By: John Walters (FanHouse.com) — MILWAUKEE — Moments before the tip-off of the 2007 national championship game between Florida and Ohio State, Mark Titus approached Buckeye head coach Thad Matta.

“I got five fouls to give,” said Titus, who then pointed to the end of the bench where he would be sitting. “I’ll be right down here if you need me.”

Mind you, at the time Titus was a freshman on the Ohio State basketball team … a freshman who had begun the year as a team manager … and then quit. But there he was with a courtside seat for the Buckeyes’ first national championship game since 1962.

“I’m going to write a book about it all,” says Titus, better known as the voice behind the cult-fave blog ClubTrillion.com. “But for now it’ll just be on the blog.”

Evan Turner may be the Oscar Robertson Trophy (one of the premier national Player of the Year awards) winner, but Titus, a 6-foot-4 senior, is the most popular player of the Sweet 16-bound Buckeyes.

Less than a year and a half since its November 2008 debut, ClubTrillion.com has received 2.7 million hits. A Titus appearance on a Bill Simmons podcast early in the blog’s existence goosed its popularity, but there is little doubt that the primary reason lies with the fact that Titus — the son of a principal and an English teacher — is both hilarious and self-effacing.

“When I arrived at Ohio State I wanted to stay involved in basketball, so I decided to become a manager,” said Titus, whose AAU team in Indianapolis featured Buckeye classmates Michael Conley and Greg Oden. “I thought I’d be playing on a scout team or participating in drills, but that first week I was filling up water bottles and filming practices.”

Quickly disenchanted with big-time college athletics, Titus quit.

“I figured I’d go back to being a regular student and watching ‘Saved By the Bell’ reruns,” he says.

Then a funny thing happened. Oden hurt his wrist. Another player was also lost, and the Buckeye squad was down to 10 players. Matta consulted Oden and Conley about Titus (“Can this guy really play?”), and before long he was tendered drugs without a prescription an invite as a walk-on.

“They needed bodies for scrimmages,” says Titus. “By the end of the season I was on the team and I was on scholarship. Can you believe that?”

Not bad for someone who quit as a manager earlier that season. Then again, the Titus narrative is replete with such tales. There’s his growth stoppage, for example. “I was 6-4 in eighth grade and I haven’t grown since,” says Titus, who has one older brother. “My first game in eighth grade I scored 29 points. That was a highlight.”

Then there’s the story of how Titus did not receive an offer from Harvard, the richest anecdote involving a Midwest kid and an Ivy League suitor since Joel Goodsen’s in Risky Business. “I’d been on the phone once a week or so with a recruiter from Harvard,” says Titus, who averaged 16 points per game at Brownsburg (Ind.) High School. “He planned to come out and watch me play, but before that game my coach decided to discipline me.”

At a practice Titus’ coach beckoned him to put more emphasis on rebounding. Titus pointed at a 6-9 teammate and asked, “Why can’t he rebound more?”

“So my coach sat me for the first half of the game with the Harvard coach in the stands,” says Titus. “I started in the second half, but when I looked out in the crowd he was gone.”

Statistically speaking, Harvard suffered no terrible loss. The term Club Trillion, in fact, comes from the stat line of a garbage time player: 1 minute followed by nine zeroes in the various statistical categories. Titus has scored nine points (two 3-pointers, three free throws) in his collegiate career, for example. On the other hand, as this self-produced video attests, Titus can make it rain. Matta has even called him the Buckeyes’ best pure shooter which, on a team that features three-point ace Jon Diebler (the all-time leading scorer in Ohio prep history), is quite the compliment.

And then there’s the fact that no Buckeye has ever been involved (defining the term loosely) in more Ohio State victories (110) than Titus. “Whatever I can do to help,” Titus says.

His legacy, though, will be his self-effacing, self-revealing blog that takes readers inside the universe of big-time college sports. More than that, though, the blog takes us inside Titus’ felicitously fertile mind. Last year, for example, he declared for the NBA draft, his ego no doubt inflated by that 0.1 ppg career scoring average.

“The NBA didn’t think it was funny,” says Titus. “They called and wanted me to sign a paper saying that I was pulling out of the draft. I didn’t take it seriously until one of our athletic officials approached me in the middle of a shooting drill with a pen and paper. He said, ‘Sign this. Now.’ ”

Fortunately for Titus, Matta appreciates his sense of humor. Earlier this season an e-mail circulated amongst the Buckeye football and basketball players concerning a huge party that would feature them. Matta got wind of it and called a team meeting, in front of school administrators, to warn his players about attending. As Matta began his lecture, Titus interjected, “Coach, can you forward me a copy of that e-mail? I never got it.”

“I call it ‘Every Day Acting’,” says Titus, who says that from day one he has always felt comfortable prodding Matta. The sentiment is mutual. As Titus, who had season-ending shoulder surgery last month, sat courtside during a recent practice with a reporter, Matta approached and barked, “Titus, did you get my car washed yet? That thing better be clean!”

The uninitiated should be warned: ClubTrillion.com is often less TMZ than it is TMI (Too Much Information). Recently Titus blogged about missing the second overtime of Ohio State’s Big Ten conference tournament semifinal win over Illinois because of a bout with diarrhea:

“I managed to make it to the locker room and do the dirty work before any real damage was done, but I ended up missing the beginning of the second overtime, when the game was hanging in the balance, all because I had my own battle going on that was hanging in the balance more than any of you ever cared to know.”

Titus’ ease with self-deprecation is due in part to a long history of being humbled. His high school AAU team, Spiece Indy Heat, featured five starters who are all now in the NBA: Conley, Oden, Daequan Cook, Eric Gordon and Josh McRoberts. “I remember one game, we were down seven with 10 minutes to play and I’m in the game,” Titus recalls. “And I thought, What am I doing on the court?”

That approach continued in Columbus, and for the longest time Titus was content to provide comic relief and scout-team defense. Then, before his junior season began, Titus was on Facebook when he came upon a friend who had his own blog. “I thought to myself, You can do this? Why don’t I start a blog?”

It was Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets Society, Professor Keating, who told his charges that men have written poetry throughout history for one reason: to woo women. And while the dispatches on ClubTrillion.com are not quite poetry, Titus can attest to the seductiveness of a provocative pen.

“My girlfriend is a former Ohio State cheerleader,” says Titus. “I used to check her out all the time during games but I never spoke to her. Then she contacted me about my blog and told me she thought it was very funny.”

How about that? As a ‘baller, Titus has a trillion-to-one shot of making the NBA. But as a blogger, he’s an All-American.

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