Shouldering The Burden of Boredom

For the past few years, I’ve been told by various people throughout the Ohio State basketball program that I “don’t do anything”, and by various people I obviously mean Evan “The Villain” Turner. This idea stems from the fact that I’m not called upon to stay after practice and shoot extra shots, I don’t have to do all the drills the scholarship guys are required to do, and I’m really not expected to contribute in any way. I see where The Villain is coming from, but still, I like to think that putting up 19 points in a 90 minute practice last year counts as me doing something, not to mention the various other instances over the past few years in which I’ve been virtually unguardable. On many occasions I’ve been money for entire practices, to the point that coaches have drawn up plays for me during scrimmages. If Vinnie Johnson was “The Microwave” because he could score a lot of points quickly, then I’m “The Slow Bake Oven” because once I get hot, I stay hot for an extended period of time (plus I’m slow, which makes that nickname even better).

Now that I’ve torn the labia in my left shoulder and will miss the remainder of this season/my career, though, The Villain’s opinion of my productivity is actually pretty accurate. I’m more of a mooch now then I’ve ever been. I show up to practices ten minutes before they start, do my rehab real quick, and then walk around and bother people who actually have jobs to do during practice. If I choose to watch practice, I almost always end up absurdly reacting to every crossover or no-look pass like I’m a loser at an And1 Mixtape Tour game who covers his mouth with one hand and fist pumps with the other, all while yelling, “Oh no he dih-unt!” in reaction to all the moves that are clearly illegal in an actual game. It gets pretty boring otherwise.

To make my boredom worse, I’m not allowed to exercise unless I ride a stationary bike or use the elliptical machine (I guess running on a treadmill would create to0 much stress on my shoulder). The bike doesn’t cut it for me because I don’t see the point in riding a stationary bike if I can’t hoist shots as I’m riding. As for the elliptical, I don’t like to use it all that often because it is kind of like the Target of exercise machines. Target is labeled as a chick store, but if a guy wants to buy an XBOX game from there, it’s not all that big of a deal. When he starts telling his friends that he’s going to “swing by Target to see what kind of deals they have on curtains and drapes”, though, a serious problem exists. In the same way, the elliptical is a chick machine that guys can use every now and then to change up their cardio workouts. But when a guy starts using the elliptical on a daily basis because it “tightens my buns and thighs”, it’s time for him to get help. I’ve already done far too many workouts on the elliptical and I really don’t want to become one of those elliptical guys, so I’m trying my damndest to stay away from the thing. Even though my buns and thighs do feel noticeably tighter.

With all this sitting around and waiting on my surgery day to get here, it almost feels like I’m on death row and I’m just waiting to be executed (not that I’d know what that feels like, of course). The only real difference between death row inmates and me is that they are held prisoner by steel bars and some guy named Horace with a handgun on his hip and an outrageous number of keys on his keychain, while I’m held prisoner by my own body. I guess another difference between us is that I’m not a pedophile/rapist/murderer, even though I choose to look like one most of the time. The only crimes I’m guilty of are murdering the confidence of my teammates and raping their zone defense everyday in practice with my silky smooth jumpshot. But I don’t think I can even be prosecuted for that in the state of Ohio.

Mentally, it’s been a very challenging past few weeks for me because I truly “do nothing” just about every day. I can’t exercise because I would either injure my shoulder more or look like a chick (hard to say which is worse). Even if I could exercise, I don’t have any motivation to, because it’s not like I need to stay in shape for basketball. After I get my surgery and fully recover, my career will be over, meaning there’s no need for me to stay in basketball shape (I’m already in much better shape than 99% of the players in the church league I’m going to dominate in a couple years, so I can take it easy for a little bit). I have already felt like a lame duck for most of this season, but the past few weeks have left me feeling lamer than ever.

