that’s all that matters.

It’s not too late to get involved with Movember, in case you just realized that you are making a huge mistake in not taking part. If you do want to get involved, go read my last post again and follow the necessary steps. As a reminder, if you want to be a part but don’t want to grow out your mustache, join the team that was started by Bryan, a member of the Trillion Man March, and donate money to prostate cancer research. As for those of you who just want to grow out a ‘stache and spread the word about the seriousness of prostate cancer, join my group and upload pictures of your flavor saver. You might even get your picture published on my blog like these guys did…

Paul Barkoukis

Cornell Basketball player Geoff Reeves (GEOFF, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!!!!!)

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse (streak of 15 wins)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: C. Evans (streak of 12)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by George R. There’s your shout-out, George. And here's your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Keller's 200k Post

2009-01-06T13:48:00.003-05:00

As I'm sure you remember, I promised Keller a guest blog for every 100,000 hits Club Trillion gets. In exchange for this, he does pretty much whatever I tell him to do. Anyway, here's what he had to say this go round. I know we hit 200,000 hits awhile ago, but the elevator story was too awesome and I HAD to step in and tell it. I'll let Keller take it from here...
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Two short weeks later and I'm back posting because we've added another 100,000 hits. I find this awesome. You probably find this awful. Thanks for everyone who submitted potential ladies for Mark to date. Everyone, that is, besides my little sister Ashley. Not cool at all. The only thing that could have been less cool is all the guys who e-mailed Club Trillion asking "if Keller's sister is hot." If you're that creepy, just add her on Facebook, jeez. For everyone else, we're still taking submissions at ClubTrillion@gmail.com. Consider it a late Christmas present to the person you're submitting. Don't worry Mark, one day, love will find you.

Now, I thought about writing 2,000 words on why I will never forgive Danny Peters for his transgressions last Saturday (you know EXACTLY what you did, Danny), but while I will have many opportunities in the future to put into words the many ways I would give Danny wedgies should I see him again, this is going to be my only chance to piggyback on the "Goals for 2009" blog idea that I gave Mark in the first place.

So here are my top five goals for Mark and Club Trillion in this New Year

The reclamation of Mark's Facebook Wall

I love the popularity Mark has received from the blog. I really do. He has added over 1,000 Facebook friends in the last month. This should seem like a good thing to most, but I absolutely hate it. The problem with all these new Facebook friends is that when I have something awesome to say or link to on Mark's Wall, it gets lost in the shuffle. In the past when I would post something as life-altering as this on his Wall, it would incite the discussion that it deserves. Now, it quickly gets pushed out of sight by 100 friend stories and 8 or 9 people posting a short sentence about being a fan of the blog. To quote The Big Lebowski (which you should do at any semi-applicable chance you get) "this aggression will not stand, man."

I offer a peaceful resolution - The Club Trillion Facebook Page. I can assure you Mark checks it daily, and it would be a better place to express your appreciation for the blog. If you have an awesome Onion article, a ten minute clip of Jonah Takalua (Mark says I can't link to it because of language), or the coolest eBay auction ever, by all means post it on Mark's wall. If it's just about Club Trillion, join the fan page and post it there.

Turn Club Trillion into that guy you know who is into technology just a little too much

No, I'm not talking about turning Club Trillion into a dude who won't shut up about how sweet his new MacBook Pro is. There are a lot of places on the internet that we can spread our Club Trillion seed to. Blogger and Facebook don't have to be the end all-be all of our internet reach. I've taken the time to set-up a few other Club Trillion accounts on other sites, feel free to subscribe to them.

Myspace - Add us, especially if you have a webcam or a page that is covered in glittery HTML

YouTube - We only have one video up so far - a news spot on a Columbus TV station - but this YouTube account is where we plan on putting up any future interviews, Club Trillion original videos, or videos of a dog we saw that we will title "YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT THIS DOG DOES SRSLY!!!", so don't miss out.

Twitter - I'm not even sure what Twitter is. When I go to it, it just looks like a bunch of Facebook statuses. I'm not entirely sure why it exists, except for making me think that tinyurl.com links were viruses for about two months until I clicked on one. Regardless, we'll try and update it a few times a day if it appears enough people are subscribing.

Make Club Trillion the most popular story on the internet - for a day

Sure, it's one thing to get a couple thousand hits from an inaccurate report of wrongdoing from SI, but it's another thing to reach the pinnacle of internet irreverence - being the top story on Digg. For 24 hours, Club Trillion would be the most popular thing on the internet, as determined by the people.

Since Club Trillion doesn't contain pleas to impeach Bush, a 9/11 conspiracy theory, a picture of a cat doing something funny (TRILcats could become the new LOLcats in my opinion), a witty put down of Microsoft, or a Cracked.com address (though at Club Trillion we LOVE Cracked), it will take a lot of effort to make this a reality. That's where the Trillion Man March comes in. I created a Digg username and will start submitting every Club Trillion post to Digg. You guys just need to sign up with a username, Digg the story up, and then make some kind of comment on it. Let's see if we can overtake an XKCD comic.

Accumulate 1,000 pictures of the Trillion Man March, including at least 50 with celebrities

One of the eventual goals of mine is to redesign the clubtrillion.com site. If that was to happen, I would want to include a section for the Trillion Man March. In that section, I'd want to have pictures of the Club Trillion fans over the world. If you have them, send them in to ClubTrillion@gmail.com. If you don't have them, why are you still reading this? I assume you have a cameraphone and a bathroom mirror - send me something.

Now, I'm not going to encourage you to be wearing a Club Trillion shirt, because as we have found out, people tend to take it the wrong way. All I'm going to say is it will probably look cooler. If you don't have a shirt, that doesn't mean you can't send in pictures. You could be creative with it. Old #34 jerseys, you and 3 buddies spelling out TRIL YMCA-style while decked out in OSU gear, the aforementioned TRILcats, the Club Trillion URL written in instead of a dollar amount on the tip of your restaurant bill - the possibilities are endless. If it's cool enough, I'll post it.

I'm going to discourage Photoshop (to an extent...awesome Photoshops are an exception) and encourage actively stalking local and Hollywood celebrities to pose in your Club Trillion pictures. Until the site redesign is done, I'll post the pictures on the Club Trillion Myspace and Facebook pages.

Mark Titus finally gets to meet Ben Affleck and have his life ruined

There are two things in my life that annoy me. The first is that as a redhead, I can never, under any circumstances, date another redhead. Regardless of the person, we would look way too much like brother in sister in public, and create a very awkward situation for onlookers were we to kiss. There's no getting around it, and redheads are the only race or hair color for which this holds true. So Isla Fisher, Nicole Kidman, and Wilma Flintstone, sorry. Maybe in another lifetime.

The other is that Mark Titus actually believes he looks like Ben Affleck. The thought is grounded in history - when we were on Spring Break in Fort Myers our sophomore year, two girls on a trolley told Mark that he looked a little like Ben Affleck. The problem is - he doesn't at all, but insists to this day because of said incident that he does. These girls could best be described as "Cal Naughton, Jr. at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert (2:05 in the video)" drunk, so their opinion should matter about as much as Danny giving tips on how to grow a mustache. This was also Spring Break, where even these guys can find girls who think they're cool. Finally, he was sitting next to me on the trolley. It's pretty easy to look like Ben Affleck when you're sitting next to a redhead with a dirty goatee and a shade of skin that is a cross between sunburn and spray tan (thanks for encouraging that one, mom. It turned out SO well).

So I hope Ohio State draws the West Region this year in the NCAA tournament, specifically a game in Los Angeles. And I hope that before the game Mark hears a voice in the stands from a man saying something like "Hey Club Trillion, you suck! How about a picture?" That man? Ben Affleck. Picture gets taken, Mark finally realizes he looks nothing like Ben Affleck, my life gets a little better. This has to be the greatest plan since this.

Here's a professional wrestling video that's much cooler than anything I just wrote:

See you at 300,000.

Keller

Mo Money, No Problems

2009-10-29T11:57:00.003-04:00

As the last basketball season of my life approaches, I can feel my days at Ohio State slowly coming to an end. I arrived on this campus some three years ago with a lot of uncertainty, but have since realized that this school is quite possibly the greatest thing to ever happen to me. Even after I graduate and move on with my life, I’ll always remember the time-honored traditions of The Ohio State University. No matter where life takes me, I’ll never forget things like singing Carmen Ohio at the football games, jumping in Mirror Lake before the Michigan game, and being absolutely hounded by charities or student organizations while walking through the Oval.

For those who don’t know, the Oval is basically Ohio State’s version of a quad, only I refuse to call it a quad because nothing about it suggests that it has anything to do with the number 4. Still, it’s probably the closest thing that Ohio State has to offer to what Frank The Tank would have streaked through on his way to the gymnasium, which is really the absolute best way to describe it. Anyway, since the Oval is kind of the focal point of the campus, all sorts of organizations decide to set up displays to explain why I should care that one out of every 2,000 babies born in Pakistan will become addicted to Taco Bell’s Cheesy Gordita Crunch at some point in their lives. It’s not that I don’t care (Gordita Addiction is very serious to me), it’s just that I usually walk through the Oval right around the time Home Improvement reruns are being shown on TBS and when given the choice, I’d rather watch Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor botch a toilet installation than hear about how Pakistani kids can’t resist the concept of a soft taco shell wrapped around a hard taco shell with a melted cheese buffer.

Because I want to avoid encounters like this at all costs, I usually end up pulling out my cell phone and faking a conversation, which is also a strategy I use when I cross paths with The Villain on campus. My guess is that most of you do the same when approached by these groups of people. The truth is, for the most part, that it’s harder to get us to pay attention to someone luring us into a conversation about their charity than it is to get Twisted Sister to “take it”. This doesn’t make us bad people. Not at all. We simply like to do charitable things on our own time instead of being coerced into caring. In fact, the only time most of us don’t mind being told that we should care about a particular charity is when we are informed by the DJ that Charity is currently dancing on the main stage. Again, we aren’t bad people. It’s just that it feels weird being told that we need to care. Unless, of course, we’re being told that “caring” involves growing a mustache for an entire month.

It was brought to my attention by a few members of the Trillion Man March that the month of November marks a very important time for lovers of mustaches and haters of prostate cancer. That’s because November has been dubbed “Movember” by a couple of Australians, which may initially sound like a month long tribute to GUTS announcer Mo Quirk, but is actually an event that was started to raise prostate cancer awareness (apparently “mo” is an Australian slang term for mustache). I thought Movember was just another event started by guys in high school who wanted an excuse to grow out their peach fuzz without upsetting their moms, but as it turns out, Movember is actually the biggest charity event in the world that is targeted exclusively for men, having raised over $47 million to date. It’s like the men’s equivalent of Race For The Cure, except instead of using your legs all you have to use are your upper lip hair follicles.

Even though one out of every six American men will get prostate cancer at some point in time, it should be noted that I can’t think of anyone close to me who has ever had the disease. I’m not trying to get you to care because prostate cancer has personally destroyed my life by inflicting the people around me. It’s not like that at all. I’m just trying to get you to care because Movember provides a great opportunity to have an excuse to grow a mustache and also provides a great opportunity to raise awareness for a good cause. You can become a better person simply by growing out your mustache. Call me crazy but I think this might be the epitome of a win/win situation.

The main reason I brought up Movember is because I wanted to explain to everyone why you might see me sitting on the bench with a mustache next month. I’m actually not the only one on the basketball team taking part in the event, though, as William Buford has informed me that he’s planning on growing his mustache out as well. In fact, Will said that he has been so serious about prostate cancer that he’s been growing out his mustache since the day he was born. Sure it looks like he doesn’t have any hair on his upper lip, but Will swears that he’s never shaved in his entire life. The world needs more heroes like William Buford.

If you want to get involved with Movember (and really, why wouldn’t you?), you can do so by obviously either donating money or simply growing out your mustache. One of the members of the Trillion Man March, Bryan Kendall, was the first to e-mail me about the event and in doing so he asked for me to join the team he started. I told him I would but being the fool that I am, I accidentally started my own Movember team that I don’t know how to delete. With that being said, I think I figured out how to remedy this problem. All of you in the Trillion Man March that don’t feel like growing out your mustaches but would like to donate money, please do so after you join Bryan’s team by clicking here and registering. That way I’m not taking donations away from Bryan’s team, in case the top donating team gets free t-shirts or something (I couldn’t accept anyway because of the NCAA). The rest of you who are either broke like me or just don’t feel like donating, but really want to grow out your ‘stache and support the cause, can join the Club Trillion team by clicking here and then clicking the “Join My Team” tab underneath the CLUB TRIL logo. In joining my team, you can upload pictures of your ‘stache to compare to mine. At the end of every blog post during the month, I will publish a picture of my ‘stache at that point along with the best mustache of the Club Trillion team (read all about the mustache growing rules here). Think about what’s going on here for a second. By simply growing out your mustache you can help raise awareness for a very serious disease and maybe get a shout-out on my blog. You’d have to be a fool not to take part in this. If nothing else, grow out your mustache to see how it competes with some of the greatest mustaches society has ever seen.

I apologize if I’m coming across as preachy on this post, but as I said earlier, I’m not personally linked to this disease in any way and therefore don’t feel like I’m on the Oval shoving a pamphlet in your face. I’m not pretending to be a spokesman for prostate cancer awareness (which is probably a relief to the Prostate Cancer Foundation) in the slightest. I’m just a guy who likes growing out his mustache and likes to help out wherever I can. Hopefully a lot of you will join Bryan’s group and donate or my group and grow out your ‘stache and make this event a lot of fun for both me and the Trillion Man March. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no excuse whatsoever as to why every college guy reading this doesn’t grow out their mustache. It’s not like growing out a mustache is really going to ruin your daily schedule of waking up at noon, skipping class, playing Halo for five hours, and downing a six pack at night. Plus, if you start growing out your mustache on Sunday, by the time Thanksgiving rolls around your ‘stache will be so long it will completely ruin your mom’s attempt at getting a nice family picture. I know that’s why I’m doing it. Just kidding, mom!

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If you want to learn more about the history of Movember, you can do so by clicking here.

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse and T. Roche (streak of 15 wins)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: A. Forth (streak of 10)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Mike R. There’s your shout-out, Mike. And here's your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (1st Place)

2009-10-24T07:00:00.003-04:00

The following is what I perceived to be the best benchwarming story that was submitted for Fan Appreciation Week. I asked the Trillion Man March to not necessarily write stories about their time on the athletic bench, but just riding the bench of life in some aspect. Most of you did write about sitting the bench on your respective team, but some of you wrote about striking out with the ladies or not getting the results you want when you Google yourself. And then there was this story. This story was the obvious winner to me because it not only made me laugh harder than anything I’ve read in quite some time, but also because it gave me a glimpse of everything I want my relationship with my son to be like, should I ever decide to spawn. With that being said, here’s a look into Matt Young's life as a benchwarmer.

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First let me say that your blog is sweet. There’s nothing like killing time at work with Club Tril. I don’t fit the demographic of your usual fans. I’m 38, married and have three kids. To put it bluntly, I’m what you and most of your readers will become sooner or later. Take what I write below to heart and realize you’ll be in my shoes one day. Learn from my mistakes (and there are plenty) and take comfort that your future lot in life was blazed by a bunch of tool boxes like me.

If I had a blog, I’d call it “Parental Fail” because that’s pretty much what I’m good at these days. I’m not like the Balloon Boy’s father or Todd Marinovich’s father. Instead, I’m just a regular helmet trying to make it through the day. My kids have food on their plate, clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads. I consider this an A+ in parenting, especially when you look at kids in third-world countries. However, in this day an age in America, that’s simply not enough. And I guess that’s where my parental fail comes in.

Once you get married and have kids (or just knock up some hook-up and become a baby daddy or whatever single fatherhood is called these days), you’ll find that your friends and co-workers will judge your parenting skills all the time. Every. Single. Step. I quickly realized I don’t care what others think about my kids and how I parent (or as the case usually is, don’t parent) them.

Example 1
My wife was out with her friends and they came home to find our 4
year-old son in the middle of the living room watching TV while
dropping a deuce on the potty seat. My wife, who has endured episodes like this in the past, shrugged it off. She didn’t want to know the details. She’s seen events like this too many times before. Her friends looked on this scene in horror.

You see, my son was watching a TV show and didn’t want to miss it while in the bathroom. I told him you can’t pause a TV show (We don’t have a DVR. I don’t want my kids or my wife to have the ability to play back their shows at their leisure. Only I can do that through the brilliance of Hulu, which I haven’t told them about yet). I told him he’s got to hold it until the show is over or he can go now and miss a few minutes.

This is not acceptable to my son, so he finds a third option: he hauls out the potty we have for our youngest child and goes in front of the TV. Problem solved. What really impressed me, and why I commended him instead of scolding him, is that he went one step further: he grabbed the baby wipes and a small trash can when he brought out the potty. Now, not only could he crap in front of the TV, but he clean up without missing a beat.

The kid’s a genius in my mind. My wife’s friends were horrified. I could care less. He took a crap and didn’t miss his show. I allowed him to help himself. I now don’t have to worry about kids whining about missing something if they have to crap. That’s a win/win in my book.

Example 2
Lots of parents barrage their kids with flashcards and Baby Einstein videos and whatnot in an attempt to foster their child’s inner genius. I don’t tell my friends and neighbors who do this that they are rubes in a money-making scheme by these companies that peddle this crap to well-meaning parents. Let’s face it, if you’re not a genius and your wife isn’t a genius, chances are little Johnny’s not curing cancer when he grows up. And there’s not any amount of flashcards or educational videos that are going to change this.

I’m quite comfortable with not spending my cash on such endeavors (my beer isn’t free you know) and letting my kids be kids. Schools were invented to teach kids and I already pay for these facilities with my tax dollars, so why duplicate the efforts. Besides, my wife handles three young kids all day and doesn’t have the time or resources to do any of that stuff with them.

Of course, this situation isn’t acceptable with our friends and neighbors. They are mortified that my four year old can identify - maybe - five letters. He can’t find his name at preschool. His preschool teacher took me aside one day and told me that maybe we should sit down with him and work on his alphabet. I told her that I thought we were paying her to do just that. And if not, what exactly are we paying her for? That went over like a lead balloon.

I get stares from other parents at the playground because my kids are dressed properly. And by properly, I mean not dressed the way they think my kids should be dressed. Who cares if my daughter is wearing hand-me-downs from her brother? She’s under the age of two. Getting her dressed is a chore in and of itself. I’m not making it harder on myself if none of her clothes are around. Just get it done.

My middle son likes to dress himself, which means he puts on his shorts and tee shirts backwards. I don’t correct him because he doesn’t care. Why should I? Kids should get a free pass from societal norms like dressing with your clothes on the right way. They have the rest of their adult lives to look somewhat decent. Let them enjoy grubbing around in whatever they want while they are young.

When my oldest was potty training, he refused to pee in the toilet or the potty. I asked him if he would like to pee outside, like dogs do. He was elated. I took him outside and he stripped himself naked (I have no idea why he did this or continued to do it for over a year) and pissed on a tree. He loved it. I loved it - the diaper chapter for one kid was finally closing. Win/win.

For about a month, he’d go outside and pee on a tree or the driveway (if he had to go right away). One morning, he’s buck naked in the driveway, pissing while walking backwards (“I don’t want pee on my leg, daddy”) and the neighbor comes outside, shaking her head. She asked me why I would do such a thing to him. I told her that he’s not embarrassed and neither am I. If she didn’t like it, she could look the other way or potty train him herself.

Another time, I’m watching college basketball with my buddy. There’s a timeout and they pan the camera to the cheerleaders, one of whom is a bit chunky. “Check out that porker” I said. My son was playing blocks behind me at the time and frankly wasn’t paying attention to the game or us.

Or so I thought.

The next day, my wife comes home and utters the line that always means trouble: “Do you know what your son said?” Evidentially, while cruising the aisle of the grocery store, my son (who’s sitting in the cart) blurts out “Mom! Look at that porker!” as an overweight woman walks past them. Meh. What can you do? I was impressed. The kid was able to play blocks and pick up on the game at the same time. You can never be disappointed at such a grand display of multi-tasking.
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As my last gift to the Trillion Man March for Fan Appreciation Week, I decided to bypass the fan submissions for the awesome YouTube and instead share a video that I probably should not be sharing. As you are watching this, keep these things in mind:

1) I made this when I was 16-years-old and a sophomore in high school. Look at the five o’clock shadow I have going. I trust you now understand how far ahead of my peers I was/still kinda am on the man curve.

2) The picture of the guy at the end of the video is that of my speech teacher, Mr. Mark Arnold. I made this as part of a lip sync assignment for his class and thought I’d do a little sucking up to get a better grade. Or at least that’s what I’m telling people.

3) I was sick when this was filmed and had such a sore throat that I had lost my voice and therefore wouldn’t have been able to sing anyway.

4) I barely knew any words to this song up until right before we filmed it. It took listening to it twice to memorize the entire song. I’m not sure if that speaks higher of my ability to learn things quickly or the overall simplicity of the song.

5) This was the first and only take. My brother, Ryan, operated the camera and I took over from there.

Enjoy.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (2nd Place)

2009-10-23T07:45:00.004-04:00

The following is what I perceived to be the second best benchwarming story that was submitted for Fan Appreciation Week. If you don’t like it, don’t worry because there’s a better one coming tomorrow. If you do like it, be excited that there’s an even better one coming tomorrow. Either way, here’s a look into Tyler Joseph's life as a benchwarmer.

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Half Truths and Whole Lies: The Sugar Shane Cowherd Story

I was introduced to The Legend before a summer league game preceding my senior year in high school. After our previous game, our long-time coach/summer camp host/volleyball ref/Teen Leadership teacher had informed us of his plans to take a job at his Church. This was fantastic news for our now ex-coach, as he was not only following his spiritual calling, but getting a raise, as well. The news of his departure led even the least discerning members of our team to the logical conclusion that the vacancy would be filled by his long-time, fully qualified assistant, Coach Pendergrass. Pendergrass was a fantastic coach with extensive knowledge of the program who already had the respect of the players. As this was clearly the most obvious and intelligent hire to make, our Athletic Director decided to go in another direction. Because Edmond Memorial High School is very large (6A, the highest class in Oklahoma), only the top candidates not named Pendergrass could have been accepted for consideration. After what I can only imagine was an extensive, intensive, and exhaustive resume review period, the AD had made up his mind. A hire was made, and a star was born.

I arrived for the first summer league game of the new era with my friend and teammate Jared. Not two steps into the gym we discovered our “old” coach chatting it up with who I figured was probably the new guy. I say “probably” not because he looked like a basketball coach, a former college player, or even someone who had once played basketball in gym class, but simply because he was wearing a whistle. As it would have been near impossible to avoid for an entire season, we decided there was no time like the present for introductions. First impressions were simple: Name was Shane Cowherd, coached at a smaller Oklahoma high school before this, originally from Michigan, seems nice enough, pretty short, doubt he ever played, nothing to abandon ship over. In fact, he seemed like a pretty cool guy. He mostly sat and observed during the rest of our summer games, leaning on and learning from Coach P, who had graciously agreed to stay on as an assistant to the man who had usurped his job. It seemed like a decent dynamic: Cowherd pretended to be interested in our offense (which he would completely change later), and Pendergrass voiced his feelings of support (which he would completely change later).

When school and practice finally started, Jared and I were fairly optimistic about our roles for the upcoming season. We had been primed for significant minutes in our old coach’s system, which was heavily predicated on the fast break. We were good enough to play for most teams, certainly good enough for our high school’s team, which had lost its top 9 players from the previous season. What we came to learn only a few days into practice, however, was that the phrase “good enough” was not in Shane Cowherd’s vocabulary.

If Coach Cowherd’s mind ran on Microsoft word, he had been clicking “Edit -> Replace” his entire life to rid himself of the ordinary. Everything about this man was fantastic, incredible, and spellbinding. “Patently Untrue” might also be a synonym suggested by Word, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Almost every day he had the team circle up so he could preach a little bit from The Gospel of Shane. As the only Commandment in this Gospel (as far as I could tell) was to let everyone know how great you are at every opportunity, I can only assume his treasure in Heaven could finance the Death Star. He started off by stunning Jared and I with the fact that he actually was a former player. And not just some Joe Jumpstop - he was a regular Jimmy Chitwood. His high school team, he told us, managed to amass a record of 110+ wins and only 5 losses during his four years in the program. While this may seem unlikely at best for a number of reasons (not least of all the sheer number of games played), it was made even more impressive by the fact that it was supposedly done at the highest level in Michigan High School basketball. He routinely recorded 20+ assists in a single game, and once exploded for 62 points – a career high, he said. These legendary years were also marked with four trips to the Finals in the Nike Tournament of Champions, including three victories, one loss, and one broken wrist that had to be frozen to allow him to continue to play. The one loss, he lamented, resulted in the team being booed off the floor by their own fans. A tough way to go out, I’m sure, but it would have been even harder not to enjoy the free clothes, free trip, free gear, and all of the girls that threw themselves at the players (his words).

At this point it might have only been Jared and I that were asking ourselves a few questions based on what he had told us. He was a 5’8” white guard with a jump shot not totally dissimilar from Shawn Marion that led his team to an outrageous high school record and national success. He was capable of dunking effortlessly with both hands and four of his high school teammates signed NCAA Division I basketball scholarships. Pretty outrageous, right? That’s what we thought, too. But pretty much everyone seemed to be going along with it, so we just kept the jokes to ourselves.

After the team was in sufficient awe of his high school achievements, it was time for the next chapter. It was only logical to assume that during his otherworldly run of high school success, college scouts would be forced to take notice. Due to the enormous demand for 5’8” white guards with limited range, he was contacted by Michigan State University, where, he told us, he was signed to a full scholarship. As he was still recovering from his wrist-freezing injury that I always imagined to be fairly similar to a scene from Terminator II, he was unable to play during his freshman season, and eventually forced to retire from the game. What could have been, nobody asked? “Who knows,” he said, “I might even be in the league.” Everyone on the team assumed he meant the NBA, but judging by his rather lofty opinion of himself, he very well could have been referring to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. He also told us that he was a cousin of former Steeler’s coach Bill Cowher, but his family decided to drop the ‘d’. He was not kidding. I imagine that all of this was part of his interview, if not resume, which also led to my confirmation that our athletic director (I say “confirmation” and not “discovery” because his unflinching support of the football coach he hired after his 1-10 season induced my suspicion) was a complete dumbass.

As the days and weeks went by, Jared and I did not become increasingly skeptical. This was simply because the term skepticism hardly applies when you are absolutely certain that someone is lying. As respect was simply no longer an issue, we fell further and further out of favor, and further and further down the depth chart. It was nothing really sinister, just a casual indifference. During the season, however, we came to discover that both Coach P and our graduate assistant coach shared our feelings regarding our new leader. They had even taken it a step further (read: one step) and done some research. As it turned out, our legendary coach had played high school basketball. It was even in Michigan! But that’s about where the similarities between his stories and the truth end. Coach Cowherd, they discovered, graduated from Pilgrim Bible Academy with a class of five people, and two of the five were girls. Ever the skeptic, I was still a little uncertain that a school this size had produced five NCAA Division I basketball players within a span of four years, or that they were even eligible for Nike’s Tournament of Champions. After scouring the web for a good five minutes, Jared discovered that our assistant coaches had asked around on the Michigan State basketball website under a false name, and not one of the registered historians knew a thing about a player, manager, or mascot named Shane Cowherd during those years. Needless to say, Jared and I registered for the forum and provided an insightful response under the name “ShaneCowherdRules”.

It was at about this point that Jared and I realized that our senior season was pretty much a wash. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn’t be playing significant minutes, our team was terrible, and our coach was a compulsive liar. Sounds horrible, right? Wrong. What followed was undoubtedly the most hilarious basketball season of my life. The rest of the year included several totally outrageous events, including an incident where we staked a bet with our team’s star player that said he wouldn’t score a single point against our school’s biggest rivals in a tournament. Not only did he win that bet, but he made no effort to disguise his intentions and we lost miserably because of it. Perhaps best of all, he got himself pulled and screamed at by the legend for firing an open shot from the elbow with two hands that hit the top corner of the backboard. The season culminated with a fake Facebook account created by Jared and I on Shane’s behalf that became quite popular throughout the school, and later with the next year’s team. So popular, in fact, that it was even passed along to us that he planned on filing a defamation of character suit if the Facebook page wasn’t shut down. That wasn’t the least bit troublesome, though, because while everything on the page was completely untrue, it could also be directly attributed to him.

I’d be lying if I said I knew what round of regionals our season ended in. I’d also be lying if I said I knew what our final record was. But I’d also be breaking the one theme of this entire story if I didn’t, so we went 12-14 and lost in the second round. An incredible story and an incredible team. Keep your eyes peeled for the Disney Movie starring Jim Rome, who is his spitting image (feel free to re-read the story with that in mind). Although the facebook page is still going, the defamation suit still pending, and the legend still growing, this marked the end of our bench warming days. I’m moving on and looking ahead to bigger and better things. I’ve already begun falsifying my resume.

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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Steve F. There’s your shout-out, Steve. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (3rd Place)

2009-10-22T08:00:00.003-04:00

The following is what I perceived to be the third best benchwarming story that was submitted for Fan Appreciation Week. If you don’t like it, don’t worry because there’s a better one coming tomorrow. If you do like it, be excited that there’s an even better one coming tomorrow. Either way, here’s a look into Kevin Hopkins' life as a benchwarmer.
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My high school athletics career can be viewed in one of two ways:

The College Portfolio Version: Three-sport athlete, Captain of 2001-2002 Football & Basketball teams, exemplary leader and winner of "Class Clown" and "Best Eyes" Senior Superlatives(which may or may not remain on current Employment Resume).
The Truth: At a 375 student school predominantly known for soccer, I was one of the 12 kids per class that preferred to toss the pigskin around and was one of the 3 seniors left on the basketball team after four seasons. Led the Varsity Football team at quarterback for three seasons with an overall record of 3-27(winless as a junior) as starter, racking up a Favre-esque number of records in the state of New Jersey for Most Sacks Taken, Interceptions, Attempted Tackles After Interceptions(ATAI), Pick-Sixes(as Simmons would call them, TAINTS), and Ambulance Appearances On The Field Madden '92 Style(unfortunately, true story). Since we actually had a good basketball team and I was Captain because I was a senior, I took it upon myself to lead both on the court and in the locker room with the following duties:

Clap Sequences during practice - My go-to would be the beginning to "The Car Wash", naturally.
Pregame Prayer - Now, for most games, this was a basic Hail Mary/Our Father combo, but on two separate occasions ('02 County Semi's and States), I pulled The Ultimate: "...and David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it...and it struck the Phillistine in the head...and he fell to the ground....Amen." Needless to say, Goliath kicked our ass both times. Those guys were pretty effin' good.
Pregame Warm-Up Music - Undoubtedly the most important of my duties, I realized the magnitude of the job. Most games, we would come out to standard classics like "Thunderstruck" (drinking game included!) and "Baba O'Riley" (CSI:NY still photo included!), but on games that I took lightly, I let my Napster Shuffle Playlist decide, which resulted in three songs on three separate occasions which I distinctly recall: "Stand By Me" by Ben E. King that I decided we all had to hum the bassline to, "Superstar" by the Carpenters ("I can live with it if you can"), and the straw that broke the camel's back (in this case, Coach Sponz's back), "Circle of Life" from the Lion King. I was suspended 5 games from Warm-Up Music Duty for that one and we had to come out to the Michael Buffer "Let's Get Ready to Rumbleeeeeeeee" Intro to Jock Jams. Ugh.
After the National Anthem was sung, I was in charge of handshake/chestbump duties during the announcement of starting line-ups and then became the Drew Brees/Under Armour Guy while we all got in the big group huddle.
Last but not least, I was the unquestioned King of Bench Jokes. My main move would be the water-bottle-squirt-on-the-crotch-of-the-guy-next-to-me-right-before-he-subbed-in-the-game move, but I also borrowed a buck from the trainer at the end of the bench one time and successfully purchased a hot dog and ate it on the bench without Coach Sponz noticing in the middle of the game. Also a true story.

As you may or may not have noticed by now, most of the above duties had nothing to do with actually contributing ON the court...but that wasn't always the case, my friends. Let's push the rewind button to the Spring of '99, shall we?

THE PLAY.

Having shot up about 7 inches between my freshman and sophomore years and making no special attempts at anything resembling a "gym routine", I was an awkward 6'3, 150 pounds, with no recognizable definition between the portion of arm between my shoulder-to-elbow region than from my elbow-to-wrist region. Basically, I was a Simpsons character, most closely resembling Jimbo Jones, without the awesome hair and skull-cap. That being said, I was decent at basketball, priding myself on the corner 3 and developing an up-and-under move from the block that was nearly unstoppable. Think Bruce Bowen Meets Kevin McHale. Now imagine he's white. Oh, McHale is White? Whatever. McConaughey NAILED that.

In a shocking move, I was called up to sit on the Varsity team my sophomore year for the final half of the season and grew accustomed to sitting next to the trainer and filling up water bottles after timeouts. At this point, I had developed a a small cult following amongst friends in the stands that would start "Put Hopkins In!" chants at the very hint of a blowout in either direction. With two games left in the regular season, I had the crew prepare themselves for the Butler game, the only one we might be able to win by 60...and prepared they were, with "We Want Hopkins" t-shirts and posterboards. Up by 30 by the start of the 4th quarter, I actually was a little nervous. The chants grew louder and started to seem like it might actually happen. Sponz looked a couple times, but turned away at immediate eye-contact. With 4 minutes left, everyone on the team had played except for me and we were up by 38. My friends were relentless and it was nearing "Rudy" levels in the stands, I think the kids on the Butler Bulldogs bench even started to chime in. I finally got the nod with about 3:30 left. It was my time, and all my boys on the bench and the seven 16 year-olds in the stands erupted while everyone else looked on in confusion.

Upon checking in, I did the nervous "I'm-just-gonna-pass-it-and-not-make-any-mistakes" maneuver on the first 2 touches and then it happened...the ball went out of bounds under our basket. I looked at my fellow teammates on the court and knew immediately that I was far superior at inbounding over all of them, if only for my unparalleled ability to yell 'break!' and slap the ball at the same time. I looked at Sponz. He nodded. "Inside!" I yelled to everyone. And then the defining moment of my athletic life occurred.

I passed the ball in to the left corner who then swung it up to the wing. The player I passed it to came down on the block and set a screen which I used to pop out to the Bowen Corner where I got the pass behind the three-point line with 5 steps of space in front of me. It was slow motion, I tell you. I caught it and set myself. I could feel the movement of my teammates behind me on the bench starting to stand and what looked like cameras starting to flash in the stands. The ball was in the air for what felt like an eternity as I held my follow through and started doing the fall/hop towards center court until I heard the splash.

I DRAINED IT. It didn't even think about not going in. And I knew it from the release. Like any classy athlete, I did what my parents always taught me to do and "acted like I've been there before," right???

Wrong. I went NUTS. And so did the gym.

Oh, what's that? You want a diagram??

My reaction could be described as somewhere between Shaq's alley-oop from Kobe to beat the Blazers in Game 7 in 2000 and Maximus's(Maximi?) "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?" reaction after slaying the tigers and chariots.

Timeout was called immediately by Coach Sponz, for what I thought was out of respect for the moment, similar to how you'd call timeout to take the seniors out of a game or something. I was now at the other end of the court high-fiving and pointing to the stands. As I walked back to our bench, I was greeted at half-court with a harsh pinch around the shoulder by Sponz and a brisk walk back to the huddle where he said the following:

Sponz: Kevin, we're up by 41 effing points. Show some sportsmanship and class. And go sit back down.

I didn't play again that season, but took pride in the fact that for nearly 9 full months, I held the NJ State Record for Shooting % in a single season, minimum of one shot taken. And they can never take that from me, even if I finished shooting at a 27% career clip.

I never thought I'd want to be compared to an autistic team-assistant, but the parallels were all too similar to avoid it. I was J-MAC before J-MAC was J-MAC.

Now where's my effing ESPY??
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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Roy H. This video was funny to me because it shows that Michael Jordan was both the best player in the world and that guy at the local rec who takes the games just a little bit too seriously. Anyway, there’s your shout-out, Roy. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (4th Place)

2009-10-21T07:36:00.001-04:00

The following are what I perceived to be the fourth best benchwarming stories that were submitted for Fan Appreciation Week. I decided to make fourth place a tie, because these girls are apparently sisters and I didn’t want to start a family feud by picking one over the other, even though I like one better (I’ll let the sisters decide which one that is). If you don’t like their stories, don’t worry because there’s a better one coming tomorrow. If you do like them, be excited that there’s an even better one coming tomorrow. Either way, here’s a look into Carla and Johanna Sawatski's lives as benchwarmers.

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Jack of All Trades, Master of None

By: Carla Sawatski

Brother: Professional athlete

Father: Professional athlete

Grandfather: Professional athlete

Grandmother: Professional singer

With my genealogy, I would expect that I would be either an outstanding athlete or an immaculate singer. I am neither. Far from it, actually. And I've spent the past 24 years searching for my place to shine, my area of expertise, my 15 minutes of fame. Spoiler alert: I'm still searching.

Here's a play-by-play of my search for stardom, and I use that term lightly.

Basketball: I'd call basketball my "good sport". I wasn't bad, wasn't bad at all. In fact, ahem... I was named Most Valuable Player for my Junior High, District Championship winning team. Please, hold your applause. However, I'm saddened to report that that was the peak of my athletic prowess. The very next year, when moved to the Sr. High team, 3 teammates and I formed a revolutionary group named "The Four Corners". What we did was.... well, we sat on the end of the bench. Our responsibilities included: hydrating our upperclassmen, wiping sweat off the floor, and keeping our mouths shut. We were lucky to get 2 of 3 accomplished. What we didn't do, was sweat... thus making our motto "No Sweat... because we don't".

Softball: I'm a Sawatski. I did this because it was expected of me. I mean, Jay's good at baseball, Carla must be good at softball, right? To me, it was just something to do after school. And let's be honest, I really wanted one of those windbreaker jackets. Which now, in hindsight, sounds a little butch. I learned so much during my softball years. I learned what "moxy" means. Ok, no, I really didn't... but I had to act like I did every time I sauntered over to pick up a foul ball and my coach would inevitably ask, "Carla, is that moxy?". I'd always reply with "probably not". I later learned that it wasn't. I learned what it felt like to have a fan club. Mine consisted of approximately 6 people including my parents, but they brought signs, which made it legit. And humiliating. I learned what it felt like to lose... a lot. Over and over and over again.

Soccer: I came home from school one day and enthusiastically told my dad "I'm going to play soccer this year!". He looked at me blankly, and then began laughing hysterically. I wasn't kidding. And that was the year that I forced my dad to sit through the excruciatingly boring game of soccer. I'm not sure he ever forgave me. I'm not sure I ever forgave myself.

Pep club: This is something I never wanted to admit, especially in a public forum, but yes, I was in the junior high pep club. It was as awkward as it sounds. I proudly wore the gold mock-turtleneck, the pleated skirt, and of course, the Asics... the mark of any official cheerleader in the 90's. My career ended with a devastating blow to my ego. Something about being 2 heads taller and slightly heavier than most 7th graders didn't scream "cheerleader". At least not loudly.

Track: actual conversation between me and my basketball coach --

coach: "hey, do you want to run at the state track meet?"

me: "no, I do not"

coach: "you get to miss a day of school"

me: "what time does the bus leave?"

That day was the beginning, and the end, of my track career.

Choir: Most normal people don't join choir if they can't sing. I'm not normal. I was a part of the women's ensemble for two years and managed to never sing a word. If I wasn't forging my mom's signature to excuse myself from class, you could probably find me mouthing the words to the song amongst the rest of the altos. I still don't know what harmony means.

In my early years, I also experimented with piano, swimming, golf, gymnastics, tennis, and karate. All were short-lived.

It's also no secret that I have no hidden talents. I'm not double jointed, I can't draw with my toes (or fingers for that matter), I can't juggle chainsaws, I can't even roll my tongue... which I blame my parents for.

I think, I THINK, I have justified my qualifications to be a Jack of all trades, one that excels at nothing. And then I got to thinking, "what AM I good at?". And then it occurred to me... math. I'm good at math. Really, God? Math? You had those genes to work with, and you gave me MATH? Good one.

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Googling Yourself Never Ends Well...

By: Johanna Sawatski

That is, unless you are my brother. Or my father. Or my grandfather. Or anyone who's done anything of merit in their entire life.

I'm a questioner. I ask a lot of questions, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't always have all the answers. As a result, Google and I have grown close over the years and have shared many a search together in my never-ending quest for knowledge. In fact, I turn to Google on a multiple-times-a-day basis. And Google has always proven to be a faithful companion... that is until I decided to type my name in the search bar. (Note: I don't Google myself often. I just wanted to see what would come up if a future employer was to do so.) It was then that I realized that unless my future employer is concerned that I once came in 50th place in the Lake Hamilton Cross Country Invitational in the 8th grade, Google doesn't really have much to offer as far as I'm concerned. Crisis averted.

But then it hit me. I think it was when I noticed the little line at the top of the page that read, "Did you mean 'Jay Sawatski'?" Ouch. Touché, Google... all these years of me asking you questions, and you fire back with one question that is capable of completely blowing my self-esteem. So here's your answer: No, Google, I didn't mean Jay Sawatski. I typed "Johanna"... and I meant every letter. Leave the questioning to me next time, capiche?

Now that that is behind us, I'll save you some time. I'm sure you all are feeling the need to Google my name right about now, so here's a list of everything my future employer and you could ever want to know about Johanna Sawatski (according to Google):

1. I have a Facebook account. Which proves that I am normal. It's the ones without Facebook that you need to worry about.

2. I made the Arkansas Razorback Diamond Dolls in the Fall of 2006. Pig Sooie.

3. My high school e-bulletin announces that Johanna Sawatski has won the Most Improved Player award for golf... To which I should go ahead and let everyone know that I really didn't improve THAT much... plus, we all know what that award means. And I'm incredibly offended by it.

4. I scored 9 points against Batesville in what was probably a meaningless game of basketball. And by probably, I mean definitely. But there's an article about it, and my name was mentioned. Twice.

5. Google proves that I am, in fact, enrolled as a student at the University of Arkansas, College of Arts and Sciences. Along with 5,000 other people. One might assume that I would have a talent for the Arts. Wrong. Or for the Sciences. Wrong again. I'm actually a Communication/Spanish major. Which, I like to believe translates to "I have no idea what I want to do with my life."

6. I came in 50th place in a Junior High Cross Country meet with a time of 11:50.07. This is concrete evidence that even though I sometimes suffer defeat, and also that I'm not very fast, I always finish the race.. in my own time. And I smoked those who finished in 51st, 52nd, and 53rd place, thus making me a winner. Of some sort.

7. My teacher once made me submit a poem into an online poetry contest. And it is apparently still online for the world to enjoy. And now, I post a stanza, for you to enjoy... My rantings as a 7th grader:

Every day gets

Even more long

All of my answers

Get even more wrong

Talk about a cliffhanger... I don't have a copyright for this masterpiece (yet), so I fear posting it in it's entirety.

After reading all 7 Hits for "Johanna Sawatski," I tip my hat to you, Google. You captured my character perfectly. I wouldn't change a thing. And your reminder to me that I am not, in fact, "Jay Sawatski" only serves to keep me humble... Because it's no secret that the list of my accomplishments on Google could easily go to my head. So thank you, Google, for reminding me that no matter how many points I score, no matter how many poems I write, and no matter how many Cross Country races I lose, I will always live in the shadow of my older brother. And my father. And my grandfather.

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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Austin L. There’s your shout-out, Austin. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

A Short Story

2008-12-14T12:11:00.010-05:00

We beat Butler yesterday in a squeaker that featured my former high school teammate Gordon Hayward putting points on our team's collective face. Brownsburg High School was easily the best represented high school in the game, as Gordon and I combined for 25 points, 7 rebounds, and 2 assists. Because I didn't even get in the game, Gordon shouldered most of the productivity, but I looked really good with the towel around my neck on the bench. Seriously. I looked REALLY good. Despite Gordon's best effort, in the end my good looks obviously weighed much more heavily in the outcome of the game than his 25 points, because my team came out victorious.

Unfortunately the Butler game prevented me from partaking in one of my favorite pastimes of gawking at the cheerleaders. I was informed by my mom that one of the Butler cheerleaders was my second or third cousin thrice removed or something like that. So essentially, we aren't related at all. Nonetheless, I was fearful that I would find one of the Butler cheerleaders attractive, only to discover that she was the one that is related to me. That would have undoubtedly led to a realization similar to this. It was a chance that simply wasn't worth taking and I was forced to turn to an alternative form of entertainment during the game--the game itself.

I could give you my analysis of the game or I could not bore you to death with a couple of paragraphs that would include phrases such as "three on the ball", "pop to catch", and "roll to bury." This blog is about all things irrelevant within college basketball, so for me to inflict pain via the boredom that comes with X's and O's would go against everything I have established here. That's why I'm going to discuss the greatest recruiting tool Butler has, and ultimately why over 95% of their players chose to play there [citation needed]. I'm talking, of course, about their short shorts.

As most of you recall, I am currently forced to wear shorts that are so close to being pants, I have started calling them shants. And as those who are close to me know, my main goal in life is to bring short shorts back into the fashion forefront. So you can clearly see how a conflict has manifested. Pictured below is the contrast of an ideal world and the harsh reality I currently live in.

Either the guy on the right isn't John Havlicek or Havlicek has an illegally powerful tanning bed.

Butler is a team that understands a fundamental truth about every Caucasian basketball player--we love short shorts. You could be saying to yourself, "But Mark, I'm white and I like baggier shorts" to which I respond with "You are not only a liar, but a disgrace to Kurt Rambis." The length of shorts is serious business to me, which is why I had to untangle my jaw from my shorts when I saw how perfect Butler's were (Note: I would have picked my jaw up off the floor, but on its way down my jaw got entangled in my absurdly baggy shorts). They weren't quite as crotch-suffocating as the shorts from the '60s, but these bad boys gave me my first look at a basketball player's knees since I was in high school.

An interesting concept is that the NBA makes its players have shorts that come down no longer than one inch above the knees. With this rule, a situation has been created where kids grow up wearing baggy shorts, then make it to the big time and are forced to make a transition that simply is too much to ask for them. Just look at Kwame Brown. Here's a guy who was a lock to be the next great thing until he was forced to wear short shorts and couldn't adapt to the change. That's why I'm calling on the NCAA and NFHS to implement a similar rule making their basketball players wear the same length shorts as the NBA. We need to put these kids in a situation where they wear the NBA-length shorts their entire lives and are, in turn, less inclined to falter when they make it to the league. John Stockton estimates that he saved himself two years on the NBA learning curve because when he came to the league he was already accustomed to the short shorts [citation needed]. Legislation needs to be passed allowing all athletes the same opportunity John Stockton was given. I swear I should be put in charge more often.

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Evan Turner's Facebook Status:
Evan is pumped that he just bought the smart guy tv series.

The joke really tells itself.

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Bone-Crushing Screens: 0 to date (0 last game)

#34 Jerseys: 20 to date (5 last game)

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus
Club Trillion Founder

Do You Own A College?

2008-12-21T10:44:00.008-05:00

Keller did a fine job of writing yesterday, but I know that you missed me and I couldn't let you go on wondering what I'm up to any longer. (Keller also did a fine job buying me a Club Trillion t-shirt for Christmas from Dale. I'm thinking I might wear it as a shooting shirt for the rest of the games.) Anyway, here's what's happened in my life the last couple days.

We played the Iona Gaels yesterday and won in a fashion that had the entire crowd on pins and needles wondering whether Club Trillion was going to make it happen. For those who missed it, I didn't make it happen, unless "it" is referring to winning every scoreboard game the OSU promotions people put on during the timeouts. I used the momentum I had from dominating the basketball shuffle game, which was just a version of that "follow the hat with the ball under it" game, and took it into the "Moments In History" trivia. Yesterday's "Moments In History" proved to be the toughest one all season, as the answer was 1925, or 62 years before I was born. I still managed to get the right answer. Naturally, I was a little excited.

Playing Iona provided me with an opportunity to stuff a completely stupid joke down the entire team's collective throat. When we played Tennessee last year, I had at least three people want to kill me by the end of the trip for my refusal to quit saying, "Did you guys hear Bruce Pearl and his staff don't get paid? Apparently they are all Volunteers!" Of course, I topped off the joke each time I told it with an exaggerated laugh, because nothing is more annoying than hearing someone laugh at their own jokes. In a similar manner as the Tennessee game, I asked a majority of the team, "Do you own a college?" As they were trying to figure it out where I was going with it, I would drop the hammer and say "Cause Iona College!" and then laugh hysterically, for no other purpose than to be annoying. Sometimes I wonder what it's like to have to put up with me on a daily basis. Good thing I'll never have to find out.

As all the Ohio State fans know, and I'm sure fans of all the other Big Ten schools will love to hear, our captain David Lighty broke his foot playing kickball. I may have just made that up, but I'm one for the dramatic and for a guy to break his foot by "just kind of coming down on it funny" is unacceptable. That's why if anyone asks me how he did it, I'm saying he took our casual game of kickball a little too seriously and slid into second base too hard, rolling his ankle and breaking a bone in his foot in the process. (There wasn't even anyone covering the bag, Dave. I appreciate the hustle, but we don't even keep score. Use better judgment next time.) We talked about how we wanted to win the game for Dave and Dave totally missed the opportunity to drop the "Coach, I'm hurt. I ain't dead" line that Gary did in the hospital scene of "Remember The Titans." I'm not sure if a broken foot or missing out on a perfect opportunity to make a completely applicable "Remember The Titans" reference would hurt more. My gut is telling me the latter.

While I'm on the topic of jabbing at my teammates, I thought I would address the Evan Turner situation that I wrote about in my last post. In case you're too lazy to click the link, I discussed how Evan's girlfriend told him about the previous prank I was pulling on him. I then went on to discuss how no women can keep secrets and how their refusal to remain hush is one of life's greatest mysteries (another of life's mysteries is why seemingly every professional wrestler looks like the late '80s version of Bono). Anyway, I asked for suggestions of an ongoing prank I could pull and I ended up getting about ten e-mails addressing this. My favorite was from John in Cleveland who is an "occasional affliction t-shirt wearer." His words, not mine. John wrote:

"I think you should text and write little notes to evan turner using strictly john mayer and maroon 5 lyrics...maybe even throw in some no doubt if youre feeling good...these are all of course per his facebook musicial interests...ideally you want to write mostly letters...hopefully one of your girl friends can help write them for you...you pick out the lyrics of course...just a suggestion"

Love the idea, but I'm going to make a little twist to it. Instead of me writing him stuff, I'm calling on The Trillion Man March to write for me. I'm going to give you the "John Mayer Lyric For Evan" at the end of each post, and I want everyone reading this to send Evan a Facebook message with nothing but the lyric. Imagine getting 1,000 Facebook messages from people that say the exact same thing. I think it's a fitting way to get him back for his girlfriend ruining my last project. Anyway, I'll maintain this prank until he knows what's going on or (and this is my most desirable scenario) he deletes his Facebook. This has the potential to be one of the coolest things I ever orchestrate, but I need your help. Don't miss out on all the fun.

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I'm reinstating the Bone-Crushing Screen counter, due to popular demand.

Bone-Crushing Screens: 0 to date (0 last game)
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As promised, here's the John Mayer Lyric For Evan Turner:

Tell me what I did. I can't find where the moment went wrong at all.

If you must know, it's from the song "Come Back To Bed." Here is Evan's Facebook. Remember to send the lyric and the lyric alone. Make it happen.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus
Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (5th Place)

2009-10-20T10:33:00.002-04:00

I realized yesterday that I failed to convey how I went about judging these stories. Some of you disagree with my rankings after only two stories, so I think I should explain how I ranked them so you have a little better of an idea. The first criteria I used was simply how well-written the story was. I’m not my 5th grade English teacher who gave kids a Stone Cold Stunner for every misuse of a comma, but I was looking for some sort of natural flow to the story. Secondly, I looked at the content of the story itself. Rather than publish seven stories about sitting the bench in high school basketball, I rewarded the people who had unique stories to share. Finally, and most importantly, I judged the stories based on how hard and how frequently I laughed while reading them.

In reality, the rankings certainly are arbitrary but are also entirely irrelevant. The winner of the contest, and thus the winner of a free t-shirt, was completely obvious to me which means those who were ranked 2-7 really don’t matter all that much since they are all getting the same consolation prize of being published. Whatever the case, the following is what I perceived to be the fifth best benchwarming story that was submitted for Fan Appreciation Week. If you don’t like it, don’t worry because there’s a better one coming tomorrow. If you do like it, be excited that there’s an even better one coming tomorrow. Either way, here’s a look into Seth Tommeraasen's life as a benchwarmer.

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I've always loved playing sports, just never been any good at them. This fact is compounded once the sports are taken out of my, or friends', front yards or driveways and placed in an organized setting. It's a bit of a reality check to find that attempting sky hooks from anywhere on the court is frowned upon when on a school team. I mean, if Kareem could do it, why can't I?

I could go on about how humiliated I was at every single practice over the span of four years, but that'd just be depressing. Let's just surmise it with the fact that over four seasons, I amassed a career total of four points (one basket in sixth grade and one in seventh). I even had a breakaway layup once that I missed horrendously. Not a boost to a kid's self-esteem.

At one particular practice in junior high, our coach went so far as to yell at me and my friends (who were better than I at basketball, but that's not saying much), saying "I don't even WANT you guys on my team!" Seriously, if you're yelling that at 12 year olds on a team you coach, there's a good chance you might be taking junior high basketball a bit too seriously. For all I know she was actually Pete Rose and had money on the game.

My inefficiency on the hardwood resulted in my spending most games on the hard wood of the bench. Even at that early level, our coaches still wouldn't play several players if it was a close game. So that's where a 12 year old Seth and a 21 year old Mark share some similarity.

Since we never got to play and even when we did we knew we'd never be given an opportunity to score, my friend Curtis and I decided that fouls were more fun than points anyhow, so any game we both got into, we would try to out-foul each other before our coach inevitably took us out and yelled at us. Hey, we had fun though. I even got to hit some other kids in the face. I think I kicked someone in the stomach once trying to mimic a Dennis Rodman-style rebound. There wasn't a foul, though, as he was on my team.

So as far as luck with the ladies goes, I didn't have the athletic skills to lure them in. Factor in that I was the skinny tall awkward kid with huge wire-framed glasses and an enormous head (it's about a size 7 7/8 or an 8) and a former rocker of the mullet, I really had nothing going for me with the 8th grade honeys in our school.

Sidenote on mullets. Growing up in Baltic, SD (you're not the only one who has witnessed a party where the country music is being provided by a pickup with massive CB antennas. Note I said witness, I was never invited to the hicks' parties), we didn't know what a mullet was. We knew them as safety cuts. I have no idea where this expression came from nor how it relates to the mullet, but to me, they're safety cuts. Mine was a tri-fecta of safety. Not only did my luscious locks naturally curl upon my shoulders, but I topped this off with gel-spiked hair on top AND the ol' cat scratches/bolts/stripes/whatever you want to call them shaved into the side of my massive cranium. If you'd like, I can scan a family pic to send your way.

But anyways, I digress. We were talking about my poor basketball skills (despite my love for the game) and my lesser luck with the ladies. It should be noted also that my senior class was only 30 total students (including myself), many of whom I had gone to kindergarten with. So all the ladies at the school I had known for pushing 10 years by the time we hit high school, therefore it wasn't like they were going to suddenly forget what a horrendous dork I had been my whole life even after I finally got contacts in place of glasses, a decent haircut, and maybe some handsome looks. Sitting at home playing Dragon Warrior on the NES probably didn't help either. But someone had to save the Princess Gwaelin and defeat the Dragonlord after all.

So I did what any logical guy would do. I gave up on athletics and joined the Future Homemakers of America (FHA), which is now known as Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America, or something to that effect. I went so far as to become our chapter's president my junior year. To this day I remain the only male president of the organization at my school (this is purely assumption that no guy has ran for the office since I graduated). The results of this were twofold: 1) all the hicks at my school that always assumed I was gay seemed to think this verified it (please note that all the accusing hicks were members of the Future Farmers of America, which is/was comprised of mostly males and actually have an event where they judge horses' butts); and 2) I became a hit with tons of ladies that didn't attend my school. Seriously, joining FHA was amazing for my self-esteem in regards to my sexual appeal to members of the opposite sex. At a typical statewide meeting, there would be about 2000 female students to about 100 males students. A 20:1 ratio of ladies to guys is a world that I can live with.

So there you have it, I have always sucked at athletics despite my love of them, so instead I became a Future Homemaker of America and became a hit with all the out of town ladies. Though most of the girls from my high school did the typical small town thing and put on weight, cranked out the babies and never left town, so I'm not too distraught that we never hooked up. Except for Michelle. We would have been a great couple.

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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by James M. There’s your shout-out, James. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (6th Place)

2009-10-19T08:00:00.001-04:00

The following is what I perceived to be the sixth best benchwarming story that was submitted for Fan Appreciation Week. If you don’t like it, don’t worry because there’s a better one coming tomorrow. If you do like it, be excited that there’s an even better one coming tomorrow. Either way, here’s a look into Chris Gaitten's life as a benchwarmer.

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Quitters Never Prosper: But they have plenty of time for easier activities

When I was 15, I faced a major dilemma. Did I want to be a professional athlete or a rock star? I know what you’re thinking--“Why not both?” or more likely, “Good lord, you were delusional.” Yes, yes I was, but pump the brakes and let me finish explaining. You see, becoming a sport star was my first desire growing up. Specifically, I wanted to be Jim Kelly. It should have been pretty obvious that being Jim Kelly was kind of a crappy gig, especially around the end of January each year, but for whatever reason that part didn’t faze me too much.

I spent my entire childhood playing sports. I played football, basketball and soccer and ran track. I even played a season of summer league basketball to fill up the year. I would have played summer league football, but it didn’t exist, and there was no way I was playing baseball. The reason for this is simple. Imagine that the best center fielder in the game is standing in the outfield. Standing next to him is a golden retriever. The batter is one of the three guys in the league who isn’t currently cheating and therefore may not hit a homerun at every at bat. He smacks one into the gap between center and left field. Who gets the ball, the multimillionaire superstar athlete or Sunshine, who was barking at the wind before the pitch? You’re not sure are you? Summer league basketball it is.

I was always a natural athlete and was usually one of the best players on any of my teams. I was tall and fast and always had great instincts for where to be on the court / field / pitch / track. Unfortunately, I was white (still am), but I don’t recall having much say in that, and I think I made a reasonable attempt to do the best with what I was given.

The dilemma came when I started playing guitar. I picked up the instrument when I was in middle school and getting into rock music. Not crappy, overly dramatic, what-in-the-name-of-feathered-hair-were-they-thinking rock, but good rock. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Smashing Pumpkins (You’re were right Billy Corgan, the world IS a vampire). After a year I was hooked, and at the same time I began to get burnt out on sports. Cue the close-up and dramatic music: it’s decision time.

Enter: Anonymous Midwestern Catholic High School. That wasn’t actually my high school’s name. Although, if it was, what would the mascot be? The Stalkers? The Anonymous Midwestern Catholic High School Stalkers? I think that has a ring to it. Anyway, the decision was actually pretty easy. I didn’t want to play sports anymore. I was a guitar god, and I knew it. Well, I wasn’t actually all that good, but I knew someday I would be. (Fast forward: I’m not.) The problem was that I was worried that my parents would expect me to play sports and wouldn’t want me to sit around the house playing guitar all day in my Kurt Cobain t-shirt. I knew they wouldn’t get my decision. In retrospect, I doubt they cared at all. I probably could have asked, but I was morally obligated as a 15-year-old to ignore them as much as humanly possible. Oh well.

I had some decisions to make during the summer before my freshman year. What sports could I go out for to appease my parents’ alleged desire to see that I had put forth some effort but would also likely result in me getting cut from the team? Track wasn’t until spring, and they didn’t make cuts so that was out. Football was the premier sport at our school (Go Stalkers!) and I had always loved football. But they didn’t make cuts either, and two-a-days in July for a sport I didn’t really want to play didn’t sound ideal. That left soccer and basketball. I decided to tryout for both to show how gung-ho I was about high school sports.

Soccer started in the summer, first with conditioning, then a week of camp, then tryouts. The first day of soccer conditioning was humbling to say the least. Apparently there’s a lot of running in high school soccer. I was the best soccer player in my class in middle school so I thought I was talented. I also was the only long-distance runner on the track team in middle school so I thought I was in shape. Nope and nope.

After some warm-ups and jogging, we had to run two miles. One would think, given the fact that I didn't want to make the team, I would have attempted to take the two-mile run easy and just finish it. I couldn’t not try, though. It’s like when Titus is going for the trillion. He doesn’t want any stats other than the minute of playing time, but he can’t really run away from the action for 60 seconds without looking like a jerk. So I ran as hard as I could. I made it six laps. Two miles is eight laps. The only other person not to finish was another freshman who looked like he spent his summer training at Golden Corral.

As the summer went along, I eventually got into actual soccer shape and even had some moments when I was borderline enjoying myself. The final day of tryouts I went onto the field knowing I was going to get cut and, of course, played the best soccer of my life. I scored two goals on one of the varsity goalies in a scrimmage and almost immediately got called over to the circle of coaches. The assistant coach with the list in his hands had his shoes off and big wad of chewing tobacco in his lip. I’m pretty sure he wanted to be there about as much as I did. I wondered briefly if I had just played well enough to make the team. Then he asked for my name. A note to anyone trying to make a cut of any kind; if the person in charge asks for your name, there’s a better than even chance you can pack it in. You aren’t on the list.

There was two weeks in between the time of final cuts for soccer and the start of my freshman year of high school. It was a great two weeks filled with pretty much nothing, which was a nice change from running, leg lifts, and being one of the least talented people on the field at a given activity for hours per day, multiple times per week. I know how you feel, Brady Quinn. I mean Derek Anderson. I mean Brady Quinn. I mean next year’s fourth overall draft pick.

High school started at the end of August, and I was busy wearing incredibly uncomfortable combinations of button-up shirts, ties and khakis and carrying huge piles of books around the hallways searching for theology class. Why does it take two full years for high school students to figure out how to modify the uniforms enough to be comfortable / look slutty? Or to figure out it’s just high school, and all you need is a pen and a three-ring binder no matter what class you’re attending? I had been doing the exciting high school routine (which, much to my surprise, was nothing like My So-Called Life) for all of two days when there was an announcement on the PA saying that all boys, excuse me, young men who were interested in trying out for basketball had to be in the cafeteria after class the following Monday. I was distraught because I had planned on at least another month of doing nothing other than learning how to do this before I had to start pretending to play sports again.

I don’t really remember the basketball meeting or anything that happened afterwards. I just know one minute I was enjoying my freedom, and the next minute I was back out on the track in a gray gym outfit running wind sprints. At least this time around I was already in shape. Like tOSU Buckeyes, we had to complete a mile in under a certain amount of time, except we only got one shot per week and it was on Saturday mornings. I finished mine on the first try. Sorry, Shark.

The only thing of note that happened before tryouts was during one of our open-gym sessions. Occasionally, older guys would show up to the games to really challenge the young guys like myself. On this particular night, Antonio Daniels decided to play. For those who don’t know who Antonio Daniels is, at the time he was playing for the San Antonio Spurs. The National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Spurs. There were two games going and he joined my game. For the other team. And I got to guard him. Wonderful.

For most of the game, he clearly wasn’t trying too hard. He was probably intimidated by my 5’11”, 139-pound frame. I looked a little bit like Blake Griffin and a lot like Peter Brady. I spent most of the night trying to telepathically assure him that I wasn’t super interested in making this team, or guarding people who made paychecks dishing to Tim Duncan, so he could really do whatever he wanted and I wouldn't say boo.

At some point he finally got the message, or he remembered that he had several inches, 50 pounds and every conceivable genetic advantage over me. Either way, he gave me The Look. I interpreted it as “I’m in The League. Move it, Brady boy.” I could stand in his way, make some attempt to either take a charge or blatantly foul him and most likely get posterized anyway, or I could move and watch him dunk unopposed. Right this way, Mr. Daniels. As I watched from where I had given up on the play, I immediately felt sympathy for every European player in the NBA. No wonder Sasha Vujacic gives the bullfighter ole to anyone who has ever had the pleasure of being guarded by him. I don’t know what it’s like to end up on a sports card with a face full of shorts, and I think I’d like to keep it that way.

Here’s a reenactment of his dunk as best I can recall. Oh, wait that wasn’t Antonio Daniels’ dunk over me at a high school open gym. It was Allen Iverson breaking Antonio’s ankles on national TV. Wow, that must be embarrassing to have that recorded for posterity. I’m glad that never happened to me. The off-season is for ill-advised trips to the strip club, marrying reality stars and designing shoes, not dunking on 15-year-olds. Read your contract next time, Antonio.

The rest of conditioning went by in a blur of wind sprints, dribbling drills and wind sprints for screwing up the dribbling drills. Once tryouts arrived, I realized that I had a much better shot at making this team. First of all, I was pretty sure there weren’t any more NBA players hanging around. Second, the basketball team was much slower than the soccer team. Unfortunately, basketball practice was even less fun than soccer practice. Maybe two-a-days wouldn’t have been that bad.

We started with a group of about 40 guys and cut our way down to 30 and then 20 and then 15. I was one of the 15. The final day of tryouts came and went. There were 13 of us left. They were keeping 12. I needed to suck, but I still had this pesky thing about trying very, very hard despite my desire to get cut. We went into an unplanned, extended week of tryouts, with the coaching staff repeatedly declaring that they still planned on cutting one of us. There were 10 guys who had their spots on the roster assured. The other three of us attempted to out-mediocre one another for the final two roster spots. As we hit the ninth day of tryouts, I slowly realized the coaches weren’t going to cut any of us. They were just testing us to see how bad we wanted it. I probably should have stepped up and told them how little I wanted it, barely at all really, but I didn’t. I made the team.

Rather than go through a blow-by-blow account of the whole season (and by my recollection it blew a lot), here are a few highlights:

We beat one team 69-13. We were winning 35-10 at the half. That’s right, they scored 3 points in the second half. They hit a three at the buzzer, and that was the only basket they scored in the entire second half. And they were excited. We beat them by 56 points in a 32-minute game, and they were excited by the three that someone tossed up at the buzzer. I was a little jealous of their attitude.

In the seventh game of the season, we played an undefeated team who was always a powerhouse in the city. We were already down three players, and one guy had quit our team so we had a total of 9 players available. A guy named Patrick decided this would be a good game to bring his home shorts and his away jersey, therefore excluding him from being able to participate in said game. Our coach went Bobby Knight on the entire team for a solid ten minutes. The tirade culminated with him screaming at Patrick, “YOU HAVE PURPLE SHORTS AND A WHITE JERSEY! WHERE THE &@!% DID YOU THINK THIS GAME WAS GOING TO BE PLAYED??!!” This is hilarious to me now, but at the time our team was too terrified to lose. Best motivational speech I’ve ever heard.

Halfway through the season, some members of the team started getting blotchy, red rashes across their chests, stomachs and backs. It didn’t take long to uncover the reason. After the games, we all went in the locker room for showers. Someone realized that the combination of water, soap and a long stretch of tile translated into one big slip and slide. It did look like a lot of fun, if you could ignore the fact that at the end you slammed into a tile wall. And apparently got a rash a week later. I didn’t have to worry about the rash because it’s not really necessary to shower after sitting on the far end of the bench wearing a practice jersey for an hour. Sure, I wasn’t dating one of the cheerleaders, or accumulating statistics, or showing off for a gym full of people, but I wasn’t getting a rash either. Point… me.

The last story in this odyssey (or maybe it’s the opposite of an odyssey) that I will share is of a time I actually had a positive effect on the outcome of an important game. We were in the playoff semifinals against our archrivals, and they had beaten us by 23 points each of the first two times we played. I had no expectations of playing in this game. But we had made a little run towards the end of our season and came together as a team as we entered the playoffs. I was feeling the full-blooded spirit of Anonymous Midwestern Catholic High School Stalker Freshman Basketball. Catch the rash!

The key to the other team’s dominance in our previous two games was its point guard, Drew. He lit us up and ran their offense flawlessly. I knew we would use our defensive stud, Aaron, to try to stop him this time so I decided to spend my week using reverse psychology to pump him up for the game. Quick tangent: Wouldn’t reverse psychology just mean doing nothing at all? Is “psychology” defined as “getting someone to do exactly what you want by asking him to do that thing?” Because that’s the only way the term “reverse psychology” makes any sense. It should just be called “idiot’s psychology,” or maybe “low-level trickery.” Ok, moving on.

I harassed Aaron anytime I saw him, whether it was in class, the lunchroom, or the gym. I would walk up to him and say things like, “Drew’s probably skipping practice this week because he’s already won,” and “Drew’s already filled out the stat sheet cuz he‘s gonna put up as many points as he wants on you,” or if I was feeling particularly witty, “Hey John Starks, you suck.”

Aaron was a madman by the time the game came around. He was walking around with a half-crazed smile on his face and a look in his eyes that seemed to say “I am going to embarrass Drew to the point that he will quit the game of basketball, grow a beard and join Ricky Williams on his journeys to find meaning in this tiny blink of time we call life, except that when he finally reaches that moment of inner peace I will be there to steal it from him because everything he owns is now mine.” Aaron had very expressive eyes.

Drew was completely shut down from the moment he stepped onto the court. There was nowhere for him to go. Our team fed off of the energy Aaron was creating, and we smothered the other team. If we had had fans, they would have been screaming “Stal-kers! Stal-kers!” (Clap-Stomp! Clap-Stomp!) at the top of their lungs. I spent the entire second half waving my towel over my head and even pulled this move once or twice. We led the entire game, won by ten, and Drew scored only two points, for which I was directly responsible. Ok, maybe Aaron played some small part.

We ended up losing the championship the next night courtesy of a buzzer beater. But the season had been a success for me. Ok, maybe success is a little strong. I played in 12 of 20 games and scored 15 points. A highlight video of my year would be shorter than Heidi Pratt’s singing career (It’s strangely appropriate that she decided to name her single after what listeners would like to do after hearing her sing). But I did post 8 trillions, and if that isn’t success then I don’t what is. Our head coach said as much when he approached me after the championship game and said, “Hey, we really wanted to get you in tonight. Sorry that didn’t work out.” I responded with a smile, “That’s ok, Coach. I didn’t want to get a rash anyway.” Two weeks later they handed out the off-season schedule, and I did what I should have done in the first place. I quit.

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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Scott C. There’s your shout-out, Scott. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week Story (7th Place)

2009-10-18T11:13:00.002-04:00

Fan Appreciation Week is finally here and I figuratively couldn’t be more excited. When I asked the Trillion Man March to send in benchwarming stories, I was pretty certain that I would only get five stories and three of them would be from people I know personally. After all, as one member of the TMM explained to me, if you really do embrace the benchwarmer mentality you’d be too lazy to take the time to write about your shortcomings in the first place. Touché. Still, I ended up getting over 80 stories, all of which were entertaining to some degree. The people who sent in stories ranged from a 53-year-old man to a 17-year-old girl. Some people even sent in stories from foreign countries such as New Zealand, Canada, and South Dakota. All in all, I was very impressed with the stories (I personally read every word of every one) and really did struggle in picking out the top seven. If it turns out that I didn’t pick yours, just convince yourself that you actually kind of won because this is yet another instance of you riding the bench in life.

With that being said, the following is what I perceived to be the seventh best story that was submitted. If you don’t like it, don’t worry because there’s a better one coming tomorrow. If you do like it, be excited that there’s an even better one coming tomorrow. Either way, here’s a look into Zac Jackson's life as a benchwarmer.

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All I ever wanted to do was be a basketball star.

Sure, I also wanted to one day be president of the Los Angeles Lakers, unseat Vince McMahon as president/announcer for the WWF, get married to my sixth-grade girlfriend and eventually host the 6 p.m. SportsCenter. But my first goal was to be the biggest star point guard little Manchester High School had ever seen.

I shot free throws in my driveway all day. I watched basketball on TV all night. I remember watching a young Chris Fowler host a show on ESPN called “Scholastic Sports America” featuring Jason Kidd and believing that some day I would be so good that ESPN would send its cameras to Manchester to film me. To talk to me. To let me share my greatness with the rest of the world, because everybody was watching Scholastic Sports America, right?

Turns out I wasn’t that good. Several not-so-funny things happened on my way to the NBA, including me not working hard enough, other kids stealing the ball from me, my own father telling me I sucked, my coach keeping me on the bench because I was too short to see over the halfcourt trap defenses the other teams kept throwing at me, and me making 90 straight free throws in practice but always missing the ones I shot in the game. Truth is the only crunch-time baskets I ever made in my life came in my driveway while playing one-on-one against my brother.

When I was 11 and he was 4.

So even though I adjusted and tempered my goals, I was still convinced I’d make it in basketball. I knew one day my high school girlfriend would have big boobs and wear my letterman’s jacket around town, and that was OK because I’d have a fancy Manchester Basketball sweatsuit to wear with a necklace and my number, 11, as the charm. Man I worshipped the older guys who did that. I knew someday I’d own the Manchester assist record, play in college and just generally be awesome at life.

Things didn’t quite work out that way, but I think I eventually became pretty good at being a benchwarmer – so good that all these years later I can take this opportunity to claim I was a better benchwarmer than you. Listen, your blog is great. Your jokes are great. You’ve carved quite a niche, and I’ve enjoyed reliving some of my youth (that’s what washed up American males such as myself love to do more than anything) through your exploits.

But you were not a better benchwarmer than I was, and I’ve broken down our matchup below. Our rivalry begins now.

THE EARLY DAYS: There was a time when I truly thought I was the greatest sixth-grade basketball player in America. Maybe I was. I scored off the bounce, in the lane, from well beyond the arc and played two or three steps ahead of most other kids. What eventually started to happen is the other kids started not only learning how to play, but also growing muscles and hair on their legs and upper lips. It seemed like every game I was a bit weaker, another half-step behind, etc. And I was. I still made the team when I got older because I knew the game, dated the head coach’s daughter (the smart take from the strong) and could make a wide-open 3-pointer, but I wasn’t any good. From your stories, I’ve come to learn that you hit puberty at age 8 (or 9 years earlier than I did) and only dominated on the local basketball floors because the other kids couldn’t physically keep up with you. Ho hum, ho hum.

Advantage: Me

SUPPORTING CAST: My Manchester High teammates were good guys and great friends, but they never were anything too special. They’re all successful now, but nobody’s really rich, has a really hot wife or a really awesome kind of drug problem. My favorite teammate was this white guy named Dane who not only never passed the ball (even when quadruple teamed) but sported a curly little afro, bobbed his head from side to side when he walked and off the court wore a Mr. T Starter Kit around his neck and on top of his tight black t-shirt. No lie. You not only get to play with a big-time NBA prospect in Evan Turner, but you coined an outstanding nickname for him (The Villain) and have a dedicated army of Trillionaires willing to help you ruin his day at a moment’s notice. Plus, you’ve played with a ton of other big-time players who may not ever let you inside their inner circles, but have made you good enough and let you close enough that you’ll be making occasional appearances on Sports Century and absolutely dominating church league play a year from now like The Villain will be dominating the likes of Gardner Webb and Fort Wayne State a month from now.

Advantage: Titus

DURING PRACTICE: My fellow benchwarmers and I called ourselves the Scrub Club and we always enjoyed standing in the same spot against the stage during practice while the starters got their run. My friend Joe and I would stand there and jokingly trash the coach for keeping us on the bench when we had talent to be McDonald’s All Americans, something I’d aimed to be since those early SSA episodes with Chris Fowler. Since our All-American Days ended Joe and I have combined to put on 170 pounds and make it to our 30s unmarried, uninteresting and still telling high school basketball stories when we do get together. Now we get winded just watching basketball. I’ve never seen what you do in practice, but I’d imagine it goes like this: Make a joke most of the team doesn’t understand, make a fart noise, get swatted by Dallas Lauderdale, get funny looks from The Villain, make the coaches rue the day they let you walk on, repeat process next practice.

Advantage: Me

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: If my quickly-failing memory serves me correctly, one of our rival schools, Tuslaw, had the hottest cheerleaders around. I was particularly in love with one named Kristen Kidd (and I very much enjoyed my extended time on the bench allowed me to stare at her). I believe I gave her my pager number once, but almost 12 years later she’s yet to find the time to call me. You, on the other hand, had a relationship with Erin Andrews. Come to think of it, I never got ANY girl to ever call me back until I started listening to country music. You were way ahead of me on that one. Plus, I still wear a pager.

Advantage: Titus

SIDELINE OBSERVATIONS: I stayed in the game, calling out plays the other team would run and answering any questions my coach might have had. Sadly, he didn’t ask “would you like to go in?” very often. I have this sick photographic memory, too, which helped me remember what certain opponents liked to do in certain situations. Today, when I run into someone our team used to play against in a personal or professional setting, I almost always remember him and what kind of player he was. Just the other night some guy in the bar told me had 17 points and 11 rebounds against us our junior year. He was lying through his recently-bleached teeth, but if 12 years later he needs that to redeem himself, who am I to cut him down? You stare down cheerleaders, fumble with a towel and try to get on camera. I don’t see much help to the team there.

Advantage: Me

ON-COURT CONTRIBUTIONS: Knowing my time on the court was going to be short, I always launched a long 3-pointer as soon as I got in the game. Not many of them went in, but I wasn’t deterred. On senior night I got the ball with about 8 seconds left and our team up by a bunch. I dribbled the length of the court and –despite being about 5-foot-9 – leapt off one foot and attempted a tomahawk dunk. My vertical wasn’t any more than 15 inches, but my arms were long enough to reach the rim. I slammed the ball into the front of the rim and fell backwards, sending the ball to the roof while everyone in the gym laughed like crazy. Except my head coach. You? Your whole goal is to record a trillion, which means avoiding recordable action of any sort. Nice blog name, terrible way to play.

Advantage: Me

APPEARANCE: These days I’m overweight, out of shape and battling several addictions and afflictions including a bad back and excess ear wax. Back then I was scary skinny, lacking muscle definition and always had the same buzzcut on my disproportionately large head. You may not be pulling the most beautiful ladies on campus, Titus, but you’re in shape and you can grow the type of mustache in a week that I couldn’t grow in a year. Plus, you get to stroll in around in a different Nike, Ohio State Basketball sweatsuit every day and I have to dress like a grown up five or six days a week.

Advantage: Titus

POSTSCRIPT: The Manchester assist record is now held by someone named Jackson, but it’s my little brother. We never won any championships. I never got a letterman’s jacket or a big-busted girlfriend, and I’m now the absolute last pick in the gym when I make my twice-annual appearances at the local old man’s open gym. Sticking with basketball at THE Ohio State University has allowed you to see the country on someone else’s dime, do Bill Simmons podcasts, hang out with Greg Oden, jump around elevators in fancy Minneapolis hotels and give ultra-uptight NCAA people even more reasons to be ultra uptight. More than anything, you’ve let a star-obsessed culture know that walk-ons are people, too. Well done, sir.

Advantage: Titus

CLOSING CEREMONIES: In the four or so minutes I got to play on senior night, I threw an alley-oop from halfcourt for a two-handed dunk to my good friend Justin and I tried that dunk of my own. When I fell back on my head just after my dunk attempt and had my moment of clarity/reflection while staring at the ceiling, I realized that I’d failed to become The Guy That Every Little Kid In My Town Looked Up To because of basketball; strangely, I was very much at peace with that. Now some of the younger guys who were wide-eyed kids at that game still know me as The One Goofball Who Tried To Dunk, and to that I say, hey, I might as well be remembered for something. You, on the other hand, won’t even get in a game this year because Coach Matta is scared of what you might write about it. Sure, you’ll get a big cheer from the crowd on your senior night and give that stupid-looking smile you give every time the cameras come around, but will your parents really be proud?

Advantage: Me

Final tally: Me 5, You 4.

Keep up the good work, Titus. But consider yourself dunked on.

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse, and T. Roche (streaks of 15)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: J. Lee (streak of 11)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Taylor W. There’s your shout-out, Taylor. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Fan Appreciation Week

2009-10-12T20:04:00.003-04:00

I’m of the opinion that the process of reflecting plays a pivotal role in the maturation and development of a society or an individual. Before we can get to where we want to be in this life we must first understand where we currently are. Anyone who saw what I assume is the Asian version of Pocahontas can tell you that without reflection it’s impossible to know that you are wearing just a little too much makeup on your face. The importance of reflection explains why the developers of the Taj Mahal and the Lincoln Memorial chose to place reflecting pools near their monuments and also explains why The Villain spends virtually every waking moment looking at himself in a mirror.

(By the way, I bet the guy who invented the mirror had a hard time convincing people that he wasn’t full of himself…

“Hey guys, I just invented something that let’s you look at yourself whenever you want.”

“Uhh…why would you want to do that? What’s so special about you that makes you want to look at yourself?”

“Nothing, it’s just that, ya know, I thought it would be cool if you could see if your hair was sticking up or something.”

“Either that or you thought it would be cool to constantly check out your flawless six pack from a better angle, you arrogant prick.”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s how the initial conversation went.)

As this blog approaches its one year anniversary/birthday (not really sure which term is appropriate in this situation), I thought it was important for me to reflect on how far it has come. When I started this blog, I did so out of boredom from the combination of living by myself and nothing being on TV. I had no intention of writing it for much longer than a month and my only real goal was to expose a handful of people to my favorite YouTube videos. Now one year later, I’ve ruined two Simmons podcasts, I’ve been denied by the NBA (and countless women), and I’ve had my embarrassing combination of serious face and faux hawk on the front page of Yahoo.com. I’ve achieved infinite times more success with this thing than I ever could have dreamed of and absolutely none of it could have been possible without you. This is why I’m devoting an entire week to give back to the Trillion Man March.

Some of you may have missed my last post and in doing so didn’t read the announcement about how I’m claiming October 18th through October 24th to be Club Trillion’s Fan Appreciation Week (still waiting for the government to officially declare it). I outlined a contest that prompted the Trillion Man March to send in stories about how you used to and/or still are riding the bench on your sports team or just in life in general (if you missed it, go back and read the latter part of the last post for all the rules and regs). So far I’ve received a solid number of entries, but I’m yet to receive one that I think is the unquestionable winner. With that in mind, you only have until October 15th to send your story in, so get to it. If it doesn’t suck, I’ll publish it and you can brag to the two other people in your circle of friends who would think that it’s remotely impressive that you got something published on Club Trillion.

In the last post, I also promised that there would be much more to Fan Appreciation Week than just the writing contest, and if there’s anything my countless failed relationships have taught me it’s that lying is an awful way to tell someone you love them. And since I love each and every one of you, I’m going to stick to my promise and outline everything else that will make up Fan Appreciation Week right now.

Free T-Shirts

Even though NCAA rules prohibit me from taking free stuff from just about anybody, I’m pretty confident that I’m permitted to give out free stuff to you all. I had ten t-shirts with the CLUB TRIL logo made up (I would have had more, but these things cost money and money is something I simply don’t have) and will be distributing them throughout Fan Appreciation Week. There is, however, some bad news to go with the t-shirt handout.

I’ve thought about how to hand out the t-shirts and every idea I have come up with involves me using my Twitter account in some fashion. This is bad news because I’m guessing most of you don’t have Twitter accounts due to the fact that “Twitter sux” and you “don’t know why anyone would care that I’m having eggs and toast for breakfast”. I completely understand your frustration but unfortunately, Twitter is really the only way I can give out the t-shirts because it’s the only fair way to do it. In most cases, I’ll post a Club Trillion trivia question on Twitter and the first person to e-mail me with the correct answer will get the shirt. I also plan on hiding shirts on campus and revealing their location via Twitter. Because Twitter is a live stream site, it makes the most sense to do it that way.

If you really want a t-shirt but don’t have a Twitter account, I suggest making one to follow me (here’s my Twitter page) during Fan Appreciation Week and deleting it at the end of the week. I know it’s a hassle, but it honestly won’t take longer than five minutes to create an account (if you’re old, have your kids make one for you) and there really isn’t a better way for me to hand these things out. If you do make an account and follow only me, you actually will have a better chance of winning a shirt than those who are following more people because only my tweets will show up on your feed, which means it’s less likely for you to miss the t-shirt announcements. Just something to think about.

All E-mails Get A Personal Response

Anybody who has ever sent me an e-mail has surely noticed that I respond to them almost as frequently as I shave my body hair (so about once a week). It’s something I’m not really all that proud of (the lack of responding, I mean), which is why I thought that during Fan Appreciation Week I would personally respond to any and all e-mails sent to the Club Trillion e-mail account. Due to the large number of e-mails I get on a daily basis (I consider more than one to be a large number), I usually put off responding as long as possible and then end up with the monumental task of responding to tons of e-mails all at once. It’s a side to blogging that I never prepared myself for and I wish I had a better method, but as it stands I continue to let all sorts of e-mails get lost in the shuffle and then come up with various excuses as to why I forgot to respond. Until now.

Fan Appreciation Week will give you the opportunity to ask me just about anything you want and be completely assured that I will respond. Some of you have already taken it upon yourself to ask me something only to go months without hearing anything back from me. If that’s the case, now is the perfect opportunity to ask again. I vow to personally and truthfully write a response to every e-mail, which may sound like a pretty lame aspect of Fan Appreciation Week, but in reality will probably be a pretty hefty workload for me. So send in your thoughts, suggestions, questions, and pictures you took of yourself in your bathroom mirror with your cell phone and I’ll do whatever it takes to write you back.

Letter of Recommendation for Anyone Applying to tOSU

Of the people who have sent me an e-mail in the past, a good portion of you did so because you were asking me to write something for you to use in some way. The most frequent request was for me to write something for you to put on your own blog, but some of you requested that I write for your fantasy football league, write some sort of speech for you, or rewrite Swingers as a play for you and your theatre class to use in your end-of-the-year high school production (I obviously made up that last one, because I definitely would have done that had anybody actually asked). Anyway, I declined virtually every request, because I didn’t have the time to do all of them and I didn’t want to play favorites and choose one or two. Basically I took the same approach towards these requests as I did with the general e-mails, which is why none of you ever heard from me after you sent me your request.

Now that Fan Appreciation Week is around the corner, I’ve decided to loosen up a little bit and offer my extremely one-dimensional and completely amateur writing services to a certain demographic of the Trillion Man March. I’m not sure if it’s too late for high school seniors to apply to colleges, but if it’s not, I’m offering to write a letter of recommendation for any high school senior applying to Ohio State. I’m pretty confident that you don’t need letters of recommendation to get into tOSU, which is why I think this aspect of Fan Appreciation Week will be doubly awesome. Also, I’m pretty confident having a letter of recommendation from me will be as helpful towards your chances of getting in as having a letter of recommendation from Mike Tyson. I would be pretty terrified for the future of Ohio State if the admissions people really consider a letter from me to be beneficial to an applicant’s cause. Come to think of it, there’s a pretty solid chance that my letter will actually be detrimental to your chances of getting in, so I’d think twice about asking for help from me if I were you. Either way, the offer has been put on the table and it’s your decision to take it or leave it.

Podcast With A Member of The Trillion Man March

This is definitely the biggest gamble of Fan Appreciation Week, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s a gamble that’s going to pay off. I plan on recording a podcast with a random one of you and plan on discussing just about anything. Unfortunately, like the t-shirt giveaway, if you want a shot at being a podcast guest you are going to have to have a Twitter account. I’ll post on my Twitter at some point in time during Fan Appreciation Week that the first person to call in will become the podcast guest. Again, like the t-shirt giveaway, the live stream feature of Twitter makes it the only logical way to choose who will be the podcast guest, so I apologize to all of you who really hate Twitter or don’t completely understand it. If you really want a t-shirt or want to be a podcast guest that badly, you should be willing to take the five minutes to create an account anyway, so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. All I ask is that if you do become the podcast guest, please don’t suck. I’m already doing all I can to make the podcast boring, so I’d appreciate it if you brought at least one remotely interesting thing to the conversation.

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Even though I want this to be a humorous and completely unserious blog, I do want to thank each and every one of you for being an integral part of the success and growth of what I’ve created. At this time last year I was a nobody who was underachieving in the classroom and on the basketball court, but now I’m a nobody with a blog who’s underachieving in the classroom and on the basketball court. It’s been a fun first year that has quite literally changed my life. I feel incredibly blessed to have the chance to ~~play~~ practice for a top notch Division I basketball program and be able to tell stupid stories on here that people apparently enjoy reading. Fan Appreciation Week may turn out to be an awful idea, but even if it is, it will completely be worth it to me because I think it’s important for all of you to know that I love you so much that I’d pick you up from the airport or help you move into a new apartment (please don’t hold me to this). God bless the Trillion Man March and God bless America.

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse, and T. Roche (streaks of 15)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: J. Terry (streak of 11)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Mitch B. There’s your shout-out, Mitch. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Podcast - 10/4/09 - Byron Mullens

2009-10-05T00:56:00.003-04:00

I need to apologize. It has been almost a month since the last podcast was published. Many of you probably said "good riddance," but to the 25,000 people who have subscribed to it, I need to tell you that the absence has been unacceptable. And completely Keller's fault.

We ran into some technical problems with the last two podcasts we taped that I'm not completely convinced couldn't be fixed by someone who didn't spend all day taking Sporcle quizzes and playing checkers on Skype. Nonetheless, when combined with basketball and classes starting up, it didn't leave much time to tape podcasts. The first podcast we taped with our old high school friend Drew Storen (of Hagerstown fame) couldn't be salvaged, so we're retaping it, but after a week of puzzled looks at the computer screen, we were able to get this podcast with my old teammate Byron Mullens to finally work.

So pardon the occasional cutting out of my microphone (if anyone has any suggestions as to what's causing it, let me know) and enjoy the podcast, where we talk about Ohio State basketball, Keller's Life and Times of K-Smoove, and the famous BW3's story that inspired half of America to tell me that the third W stood for "weck".

I consider Photoshopping Byron's mustache on myself to be one of life's simpler pleasures

Another podcast should be out within a week or so, and we're working on lining up some really cool guests for the future. If you have any suggestions (that are realistic), send them in and we'll see what we can do. Also, don't forget that October 15th is the deadline to submit your Fan Appreciation week story, so if you've got one and it doesn't suck, send it in to ClubTrillion@gmail.com and you might make the cut.

The Last Summer – Part II

2009-09-29T17:17:00.003-04:00

This blog post is the second of a two part entry about why this past summer was the best of my life. By my own admission, it sucks. I know it sucks (so don’t tell me) and I’m fine with it sucking because I wrote it for myself and only chose to publish it so the diehard members of the Trillion Man March wouldn’t call me lazy in a bombardment of complaining e-mails. I wanted to chronicle an action packed time in my life so I could look back in the future and remember what I did, making this more of a diary/journal than an entertainment-oriented blog post. As I said in the previous post, this should be the last entry that’s way off-topic, because basketball is now in full swing and I already have plenty of material from the past couple weeks that I could write about. With that being said, there is a pretty big announcement at the end of this post, so make sure you at least check that out (I put “STOP SCROLLING” in bold at the bottom of the entry as a heads up for you, should you choose to bypass the blog post altogether). Make sure you also check out this sweet new YouTube video I found. Pretty awesome, isn’t it?

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I’m beginning to notice that it is becoming increasingly harder for me to buy a jumbo pack of tube socks at Wal-Mart without at least five people coming up to me and saying something along the lines of “Mark, when I think of America I immediately think of morbidly obese people and AC Slater’s jheri curl. But then I think of you, because you are everything the stars and bars stand for.” Based on what I regularly write on this blog, I completely understand where these sentiments are coming from. I like to think of myself as the consummate American who listens to country music, supports the troops, and only speaks one language because I’m unapologetically ethnocentric. Sure I like Japanese game shows and I follow the English Premier League, but all it takes is being around me for five minutes to know that I’m practically as American as they come.

Let’s do a little role play. You and the hot babe with zero personality or intelligence that you are dating are walking down the street. You see a seven-year-old girl selling lemonade for a quarter at an intersection and you decide to get some. You hand her a dollar, ask for two cups, and tell her to keep the change. You and your girlfriend drink your lemonade (that more than likely tastes like a combination of tap water and sweat) and continue walking. You notice your girlfriend has a single tear rolling down her cheek, so you ask her if she really thought the lemonade was that bad. She responds with, “No, it wasn’t the lemonade. I was just thinking that that girl and her lemonade stand are more American than apple pie.” You add on, “Yeah, apple pie and baseball.” Your girlfriend chimes back with, “Except baseball really isn’t all that American.” You look at her as if she just suggested that the two of you spend the day shopping for curtains to hang in the living room of her apartment. Is she trying to be stupid? Well, as crazy as it may be, your dumb girlfriend is absolutely right.

Now let’s go back to real life. The phrase “…as American as apple pie and baseball” has been around forever because it was conceived when things were different. Back then, baseball was the most American thing in the world because, well, it was played by exclusively Americans. But now it’s tough to say if America is even the best country in the world at baseball. Most major league rosters are filled with foreigners, which has undoubtedly made the game a little less boring but in doing so has made the game much less American. Names like Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, and Ichiro Whateverhislastnameis dominate the baseball landscape, which is surely making all those racist owners from back in day roll over in their graves. The point is that baseball simply isn’t as American as it used to be because it’s becoming more and more popular all over the world. So go apologize to your hypothetical girlfriend.

The reason I bring up my love for America and baseball’s globalization is because I think it can explain why I’m not really all that big of a baseball fan. I love my country and everything that makes it what it is, which is why I’m becoming less of a baseball fan as baseball becomes less of an American sport. Sure I still love my Chicago Cubs (currently tied for first place in the 2010 season!), but outside of their consistent disappointment, I don’t do a whole lot of baseball watching. The obvious exception was when I went to Hagerstown, Maryland for a minor league baseball game (as I detailed in Part I) but even then I enjoyed the promotions at the game more than the game itself. Baseball is definitely losing it’s American feel, but it’s younger, more awesome, steroid-free cousin is still as patriotic of a game as they come. I’m talking, of course, about wiffleball.

At the beginning of the summer, I received what I consider to be the most significant e-mail of my life. It was from a Nigerian prince who explained to me that I was entitled to over one million dollars if I simply told him my name, address, social security number, and favorite song from the Thriller album. Naturally, I obliged and should be collecting my fortune any time now. I also got a rather important e-mail from Joe Overman of Coldwater, Ohio that served as an invitation to throw out the first pitch at a wiffleball tournament in the aforementioned town. Apparently the tournament coincided with a yearly festival that is thrown in Coldwater that may or may not just be an excuse for Coldwater natives to celebrate the fact that they are American and proud of it. Either way, it was the first time I had ever been asked to act as a “celebrity guest” (or whatever the equivalent is for someone who is in between “that guy looks familiar” and “I swear I know him from somewhere”), which is why I jumped on the opportunity like I was Lindsay Lohan being offered the chance to act irresponsible.

After researching Coldwater a little bit (which consisted of asking various people about it), it was revealed to me that not only does the town have a pretty uncreative name, but it’s also a little too much country for most people to handle. I invited Keller to tag along because he’s the only friend I have who knows all the words to “If You’re Gonna Play In Texas” by Alabama and can name at least three NASCAR drivers. Based on what people were telling me, Coldwater seemed like my kind of town, which is why I felt like I couldn’t get up there fast enough. Unfortunately, the cop that pulled me over on the way up completely disagreed.

In the cop’s defense, I absolutely was tailgating him and probably had been for at least two miles. In my defense, though, I honestly didn’t know that what I was doing was illegal. As soon as I got pulled over, Keller told me I was tailgating the cop, but I calmly explained why he was wrong. I wasn’t tailgating—I was drafting, which is a strategy that has catapulted Jeff Gordon to four Sprint Cup Championships, so I really couldn’t see where the problem was. The only tailgating I do involves playing cornhole (or “bags”), eating way too much, and high fiving passersby. Still, apparently what I did was illegal and it was going to take a smooth performance on my part to get out of a ticket.

The first thing I noticed as the cop approached my car was that his mustache was nearly perfect. It was glaringly obvious that this cop was a seasoned veteran who probably didn’t even carry a gun because his hand-to-hand combat was the stuff of legend. I knew I’d have my hands full trying to get him to crack. He asked for my license and registration, and then asked if I had been pulled over recently. I truthfully answered that I had just received a speeding ticket a few months back, which prompted him to ask if I’m “always in a hurry or something”. Because I’m both too stubborn and too stupid to play by the rules, I responded with, “Well, sir, I am from Indianapolis and racing is just in my blood I guess” and then let out a few nervous laughs. The cop looked at me as if I had just said “I have such little respect for you that I plan on taking your daughter to prom and not bringing her back until the next morning.” He replied, “Wisecracks aren’t going to do you any favors out here, son”, snatched my license and registration, and walked back to his car. Yikes.

(By the way, any time an authority figure adds “son” to the end of a sentence, it almost always results in me being entirely terrified of what happens next. Especially when I’m not the authority figure’s actual son.)

At this point, I told myself that I should be completely satisfied if the cop gave me a ticket and a swift kick to the groin because I was halfway expecting to get cuffed and thrown in the back of his cruiser. Instead, he walked back to my car, handed me my license and registration, told me to “be more careful out there”, and then laughed and walked away. It honestly felt like the opening scene of Super Troopers, only I wasn’t completely stoned and the cop didn’t come back and repeat everything he had already told me. I was, however, freaking out, man.

Even now, I really can’t think of an explanation as to what happened with the cop. He basically went from Agatha Trunchbull to Uncle Joey in a matter of ten minutes without giving any indication as to why he did. The way I tell the story (to everyone but you all) is that the cop called my information into dispatch and the Rod Farva equivalent on the other end of the radio was a member of the Trillion Man March who immediately informed the officer that he should let The Shark swim free. This is most likely not the case, but when your moments of fame are as limited as mine are, you tend to embellish things to make you feel better about yourself.

When we finally made it to Coldwater, we met up with the one person from Coldwater that I knew and made our way to a house party a few blocks away. As I approached this particular party, I couldn’t help but think that this must be what the parties in high school that I was never invited to were like. You see, while all my classmates were hooking up and lying to their parents during high school weekends, I was busy studying molecular genetics and volunteering at a local animal shelter. More accurately, I was busy trying to figure out what the parental lock code was on the TV in our basement, but let’s keep that between you and me. Anyway, I was excited to finally be invited (note: I wasn’t actually invited) to my first party in quite some time and decided that this party would just have to make up for all those missed opportunities in high school. And it did.

When you hear that an awesome party took place that was thrown by a bunch of twenty-somethings, you immediately assume that KY Jelly was involved somehow, the cops showed up numerous times, and at least one person passed out before 9 pm. And while that certainly would be a winning combination for any party, that’s not what took place here. This party wasn’t awesome to me because it was an out of control drunkfest. In fact, the only real reason I thought it was worth mentioning is because it had the one thing no other party I’ve ever been to has had—a truck parked in the backyard with all its doors opened and country music blaring through its speakers. Apparently high quality radios are hard to come by in Coldwater, which is why residents use their trucks as both female-attracting machines and audio entertainment devices. Either way, the image of a bunch of Coldwater natives hanging out in a backyard listening to country music through a truck’s speakers was enough for me to conclude that Coldwater is quite possibly the biggest hick town I’ve ever been to in my life, which is about as big of a compliment as I can give.

The wiffleball tournament itself was held the next morning and, as far as I could tell, my first pitch was as perfect as I had hoped for. I was a little nervous heading in because the last memory I had of throwing a baseball/softball/wiffleball is when I played left field in a men’s softball league and slightly missed the cutoff man as I threw the ball onto the roof of the concession stand right next to the field. Still, I managed to throw a flawless pitch by starting the ball on the right edge of the plate and letting the curve I put on it bring it back down the middle. It was a proud moment for me that was made possible by the fine people of Coldwater. I couldn’t stick around to watch the whole tournament because I had some sort of basketball function, so I don’t know who won the thing, but I do know that the combination of a truck used as a boombox and a community wiffleball tournament is enough to make me adopt Coldwater as my Ohio hometown. The only problem is I don’t think I’m country/awesome enough to claim Coldwater.

Following the success of the Coldwater trip, Keller and I went to Mankato, Minnesota for the Vikings training camp. As I touched on in a previous post, I have been a Minnesota Vikings fan for as long as I can remember and discovered in the offseason that Sage Rosenfels, a Vikings quarterback, was a fan of my blog. Through a series of e-mails, Sage invited me to training camp and because I didn’t want another interaction with the police like I had on the way to Coldwater, I recruited Keller to tag along and do the driving. After around a 10 hour drive, we arrived on the campus of Minnesota State University and immediately began asking the locals where we could find Craig T. Nelson. They must have assumed we meant the football stadium because that’s where pretty much everyone we asked sent us. We got to the stadium a little late but still managed to catch the exciting parts of training camp, which is to say we got to see a Vikings fan instruct everyone in the surrounding area to kill the guy wearing a Packers hat. Some would say he took it too far, but I say he’s just passionate about his Vikings. And after the Brett Favre miracle against the 49ers, how can you not be?

The best part of our trip to Minnesota was when we got to hang out with some of the players at a local bar after training camp was over. I decided to wear an Ohio State shirt to serve as a conversation starter, which was a decision I immediately regretted as soon as I saw Steve Hutchinson, a 315 pound offensive lineman and Michigan alum, and his furrowed brow looking at me in an unsatisfactory manner. If you think that I was maybe reading into things a little too much, take a look at this picture and imagine it coming to life and standing five feet away from you. Now go change your underpants.

While hanging out with some of the Vikings, Keller and I also had the chance to meet Pro Bowl defensive end and mullet connoisseur Jared Allen, who is now quite possibly our favorite human being ever. He wore a cutoff t-shirt to the bar with cutoff jean shorts, a camouflage hat, and Crocs and basically told the entire establishment that he didn’t give a Michigan what they thought of him. His carefree attitude really is inspirational, so much so that Keller claims he will name his firstborn (guy or girl) Jared Allen Keller and his secondborn Allen Jared Keller. He is easily the biggest redneck to ever be a professional athlete (I’m including NASCAR drivers in that claim), which is something that kind of makes him a hero of mine. I could go on and on about how big of a man crush I have on Jared Allen (as if I haven’t been already), but that would only lead to me wasting even more of your time and you judging me in an unfavorable fashion.

Altogether, the trip to Minnesota was a huge success, even though we spent more time driving to and from Minnesota than actually hanging out in Minnesota. Still, Sage showed us a pretty unreal time that got me more excited for football than I’ve ever been in my life. When you consider my preseason trip to Mankato, my Week 1 trip to watch the Vikes dismantle the Browns, and a 3-0 Vikings start, it’s easy to see why I’m so jacked up for the NFL season. AMPAP goes out to Sage Rosenfels for not only being a member of the Trillion Man March and giving me the hookup with my favorite football team (don’t worry NCAA, I paid for everything!), but for also leading my Favre-less squad in Madden to a 6-0 start with over 1400 passing yards thus far.

In a little over three months, I managed to basically travel all over the Midwest while still taking summer school full time. I also went to Canada for four days with the basketball team, took a weekend vacation to Charlotte with my brother, and went to a local Columbus fair that was dubbed as the “Biggest Little Fair in The World” or a similar ripoff of the sign in Reno, Nevada (in reality, I could have dedicated an entire blog entry to the fair, but I’m willing to bet that you are sick of reading about how much I enjoy acting like a redneck). When it was all said and done, I set foot (not feet—I did a lot of hopping) in 13 different states and two different countries this summer, and met countless awesome people who made it all possible.

I doubt that you found my summer as awesome as I originally hyped it up to be, but I still thought it was pretty action packed. I got to hang out with a bunch of different types of people, ranging from professional athletes (the Vikings, former HS teammate who’s pitching for the Nationals) to nobodies (Keller). I did loads of traveling, got out of a tailgating ticket, and managed to knock off all the musts for any summer of mine (Indy 500, spend day on body of water, baseball game, fair, eating a ton of fried food). I was pretty sad to see this summer come to an end because in a way it’s like I saw my youth come to an end. Society is telling me that I need to grow up and stop telling girls that I would think it’s fly if they stopped by for the summer, for the summer. At the same time, I was pretty excited to see the summer end because it meant I wouldn’t have hear "Summer Nights" by Rascal Flatts being overplayed on every country station in America. That song kinda sucks.

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STOP SCROLLING!

Diehard Club Trillion fans have undoubtedly noticed that a pretty special date is quickly approaching, but for those of you who don’t know, on October 24th it will have been exactly one year since the internet and I made love and conceived this blog. For the blog’s birthday I’ve decided to throw a little bit of a party (but it’s a surprise so don’t tell the blog!), and guess what? EVERYONE IS INVITED.

I am officially declaring the week of Sunday, October 18th through Saturday, October 24th to be Fan Appreciation Week for Club Trillion and the Trillion Man March. It’s going to serve as a week for me to give back all I can (so basically nothing) to you fine people who have made this blog as much fun for me as it is. Within the next week or so I will outline what exactly this giving back entails, but for now I wanted to present what will make up a large portion of Fan Appreciation Week.

Because the 18th through 24th is your week (it’s not mine because I’m actually not a fan of my blog), I’ve decided to let the Trillion Man March do the writing for the blog. The topic of your writing should be centered around a time in your life when you were a benchwarmer, whether it was in sports or just everyday life. For example, you could write about how you are similar to me in that you rode the bench for your high school basketball team and would eat nachos during the games. Or you could write about how you had to work a dead end job for ten years and spent your entire time at the job mocking your boss by dressing exactly like him on an almost daily basis. Or you could tell stories about relationship failures. Basically, the entire premise is to explain a time when you simply weren’t good enough. The backbone of this blog is that I’m not good enough at basketball, yet I still find a way to have a good time with the team. That’s why I want your stories to be about how you aren’t/weren’t good enough, but you still found a way to take your failure and turn it into a pretty amusing situation.

As far as rules and regulations go, they are pretty simple. The first rule is to make sure your story doesn’t suck. If I wanted to publish terrible writing, I’d just keep writing about my summer and not take the time to have Fan Appreciation Week. Also, make sure you keep it clean. There are ways to talk about adult situations without using foul language or suggestive phrases. If your entire story is based around an experience you had with someone in the bedroom, it’s doubtful that it will get published (please still send it to me, though, cause I’d love to read about it). If your story only briefly touches on a singular instance in the bedroom, however, there’s a chance it could get published if you make it as classy as you possibly can. I’m fully aware that some of the best stories in the world are as explicit as can be, but I’m also aware that a large number of children read my blog and I’d prefer to not get e-mails from their parents explaining why I’m an awful influence. As a general rule of thumb, don’t write anything that you wouldn’t have told your parents at the dinner table when you were a 12-year-old. And if, by chance, your parents happen to be Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, don’t write anything at all.

Please submit your stories with the subject line of “Fan Appreciation Week Story” to the Club Trillion e-mail at ClubTrillion@gmail.com. I’m setting the deadline at 11:59 pm on October 15th so it will give me a little bit of time to sort out the best ones. I will publish the top seven entries (one each day), with the seventh place story going up on the 18th, sixth place on the 19th, etc. until I publish what I perceive to be the best story on the day of the one year anniversary, October 24th. This contest, along with the entire Fan Appreciation Week (there will be much more to the week than just this contest, as I’ll explain later) is my way of showing gratitude to those of you who have stuck with me all summer. I know that I strayed away from what probably originally brought you to this blog, so I thought I’d do a little something to show my appreciation that you continued to read despite the change. Plus, I think this will be a fun way to get everyone excited for basketball season, and thus excited for more stories involving me getting disrespected in some fashion. With that being said, go tell all your friends who used to read the blog but stopped because it got boring (can’t really blame them) to come back and participate in this contest. I’m really looking forward to reading through stories, so make it happen. Ready, go.

LEGAL NOTICE: First of all, I’ve always wanted to write “legal notice” in all caps because it demands so much respect and kind of makes my blog seem like a legitimate operation. Secondly (and most importantly), please be aware that by sending me an e-mail with “Fan Appreciation Week Story” as the subject, you are giving me permission to publish whatever is in the e-mail, including names, dates, and places. I’d really hate for you to send me some secretive story without realizing that there’s a chance your wife could get on here and read it. If you don’t want your real name to be used, make up a fake name. If you don’t want your real town to be used, just write “Avon, Indiana” because that was a rival town of mine in high school and is basically crawling with misfits anyway.

TOO FAR!

SCROLL BACK UP!

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: D. Blum, T. Rittenhouse, and T. Roche (streaks of 15)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: K. Sullivan (streak of 12)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Kara K. and features a young Kyle Madsen dunking a baseball cap. For those who might not know, Kyle is a current teammate of mine and is the tall guy that appears throughout this video. My favorite part is Kyle’s performance at the end, but that’s just me. And before you ask, no he isn’t the one with the thirty sweatbands on his arms. Anyway, there’s your shout-out, Kara. And here’s your video.

It’s uncertain whether or not Club Tril gear will ever be available in camo.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

The Last Summer – Part I

2009-09-17T16:10:00.007-04:00

I sat down to write this blog entry, not so much for your entertainment, but more because I wanted to chronicle what I thought was a really fun journey in my life (it’s really just my way of giving shout-outs to all the people that showed me a good time in the past three months). This summer I’ve resorted to posting much longer blog entries with much less frequency than I did during the season. This is because I had less basketball-related stuff to talk about, which caused me to basically wait for something to happen. When nothing did, I decided to write about personal events in my life instead of the end of the bench events in my life, and because I usually waited awhile to post, I thought I’d write a little extra each time to make up for it.

With that being said, the following (including Part II) should be the final in the pattern of long, off-topic blog entries. I am now back on campus and have started what is basically practice, meaning a steady dose of basketball will now be present in my life until April. This particular blog entry is way too long to post all at once, so I decided to post the first half now and post the rest when I finish it. Also, there promises to be a pretty important announcement at the end of the second half of this entry, so definitely open up the second part when it’s posted, skip the blog altogether, and just scroll down to the good stuff (at least that’s what I’d do).

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Every college-aged male I’ve ever met, regardless of their race, their creed, whether or not they like Creed, or which of the over 60,000 combinations they get when they go to Chipotle behaves in the same manner when three certain situations present themselves. The first is that we will place the blame of our farts on someone else standing close to us. Unless, of course, we think it breaks some sort of record on the disgusting scale in which case we will announce to everyone within a 5-iron radius that we are more of a man than the rest of the world combined. The second thing we do is develop our own barter system amongst our friends that is usually anchored by the proposal of “If you buy the pizza, I’ll buy your beer at the bar tonight.” This almost always ends up being an awful deal for the pizza buyer, as he spends $20+ on the pizza, only to see his hopes of getting free beer all night come crashing down when the beer buyer gets the first round and quickly scampers off into the night with an average-looking co-ed he met five minutes before. While both these scenarios are pretty much spot on, neither of them have anything whatsoever to do with this particular blog post (meaning you really could have just skipped this entire first paragraph altogether). The third thing that we do, however, absolutely does.

When a man is 18-25 years old, society tells him that it’s time for him to line up the rest of his life. This is usually the age when men figure out what job they want, where they might want to live, and which woman they want to blame all of their neighborhood Couples Game Night losses on (sidenote: it’s perfectly acceptable to break up with someone based on their performance in charades or Pictionary). Because of this pressure, men in my age group feel the need to outdo one another. How are you supposed to get the best job, house, or woman if you aren’t even smarter, richer, or more charming than any of your friends? It can’t happen. This is why all college-aged men (more like all men, am I right ladies?) fabricate absolutely every story we ever tell. Whoops, I think I just let the secret out.

Perhaps saying we fabricate isn’t exactly the best way to describe what we do. It’s not that we get calls from our grandmas and moms and then brag to our friends about how the ladies won’t stop bugging us (at least I don’t think anybody other than me does that). Instead, we believe (and that’s the key—we truly believe) that everything we do/did/would have done is the most compelling and interesting thing to ever happen to mankind. We’re the types to go out for a few drinks, hit on girls way out of our league, go back home with the same group of guys we originally went out with, play Halo until 4 am, and then tell everyone that wasn’t with us on that particular night that we had “the craziest night EVER.” We’re also the type that say things like “if Steve hadn’t dropped out of high school and if Tommy didn’t tear his ACL in the third game, we would have steamrolled everybody and easily taken state my senior year.”

To accompany this notion that everything we do is the best, we also are quick to point out that everything someone else does is “weak” or “lame.” For example, if Andre The Giant was drunk with a group of college-aged guys, everyone around him would undoubtedly call him a “lightweight” for being drunk after drinking only two barrels of beer and a bathtub of wine. Guys my age, myself included, are nothing more than one-uppers who always think that what they did last weekend makes The Hangover look like a tea party and honestly believe that their circle of friends in high school were “seriously the biggest badasses ever.” If you don’t believe me just ask some guy you know in my age group how his weekend was and do your best to not laugh when he inevitably pulls a Barney Stinson and uses the word “legendary” in some fashion.

As I’m sure you can probably figure out, it’s impossible for every guy in the world to have the craziest night of all-time every single night. But we don’t care. We truly believe that we are the biggest party animals to ever live, just because one of our friends had one too many last night and asked a girl if he could smell her face. We do this because it’s our way of convincing ourselves and others that we matter in this world. “Sure I’m basically incompetent at every job I’ve ever had, but if coach wouldn’t have screwed me in high school I could have easily gone D1 and ended up in the league.” To be successful in life, you sometimes don’t have to be the most talented, best looking, or most charming person. You just have give off the perception that you are, which is achieved through convincing everyone you talk to that you are literally the most interesting man in the world. With that in mind, let me tell you why I seriously had the most legendary summer ever.

At some point in life, virtually everyone makes a vow to themselves to do something. These vows are usually made on New Year’s Day or Ash Wednesday and are broken a week later because chocolate is just too delicious and turning on the safe search feature in Google Images for 40 straight days is borderline impossible. But there’s another kind of vow that young, single people make to themselves. We all seem to convince ourselves that each and every summer we’re going to have “the time of our lives” or some other cheesy line that you’d hear in High School Musical (not that I’d know or anything). We talk about travelling the country/world, eating fried anythings at a county fair, and working on a farm for a widowed cougar who probably doesn’t understand the concept of the age of consent. Like the previous vows, though, more often than not these promises go unfulfilled (the Summer of George being the prime example). We all get jobs stocking shelves at Wal-mart during the midnight shift for $7.50 an hour, which seriously hampers the fun-having potential of the summer. Suddenly instead of talking to our friends about how we’re going to buy a season pass to Cedar Point and ride Millennium Force “like ten million times” we start talking to our friends about how disgusting the mole on our co-worker’s back is and how badly we want to kick our shift manager in the nads. Because I’m graduating from Ohio State next spring and because I plan on joining the real world shortly thereafter (“pssh, good luck in this economy!”), this past summer was the last true summer of my life. In other words, it was the last summer I could act recklessly and still be able to somewhat justify it. That’s why I made yet another promise to myself that even though I was taking summer school full-time, this summer would be the best one yet. Only this time I made sure that it really was.

Excluding meteorologists, astronomers, and all those other nerds who study the rotation of our planet, pretty much everyone agrees that summer begins with Memorial Day weekend. With that in mind, I decided to start my summer off right by going to the Indianapolis 500, which is what absolutely everybody in the Midwest should do each and every Memorial Day weekend. I devoted an entire blog entry to my experience, so I’m not going to be redundantly redundant with my redundancy, but I will reiterate why the Indy 500 is a sporting event that everyone should witness at least once in their lives.

Most people assume that the Indy 500 is only for people who like racing and kissing their cousins, and while there certainly are more than enough cousin-kissers present, you don’t have to like fast cars and incest to have a good time at the race. All you really need to have fun is an open mind and an understanding that you probably will get sunburned. Outside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on race day is like five college football tailgaters (or ten if your team sucks, and twenty if your team is Indiana) rolled into one, in terms of both the number of people and the number of foods that will send you into cardiac arrest. The people at the 500 are incredibly friendly, even if they do charge you 20 bucks to park in their driveway that’s two miles from the track. The weather is pretty much perfect year after year, except for the years that it’s not. And the race itself is a heart-pounding sight for those who have never seen an auto race live. The Indy 500 is not so much a sporting event as it is a cultural happening, which is what keeps me coming back every year. Despite the fact that most of what I write isn’t meant to be taken all that seriously, I’m completely serious when I suggest that you make it a priority to go to at least one Indianapolis 500 in your life. There’s an 80% chance that it won’t let you down.

Just like the Indy 500 is a must for me each summer, waking up at the buttcrack of dawn and spending an entire day on a body of water at least 100 miles from my house is also a must. That’s why I decided to make my next big adventure of the summer a whitewater rafting trip to the Ocoee River in southeastern Tennessee. I already briefly touched on my experience in another blog entry, but I think I may have failed to fully explain how awesome of a time I really had.

After staying in a nearby hotel the night before, my brother, Keller, and I showed up at our rafting company’s station/outpost thing at around 8 in the morning with adrenaline running through our bodies and big wads of eye boogers in our caruncles. We were one part excited, one part tired, and however many parts remain nervous, because the closest any of us had come to anything rafting related was when I interrupted Bill Raftery midsentence to tell Verne Lundquist that I really enjoyed his work in Happy Gilmore. To make matters worse, we completely ignored the safety presentation, which consisted of the guy in charge basically telling us what not to do, because we were too busy telling jokes that were centered around the plot of Deliverance. Luckily for us, we had the best rafting guide any of us had ever had.

I’ve already outlined why I think Joe Cope should win some sort of award for his river-guiding excellence, so please forgive me for coming across as having a man crush on him (if he didn’t have such dreamy eyes it would be a lot easier). Joe knew every rapid of the river like the back of his hand, ya know, if he were the type of guy to look at his hands a lot or something. Because of this, he knew when we would be able to tip the raft if we all leaned a certain way, which may not sound like fun to you, but I assure you that there are few things in my life that have been more exhilarating than falling out of a raft and floating down a series of class 5 rapids. Just like my first marriage, it physically and emotionally hurt like crazy and gave me a few scars that are still in the healing process, but in the end made me a better person and was therefore worth it. Other than being an expert raft-flipper, Joe didn’t have a problem with me splashing people in other rafts, announcing to everyone on the river that I was peeing, or doing anything else that only a 12-year-old and I would do. Basically all it takes for me to like someone and have a good time is for them to allow me to act like a child. This is why I loved my whitewater rafting experience and just figuratively batted my eyes at Joe with this entire paragraph. Anyway, like the Indianapolis 500, I strongly urge all of you to give whitewater rafting a try at some point in time.

Following the whitewater rafting trip, Keller and I traveled to Hagerstown, Maryland to watch our former high school classmate Drew Storen pitch in a minor league baseball game. Drew had just been drafted into the MLB and was starting out by playing for the class A Hagerstown Suns. Because I currently live in Columbus (home of the AAA Clippers) and am originally from Indianapolis (home of the AAA Indians), I had been to my share of minor league games. However, I quickly realized that not all minor league games should be treated equally.

Anyone who has ever been to both a minor league and major league baseball game will tell you that what sets the two apart is that people are actually interested in the baseball at major league games (with the obvious exception being Marlins fans). The truth is that nobody really cares whether or not the Hagerstown Suns pull out the W on that particular day or where they are in the current standings. Nobody really cares that Corey Cartwright’s torn biceps is going to put him out for the season and will make the Suns bullpen a liability. And nobody really cares that the Suns third base coach is a little too aggressive and causes too many guys to get thrown out at home. What people do care about is that next Tuesday is Dime-A-Dog night and a thirty minute firework show will follow the game, at which point all kids under 12 can run the bases provided they brought their report card proving they got an A in at least one class.

For the most part, there is an inverse relationship between the outrageousness of the promotions at the baseball game and the level of baseball being played on the field. Major league teams and some higher level minor league teams don’t need to come up with ways to get fans to come to their games (again, except for the Marlins) because the steroids that the players take already do that for them. The rest of the minor leagues (and especially single A minor league teams) need to be creative to get butts in seats, though. This is why I truly believe some of the most creative minds anywhere are working for minor league baseball marketing departments.

I went to two Suns games while in Hagerstown and was exposed to twenty wrestling theme songs, two fireworks shows, one sack race with children, one game that involved grown men wearing baby bonnets and diapers, and one enormous beer tent down the left field foul line. There were times that it seemed as if baseball was being played only to serve as entertainment in between different promotions. I watched a man sing “Man! I Feel Like A Woman”, I saw little kids try to cheat one another in a barefoot race, and I witnessed a guy dressed as a cowboy (try to) dance to “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Going to a low-level minor league baseball game showed me that baseball games actually can be fun and people in Hagerstown, Maryland lead really boring lives, which is why they come out to the ballpark to celebrate National Egg Toss Day. Needless to say, I find minor league baseball far more entertaining than major league baseball which is to say I find three-legged couples races in which the boyfriend/husband is completely hammered more entertaining than watching Craig Counsell lay down a well executed sacrifice bunt.

To be continued…

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Before I get to the YouTube for this entry, I wanted to give a shout-out to Brian in the Trillion Man March for making a pretty awesome CLUB TRIL sign for the set of College GameDay this past Saturday. I had to go to campus to run an errand as GameDay was setting up and was pleasantly surprised as I walked by the set to find Brian close to the front row representing Club Trillion on national television. Here’s a picture for all of you who may have missed it.

You inspire me with your awesomeness, Brian.

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Streak for the Cash Group Leader: T. Rittenhouse, J. Ryder, and A.L. (which may or may not just be “Al”) Maldonado (streaks of 15)

Streak for the Cash Group Loser: N. Poor (completely appropriate last name for his performance in Streak) (streak of 12)

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Mark H. There’s your shout-out, Mark. And here’s your video.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Love In An Elevator

2009-01-04T23:13:00.006-05:00

For those of you who don't know, Club Trillion is a two man operation. I write the blogs, get the ladies' numbers, look fantastic on the bench, and take pictures holding babies. But behind the scenes, my BFF (at least that's what our charm bracelets say) Andy Keller takes care of all the dirty work. He is kind of my manager of sorts. Anyway, he did a great job stepping in a couple days ago in an emergency situation, where there were some redoinkulous claims made about me. I am going to explain the situation one more time, then forget it ever happened.

Here's the best way I can describe it. (This is a hypothetical, put in terms that are easier to understand. So if you are a writer of any sort, please do not publish this paragraph and leave out the fact that I just said it's a hypothetical. THE FOLLOWING DID NOT HAPPEN.) It's as if one of my friends had left his hunting shotgun in my car and I was approached by a lawyer, who told me that if something were to have happened involving that gun, it could lead to serious trouble for me. However, someone took this and twisted it into me being charged with murder. That's the best way I can describe what happened. I now look forward to seeing headlines that read "Ohio State Benchwarmer Commits Murder With Friend's Shotgun." This was not a big deal at all and I was just poking fun at the somewhat strict nature of the NCAA's rules. Somehow people decided to read one or two sentences and write a story on it. It's baffling to me that anybody would use my blog as a reliable source for anything but awesome YouTube videos. With that out of the way, let me get back to doing what I do.
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We lost to Minnesota yesterday in a game that we seemingly decided to stop playing with six minutes left in the first half. This was my second trip to Minnesota and I must confess that I have been impressed both times. The campus looks pretty cool and the city is so big, it almost feels like there are two cities right next to each other. The most interesting part of the trip came after our shoot around when we returned to the hotel. Here's a recap of how things went down...

6:07 p.m. - We return to the hotel and are informed that we are watching film in 30 minutes. I make a mental note that this is more than enough time for me to pull a prank on Evan Turner. Ideas start flowing.

6:09 - I get off the bus while listening to Alan Jackson's "Livin' on Love." The face I make suggests that I am the toughest man on the planet and am therefore listening to heavy metal or hardcore rap. This probably confuses everyone who is around me and can tell what I am actually listening to.

6:12 - An elevator finally arrives and a group of about six players get on board, including Walter Offutt, Will Buford, and myself. Will is listening to some rapper I have never heard of and is bobbing his body up and down, presumably to the beat. As the doors start to close, Walter sticks his arm out preventing the doors from actually closing and has a Don Vito moment. Apparently Walter is not too thrilled with Will shaking the elevator from his bobbing up and down. Walter leaves the elevator and says he will wait for the next one. I notice he is visibly upset and realize this is a perfect opportunity to exploit his current mental state and I exit the elevator with him. This seems like a good time to mention that I have a video camera with me and plan on taking awesome footage of Walter losing his mind.

6:15 - The next elevator comes. Walter, Danny Peters, our trainer Vince O'Brien, and myself board. Danny pushes the 18th floor button, ignoring my request to push all the buttons or at least make a Christmas tree design. Walter is in the corner of the elevator, still upset by the scare that Will gave him. I go in for the kill.

6:16 - I turn the video camera on and point it in Walter's direction. I then ask, "Walter why were you so scared on that last elevator?" He responds with, "Cause I cain't staind it when people be jumping on elevators!" I know exactly what is going to happen next. As soon as the doors close, Danny starts jumping as high as he has ever jumped in his life, as his feet almost come completely off the ground, and is taunting Walter relentlessly. Walter is yelling at the top of his lungs. I am laughing hysterically and have the camera focused on Walter. I decide to add to the suspense and start bobbing my body a little bit. Keep in mind I am nowhere near the level of jumping Danny is doing. Vince joins in and bobs up and down even less than I am. It's at this moment that Danny lands from one of his foolishly intense jumps and the elevator starts shaking. The elevator then stops on what appears to be the 9th floor. The doors do not open. We are stuck.

6:17 - Walter goes crazy and yells at mostly Danny, but directs a little bit of his hatred toward me. It's at this time that I'm thankful Walter does not have a weapon. This is easily the most upset I have ever seen him get and I am documenting the entire thing with my video camera.

6:18 - I realize I forgot to hit the record button on the camera. I am now almost as upset as Walter. I hit record and hope to at least get some solid post-freak out footage.

6:20 - Walter is cooling down a little bit, but is still very upset. Danny is trying to justify his actions, suggesting it's the elevator's fault and claims that I was jumping just as high as he was. Vince is in one of the corners sitting down and is surprisingly taking the situation well. I turn the camera on myself and do a "Blair Witch Project" parody. You know, the one where my nostrils become the focal point of the camera. I say something like, "It's been four minutes and we still aren't out. I feel cold and empty. I need a hot cocoa before I lose my mind. I'm beginning to seriously question if we make it out alive."

6:22 - We decide it would be a good idea to utilize the emergency phone that is in the elevator. Danny calls the front desk to the hotel and explains the situation. Danny leaves out the part about him doing a cannonball onto the floor of the elevator. Probably a wise decision on his part.

6:25 - I bring up the idea of cannibalism and ask for a volunteer to be the first to be eaten. No takers. Vince then declares that he has nutrition bars in his trainer bag. I think about the consequences of turning to cannibalism within ten minutes of getting stuck in the elevator and decide it's probably best to just eat a nutrition bar.

6:29 - Walter calls his girlfriend and discusses the situation. I ask him who he is talking to and he says his girlfriend. I respond with, "Is this the same one from last night?" loud enough for her to hear me. Walter flips out again and explains to his woman that it was just a joke. Mark - 2, Walter - 0.

6:34 - I eyeball the top of the elevator and think about a possible escape. Walter is still talking to his girlfriend explaining that I was only kidding about him being with another girl. Danny is texting various coaches on both of his phones, presumably discussing how to guard a sideline ball screen. I approach Vince and ask him to tape my ankles for added support during the escape. He agrees that it would be a good idea, but he goes a little overboard with the tape and ends up taping both of my ankles, both of my wrists, and my left index finger to my left middle finger. Either way, I'm set for an epic escape.

6:37 - The film session is supposed to have started. I don't feel quite as badly as I should that I'm missing it.

6:40 - As I'm preparing to make my escape, I am reminded of how criminals like to stash dead bodies on the roofs of elevators, much like Hannibal Lecter did in "Silence of The Lambs." The possibility of opening the hatch and having a dead dude without a face falling on me is too much of a risk for me to try it. I opt to wait it out instead.

6:42 - I roll back the video I recorded and begin watching to pass the time. Walter is still a little distraught, so he calls the front desk lady back and makes small talk with her. He begins telling her stories about his basketball career. I find this conversation he is having worthy of recording on the video camera, so I stop the tape I was watching and begin recording Walter again.

6:45 - Walter asks the lady at the front desk, "You think we can get some pizzas or something since your elevators broke on us?" He then goes on to order pizzas for everyone in the elevator. Right before he hangs up, he says, "Thanks for those pizzas. We'll call back in ten minutes with more demands." Danny explains to Walter that we aren't holding anything hostage and "demand" was probably a poor choice of words.

6:51 - I realize that by rewinding the video tape earlier and not fast forwarding it back when I started recording again, I recorded over all the footage I had previously taken. My inability to operate a video camera is now becoming annoying to everyone in the elevator.

6:53 - I put the camera back on Walter and ask him if he has anything to say for the camera. He begins talking to the camera as if it represents people who aren't in the elevator, which makes me think of an awesome idea. I suggest to Walter that he should make a video to play at his funeral in case we don't make it out of the elevator. He immediately flips out and tells me to stop talking about the possibility of us dying. Mark - 3, Walter - 0.

6:54 - I decide that it would be awesome for me to make a video for my funeral, not only because it would be funny, but also because it would drive Walter insane, making it even funnier. I now realize that I am probably a little too mean to Walter, but this is a situation too good to pass up. I begin by saying that I love my family and miss them like crazy. I then request that they not release the footage to 20/20, should 20/20 choose to run a story on the four men who got stuck in an elevator in Minneapolis. Finally, I bequeath all my belongings to The Trillion Man March, should something go down. Unfortunately for you all, nothing did.

6:59 - Walter calls back the lady at the front desk. She claims they will be there soon to rescue us. She said the same thing 30 minutes ago. I ask Walter to put in a good word for me and to ask her what color of panties she is wearing. He does neither. I guess this was his payback to me. Mark - 3, Walter - 1. Walter asks her for a free iPhone since "I think my phone broke when the elevator messed up, so you guys should get me a new iPhone." Walter doesn't even have an iPhone to begin with, and the phone he does have is obviously not broken. It is unknown what her response was, but I heard Walter say "I was jusss messin' witchu...I'm sorry." I realize at this point that there is no way the people on the outside are doing all they can to rescue us after Walter's spectacular performance on the phone.

7:05 - A call comes in to Vince from our Director of Basketball Operations. He explains to Vince that the team meal is almost over and if we want any food we should hurry up and get out of the elevator. Vince explains that we aren't on the elevator by choice. Besides, Walter had brilliantly negotiated some free pizzas out of the deal.

7:07 - I call Keller and explain what is going on. He immediately suggests we sing Aerosmith's "Love In An Elevator" to pass the time. Vince and I begin singing it. Danny and Walter claim that the only Aerosmith song they know is "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing." They start singing that, completely oblivious to the fact that it simply doesn't apply to the situation like "Love In An Elevator" does. Plus, they are so off key that blood begins seeping from my eardrums. I ask them to please either stop singing or learn the words to "Love In An Elevator." They do neither. The tension begins to build.

7:09 - The four of us have now divided into two tribes. Vince and I were on the south side of the elevator and formed our own tribe named "Team Clyde Drexler." It is unknown what Walter and Danny on the north side named their tribe. The fact that they painted their faces and ripped off their shirts suggest their tribe is barbaric in nature and their minds are probably too underdeveloped to come up with a name for themselves. Vince and I realize the probability of us winning is minimal should a war break out, and quickly decide that we would be much better off if we engaged in a game of Scrabble against the people from the north side, instead of hand to hand combat.

7:11 - Everyone agrees that it's stupid to fight over which song to sing. We all agree that singing a different song would be much more fun anyway, even if it isn't applicable at all.

7:15 - The elevator begins moving. We drop down to the 8th floor. I push Walter out of the way so I can get a good shot of the welcoming party that is inevitably waiting on us. I'm picturing banners, balloons, confetti, news cameras, and an over-sized card signed by an entire elementary school waiting right outside the elevator.

7:17 - The door is still yet to open. I turn my camera off to conserve battery for the actual rescue. As soon as I power down the camera and begin putting it away, the door opens and the only person there is a middle aged lady with a name tag that read "Bernice." Walter asks if she was the lady we were talking to on the emergency phone in the elevator. Bernice confirms that she was. I immediately regret my request for her color of underpants.

7:18 - Danny texts one of the coaches and asks him what the team is doing. The coach says the team is about to start film. I am overwhelmed by the fact that they waited on me to get out of the elevator, but quickly realize they probably were waiting on Walter. Danny and Vince get on a different elevator. Walter takes the stairs. I follow Walter with my video camera on, just in case.

7:21 - We arrive to the film room. Walter was pretty reserved and didn't do anything crazy on the way down the stairs. Dang.

7:56 - We get out of film and two large pizza boxes are waiting. One has "Walter Offutt" written on it and the other "Mark 'The Shark' Titus." Danny is furious that his pizza is missing. Danny calls Vince and Vince explains that he got his pizza.

8:05 - Danny and I return to our room. I'm devouring my pizza in front of Danny. I explain how karma works and Danny is not impressed in the slightest. He calls the front desk asking for his pizza. The lady at the front desk claims she ordered one for him and placed it outside the film room. Danny swears his pizza was stolen. I think the lady knew it was his fault all along and "forgot" to get a fourth pizza for him. Either way, my pizza is delish and I'm not sharing.

After the entire fiasco went down, I went back and watched the tape I had recorded. To be honest, the footage was pretty awful, seeing as how I recorded extreme closeups of my buzzcut over the solid footage of Walter freaking out. It all worked out pretty well in the end, though, as we surmounted our obstacle of being stuck in an elevator. Great teams always find a way to battle through adversity and win, or in this case escape from a stuck elevator.

Before the Minnesota game I was approached by Minnesota's Director of Basketball Operations, Joe Esposito. He informed me that most of the Minnesota team reads the blog and Coach Tubby Smith has even taken a peek or two. Also, the Minnesota student section (not sure what they call themselves) heckled me the entire game and even started a "We Want Titus" chant towards the end of the game. A big thanks goes out to Minnesota's team for reading, but definitely not for beating us senseless in the game. And a thank you goes out to the student section for supplying the first "We Want Titus" chant ever on the road. Good work.
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I dotted two new victims in our practice the day before the Minnesota game. Will Buford (who is kind of responsible for the elevator mishap, really) and Jeremie Simmons both fell victim to the smooth flowing jumpshot of The Shark. Two new victims made for a pretty fantastic day for me in the dotting business.

Bone- Crushing Screens: 1 to date (0 last game)
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Your awesome YouTube was sent in to me by Greg D. There's your shout-out, Greg. And here's your video.

Here is the same video as a link, for all you iPhone users out there.

Your Friend and My Favorite,

Mark Titus
Club Trillion Founder