CAMERON SHARP/THE LANTERNMark Titus, center, sits on the bench during Sunday’s game against Northwestern. Titus’ blog, ‘Club Trillion,’ is gaining popularity for its witty and sarcastic insights into life as a bench player for the Buckeyes.Ohio State men’s basketball fans won’t have a Big Ten championship to celebrate this season, but they will have something to smile about. For that, they can thank the off-the-court antics of bench-warmer Mark Titus.
The junior guard’s blog, “Club Trillion,” pointedly ignores the drama of college basketball, instead focusing on a little-known side of NCAA athletes: when stripped of all the pomp and circumstance, they can be some really funny guys.
One need look no further than a recent “Club Trillion” entry about a team election to decide who was “the whitest guy on the team” (it came down to Titus and junior center Kyle Madsen).
“Club Trillion” provides fans with the kind of cutting but good-humored teammate-mocking that has become a Titus specialty, like this recent blog entry about freshman guard Walter Offut: “I truly believe that Walter thinks that coach Matta has absolute control over everything in the world. About a month ago on a plane ride to wherever we were playing, we hit a patch of turbulence and the plane was shaking for a solid five minutes. During this time Walter screamed for coach Matta to do something, as if coach was supposed to tell the turbulence to run a suicide and then leave the gym until it decides to play harder on defense.”
This is the sort of insider snarkiness that has attracted more than a half-million visitors to the blog since Titus and two teammates came up with the idea last October.
“I never planned for it to become anything big,” said Titus, who is a surprisingly low-key and shambling presence in person. “I kind of started it as a journal for myself, so I can remember what happened in 20 years, and as a way for my friends and family to keep up with what’s happening.”
“Club Trillion” is based on the principle that nearly everyone, at some time in their life, has sat on the bench, thinking, “put me in, coach,” but knowing he probably won’t.
The title of the blog refers to the box-score tally that is assigned to a player who goes in for one minute and does nothing of any consequence – scores no points, snares no rebounds, makes no assists. The player’s result in the box score is a “1” in the minutes-played column followed by twelve zeros. It may not have looked like much on the court, but on paper it looks like a trillion.
It’s a distinction that only an over-looked or under-played athlete could achieve. Titus said he’s scored a trillion at least six times in his OSU career.
“I think everyone hears the story about the guy who scores 20 points a game, but no one hears about the guys on the end of the bench,” he said. “I thought it would be a fun way to take a situation that’s kind of stale and make the most out of it.”
Titus said he would gladly give up his e-fame for the skills and game-time to really contribute to his team. He says it embarrasses him when fans of his blog chant for coach Thad Matta to put him in at the end of a game – and boo if he does anything to mar his chances for a trillion.
But that doesn’t mean he’s about to give up the role of court jester.
He makes fun of freshman guard William Buford “for having a weaker goatee than I did in sixth grade.” When he noticed that sophomore Evan Turner had a bad habit of referring to himself in the third-person, as “the kid,” he started calling him “the villain” and made him the target of a series of light-hearted pranks. He has also conjured up an imaginary relationship with ESPN correspondent Erin Andrews, complete with a heart-breaking but imaginary break-up.
Titus said he finds that, other than OSU fans, his audience consists largely of other pine jockeys. He is a sort of diplomat to the disenfranchised of other teams. At one point, he received e-mails from Michigan players who were confused by his blog: they had become fans in spite of their attempts to hate everything Ohio State.
Titus said he’s careful to avoid putting anything that would cause trouble for the team in his blog, but he hasn’t always been successful. Twice, the university’s NCAA compliance officials have contacted him and told him to take information out of the blog. Once he was reprimanded for posting a teammate’s grade point average, and another time for posting a link where fans could buy “Club Trillion” T-shirts.
Titus wasn’t always a bench warmer, though. At Brownsburg High School in Indiana, he was a starter on the basketball team and was the starting quarterback on the football team. He was second-team all-state in basketball, and his grades were such that he was recruited by Harvard.
Even though he did not get a scholarship offer from the Buckeyes, Titus chose to go to school at OSU.
He planned on studying to become an orthopedic surgeon, but has since changed his major to marketing. He joined the basketball team as a manager at first, but didn’t find the workload to his liking.
“I was just filling up water bottles, so I ended up quitting after about a week,” Titus said. Eventually, Titus was invited to join the team.
Titus, the only member of the basketball squad to make the Big Ten all-academic team, said he is pleased the blog has become so popular, but he’d still be writing it even if it weren’t.
For one thing, his mom loves it.
“He is such an intelligent writer in his blog,” said his mother, Laura Titus. “He can quote books or movies or anything, and that great memory always helps him in his blog.”
And even though he’s not complaining, Titus will be the first to mark the irony of his situation.
“It’s kind of backwards,” he said. “I worked 20 years on basketball and have only been writing my blog for three months, and I’m more famous for my blog than basketball.”
Titus’ blog is online at clubtrillion.blogspot.com.
Samuel Rose can be reached at [email protected].