The fundamental aspects of being a walk-on that have made this blog as fun as it’s been have been stripped away from me. I can’t make it rain in warmups anymore, or even slap boards for that matter. I can’t outshoot The Villain in practice and then rub it in his face that even though he’s going to be the National Player of the Year (By the way, there’s no reason he shouldn’t win this year. I’ll legitimately be upset if someone else wins. This is coming from his sworn enemy. That should tell you how good he’s been), he’s not as good of a shooter as a walk-on who plays basketball solely because he hit puberty before his peers. I can’t blare country music in the weight room because I don’t lift anymore. Sure I still get all the perks of playing college basketball, like a front row seat to all the games, admiration from people on campus, and a free Cadillac from a rich booster (just kidding, compliance!), but it’s hard to enjoy them when I can’t even make it rain anymore. I never thought I’d see the day when I would complain about how much it sucks to not do anything, but then again I also thought I’d never see the day when Britney Spears would shave her head and vandalize a car with an umbrella. I guess I’ll just try my hardest to enjoy the free clothing, meals, and travel that comes with playing high level college basketball, even though I do nothing to deserve them. Life isn’t always fair and I’m learning that the hard way.

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I was originally planning on bringing back The Cage with this post, but I’ve decided to push it back to the next post. For those who don’t know, The Cage is my version of a mailbag, where I post e-mails from the Trillion Man March and provide some juvenile commentary about each one. If you’ve got something to ask me, send an e-mail to ClubTrillion@gmail.com. If it doesn’t suck, I just might publish it.

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Don’t forget that Club Trillion Shirt Day is less than a month away! On March 2nd of this year, members of the Trillion Man March are being called upon to wear their Club Tril shirts as a way to celebrate all the fun we’ve had together in the past 15 months (or however long you’ve been reading the blog). If you still don’t have a shirt, click here and get one before people start questioning how big of a loser you really are. All the proceeds from your shirt purchase will be donated to A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses.

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We played one game against Iowa since you last heard from me, but tragically I received no one armed embraces from their team.

One Armed Embraces: 18 to date (0 last game) ___________________________________________________

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

Proud To Be An American But Even Prouder To Be A Buckeye,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

The Name Game

It’s no secret that the relationship I have with the compliance office at Ohio State could best be likened to that of a teenage girl and her mother. Compliance (acting as the mother, obviously) likes to give me orders and they aren’t afraid to scold me when I come home two hours after curfew because I was making out with Brent Carter in some cornfield just outside of town (if he wasn’t two years older than me and didn’t have like thirty varsity letters, maybe it would be easier for me to tell him no). On the other hand, I listen to compliance’s orders and follow every one of them, even if I do mumble insults under my breath as I walk away. I then go sulk in my room about the punishment that was handed out and call all my friends to complain about how I can’t go to the dance this Friday because my mom is “seriously the biggest jerk ever”. It’s not exactly the healthiest relationship in the world, but I know compliance still loves me and they know that I still love them. Except when they are seriously the biggest jerks ever.

As I’m sure you remember, at the end of the last post I wrote, I called on the Trillion Man March to follow me on Twitter. My chief reason for asking you to do so was that my girlfriend promised to buy me a Dairy Queen cake if I reached 20,000 followers, which is why she’s the coolest girlfriend in the world (Valentine’s Day is coming up—I have to suck up a little bit). But the other, more relevant reason I wanted you to follow me on Twitter is because I said that I was going to start a completely pointless contest that resulted in shout-outs for the Trillion Man March. I wrote about how I don’t sign my real name on our per diem sheets, but instead I write either quirky made up names or names of famous people throughout history. My idea was to prompt the TMM via Twitter to come up with creative names for me to use on the per diem sheet, because I didn’t think anybody fully appreciated what I was doing. As it turns out, I was exactly right. There was a particular group of people who didn’t appreciate what I was doing one bit.

Before I discuss the frustration I have with the compliance office at Ohio State, let me first say that I think they are all very fine people who truly do want what’s best for all Buckeye athletes. I have nothing against them personally and I completely understand (even though I disagree) where they are coming from in most cases. In fact, most of the problems we have aren’t because of their decisions, but rather because they are just enforcing the dumb rules laid out by the NCAA. Like most mother-daughter relationships that go through a rough patch, I’m sure compliance and I will look back on some of the headaches we’ve caused each other and we’ll just laugh. Ok, so maybe they won’t, but I definitely will. In fact, I don’t see why it has to wait. I think I should look back and laugh right now.

After publishing my post that included the tidbit about the Twitter contest with the fake names, a part of me wondered if admitting that I don’t sign my actual signature would come back to bite me. But then I realized that there was no way compliance would honestly care that much. After all, virtually nobody on the team signs their actual signature, but instead they all choose to scribble a couple times and collect their money (I understand that most autographs look like scribbles anyway, but I assure you that the per diem scribbles are much, much worse). Technically there should be no difference between a scribble and a completely fake name, seeing as how neither are actual signatures. Just like you can’t be “kind of pregnant”, you also can’t have varying degrees of authentic signatures. Either you sign your actual signature or you don’t. At least that was my thought process and it made total sense to me. If I was going to get in trouble for signing fake names, I knew that a large majority of the team would get in trouble for scribbling, and there was no way compliance was going to make most of the guys on the team re-sign all the per diem sheets. It was strength by numbers at it’s finest.

Unfortunately, I forgot to account for the “The Guy With The Blog Is Always The One At Fault And Under No Circumstances Should Anyone Else Ever Be Disciplined” Clause in the NCAA’s bylaws that states “the guy with the blog is always the one at fault and under no circumstances should anyone else ever be disciplined” (the title of the clause sort of gives away its meaning, in my opinion). Because of this clause, I was forced to make a special trip to our compliance office to re-sign all the per diem sheets with which I decided to have a little harmless fun. Meanwhile, my teammates weren’t reprimanded in any way for their illegible scribbling. I probably had it coming to me by publicly discussing my shenanigans on my blog. And I certainly didn’t help my cause when I printed the name of one of compliance officers on the per diem sheet in place of my signature, just a few short hours after finding out that compliance was upset about my fake names. Even so, because my teammates don’t exactly sign the sheets either, I felt like I was being treated unjustly. Especially when I showed up for my punishment and I was greeted with an enormous stack of per diem sheets dating back to at least two years ago. Even though I explained to the compliance office that I had only been signing fake names for a few weeks, they still made me sort through the giant stack and review every sheet.

Pictured: The glamorous life of a college basketball player

My gripe with how this all played out isn’t that I got caught, but rather that compliance went to such great lengths to see that everything was fixed. I’m guessing that because we get paid a substantial amount of money every time we sign the per diem sheet, our compliance office is forced to file all sorts of forms in case some NCAA accountant comes knocking on their door and starts spewing out fancy words like “audit” and “taxes”. Still, my fake signatures shouldn’t be a big deal. After all, the point of signing the per diem sheet is to verify that I did indeed get paid my per diem. Whether I sign it with my usual signature or whether I sign it as “Your Mom”, it shouldn’t really matter because I’m verifying that I got paid either way, even if one way happens to be incredibly juvenile.

I guess what I’m scratching my head about the most is that it seems like there should be more important things for compliance to investigate than the consistency of my signatures on per diem sheets from 2008. What’s crazy is that they wouldn’t even have to look at other athletes to find these more severe things. That’s because I know that I have personally committed a handful of NCAA violations that are much worse than fake signatures on a per diem sheet. Here are a few that come to mind:

• When my dad bought me a car for my 17th birthday, he got the car dealer to drop the price by $100. I’m fully convinced the dealer did so because he knew I was a five star recruit and he wanted me to play for his alma mater.
• During my sophomore year at Ohio State, I was relentlessly hitting on some chick at an on-campus party. I tried to ease into a conversation by making her laugh, so I said, “Doesn’t it annoy the crap out of you that those dumb little kids on Legends of The Hidden Temple could never put together the shrine of the silver monkey?” She didn’t budge. But then someone mentioned to her that I played basketball at OSU and she gave me her number as she whispered something in my ear that would surely make her dad want to kill me. I’m almost positive that’s an impermissible extra benefit, since she only gave me her number because I play basketball.
• At the beginning of this season, when I had to run a mile in under 5:30, the ghost of Steve Prefontaine visited me while I was sleeping and gave me running tips. I probably should have told him to go away, since NCAA rules strictly prohibit athletes from talking with agents or “runners”.
• I popped my collar for about a month while I was in high school. I realize this has nothing to do with NCAA violations, but since I’m confessing things from my past I thought I’d go ahead and get this off my chest too.
• I ordered a medium soft drink during my last trip to Chipotle, but the guy working the register gave me a large. Sure it might have been because they were out of medium cups, but maybe he saw my letter jacket and knew that his parents were Ohio State boosters who wouldn’t mind covering the 79 cent cost for the upgrade.
• My mom made me dinner the last time I visited my hometown. At the time, I thought it was because she loved me and wanted me to eat well. I later found out that she is an agent and she was trying to persuade me to sign with her after the season. That must explain why the food wasn’t burnt that time. (Just kidding, Mom! You know I love you and your meatloaf!)

Because I self-reported these violations, I’ve got my fingers crossed that I won’t get into trouble for them. At the very least, I hope I don’t get disciplined as badly as I did last time. I don’t think my writer’s cramp can handle any more punishment like that. ___________________________________________________

A lot of readers have suggested for awhile that there should be a “Club Tril Shirt Day” that prompts everyone in the Trillion Man March to wear their shirts for an entire day. I brushed this idea to the side, because I just assumed that everybody already wears their shirts every day anyway. Picking a day to wear a Club Tril shirt is like you and me picking a day to breathe or Evan “The Villain” Turner picking a day to be generally unpleasant to everybody he talks to. If something is already done on a daily basis, a special day kind of loses all its meaning. This is why I don’t celebrate National Chipotle Day.

After giving it more thought, though, I realized that your Club Tril shirt might get dirty from time to time, which might cause you to wear something else on a particular day (this wouldn’t be a problem if you bought two or three of them). This means that a “Club Tril Shirt Day” wouldn’t be all that bad of an idea. With that in mind, I’m declaring Tuesday, March 2nd as “Club Tril Shirt Day” throughout the Trillion Man March. I’m picking this day because it’s my senior night and it’s also the last time I will ever put on an Ohio State uniform (I’m waiting until March 4th to get surgery on my shoulder because I want to dress for senior night). This will be the last time many of you will see me make it rain in warm-ups or slap boards in the layup line. (Even though my arm will probably fall off, I’m going to make it rain like never before in warm-ups. It’s the last time I’ll ever have a chance to do so and since I’m getting surgery two days later, I really don’t care if I tear my labia any worse than it already is.)

Even if you aren’t coming to the game that night, you can still take part in “Club Trillion Shirt Day” wherever you may be. I know that there are a lot of readers from all over the world, and I encourage all of you to take part in this completely insignificant celebration. For those of you who have to dress up to work, wearing your Club Tril shirt underneath your suit is not a bad alternative. Get creative if you have some sort of dress code at your work/school. This is a day of celebration for the entire Trillion Man March.

If you are new to the party and haven’t bought a Club Tril shirt, I strongly encourage you to do so by clicking here. Not only will it become the most comfortable shirt you own, but all proceeds from your purchase will benefit A Kid Again, a local charity aimed at enhancing the quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. There’s really no reason to not get one. ___________________________________________________

Our game against Minnesota produced one armed embraces from two people that consistently deliver every time we play the Gophers. I’m talking of course about Minnesota’s Director of Basketball Operations, Joe Esposito, and their left-handed sharpshooter, Blake Hoffarber. I’m running out of compliments for these guys.

The Penn State game also produced a couple of one armed embraces from two guys that will be receiving their first shout-outs on my blog. Steve Kirkpatrick and Adam Highberger delivered on the embraces and I couldn’t be happier about it. I think I’ve now received embraces from players on every team in the Big Ten.

One Armed Embraces: 18 to date (2 last game) ___________________________________________________

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

Proud To Be An American But Even Prouder To Be A Buckeye,

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder