Your Contributions Matter

In our last blog you read about the role of appreciation in employee engagement, I’d like to introduce you to another component of the Life Strategies’ Employee Engagement model: Contribution. Engagement means being involved and invested in the future or organization. It’s about actively contributing to making your organization more successful. In light of this, organizations need to show employees how their contributions are linked to corporate successes.

Engagement is much more than just contributing through your regular work duties; it’s how involved you are with the “bigger picture.” Consider the following:

• Are you an individual who actively contributes to shaping the organization?


• Are you solicited for feedback on the direction of the organization?

Effective contribution is a partnership – good employers provide opportunities to get involved and good employees avail themselves of those opportunities. In return, employees get opportunities to cross train, take on stretch assignments, and explore other opportunities within the organization.

Battle For The Belt

In case you missed it, summer is now officially over which means that it’s now officially time to break up with that kinda hot chick who you never really paid attention to in high school cause she was a few years younger than you, and you only started dating this summer because you both worked together at Applebee’s in your hometown and you were bored (plus, she was wearing the great Larry Bird jersey 33).  Just trying to give you a heads up.  If you let your fling drag on for too long, she’s bound to spring a surprise college visit on you and knock on your apartment door right as you are rounding third with that hunnie from 3A.  Even though you’d technically not be doing anything wrong, she’s immature and wouldn’t see it that way, which means that she will cry, cuss you out, and might even fake a pregnancy as a last ditch effort to save the relationship that never really was a relationship in the first place.  And nobody wants that.  So do the right thing and make the call.  No matter how far away you now live from each other, take the safe approach and just blame everything on “the distance.”  It’s the one excuse that women always accept, probably because it’s the one excuse that they aren’t embarrassed to tell their friends about.  Every other reason for breaking up either makes her look like the bad guy or makes her look like a pushover who was used and kicked to the curb.  Blaming it on “the distance” means she can tell her friends that it was nobody’s fault and there’s nothing that could have been done about it.  Trust me on this. I have experience saw it in a movie once.

Aside from being the official time to break up with your summer fling, the beginning of fall should be a sign of something much more important in your life (get excited about the next blog post if you read that sentence and thought, “Well duh. The new FIFA always comes out at the start of fall”).  That’s because, if you’re anything like me, the beginning of fall is an exciting reminder that basketball season is right around the corner. If you somehow aren’t enthused about that, maybe you should consider that this means another nine months of Adam Morrison’s mustache and Brian Scalabrine’s Scalabriness are right around the corner.  That’s what I thought.

(By the way, I just realized that “Scalabriness” rhymes with “penis.” I don’t know for sure if I did this on purpose or not. That troubles me.)

This time of year has also historically meant that it’s time for The Villain and me to get our love-hate relationship going again.  This usually was accomplished during our first weightlifting workout of the fall, when The Villain would hit me in the nuts while I was bench pressing, and would explain to me after the workout that he was taking my Gatorade because, even though I always lifted more than him, he deserved two bottles for working so hard.  This year will obviously be different, though.  The Villain selfishly took his talents to the NBA and I, well, I didn’t.  For the first time in my life, I will not be playing basketball throughout the fall and winter, except for the handful of occasions I go to the Y and demoralize more middle aged men than erectile dysfunction and gold-digging ex-wives combined.  I guess I could pull a George Costanza by showing up in my old practice uniform at the first OSU practice this season and acting like I’m still on the team, but since I never made any significant contributions during practice when I actually was on the team, I doubt anyone would even notice I was there.  Alas, as it stands the basketball world will have one less shark in its oceans this time around.

To deal with the depression that comes with knowing I’ll never play competitive basketball again, I decided to do what every other semi-depressed person my age does – I turned to Facebook to somehow make everything better.  Any other time, I would do some self-healing by posting lyrics from an applicable song or Bible verse as my status, followed by “OMG SO TRUE!!!!” or something similar, because it’s a well-known fact that this method always works.  In this case, though, I couldn’t really find a song that applied to my situation (some Tupac songs were close, but he uses the N-bomb too much) so I instead decided to look through all of my pictures on Facebook, because that obviously makes a ton of sense.  After looking at the pictures for a few minutes, I was reminded of a few things.  One of these things is that my haircut/facial hair/outfit for this past Indy 500 is one of the proudest accomplishments in my life.  Another is that the Trillion Man March is awesome.

Seemingly every other picture on my Facebook was actually a picture of one (or many) of you wearing a CLUB TRIL shirt or “throwing up the shark fin,” or both in a lot of cases.  There were pictures of the TMM from tourist attractions in foreign countries, pictures of handfuls of teammates celebrating their victory with shark fins, and pictures of guys in their CLUB TRIL shirts with swarms of babes at their side (obviously).  As tacky as it sounds, these pictures made me realize that this blog was never about me.  It has always been and will always be about the Trillion Man March and benchwarming in general.  Sure I’m the one who does the writing, but the fact is that, for the most part, you all have stories that are very similar to mine because you are either living them right now or you lived them in the past.  I’m far from the first benchwarmer and I certainly won’t be the last.  Keeping this in mind, if benchwarming will continue after I’m done doing it, why can’t the Club Trillion we all came to love continue as well?

Heading into this basketball season, I plan on making Club Trillion less of a one man operation and more of a community thing, because that’s really how it should be.  I obviously can’t fill the role of the walk-on giving a behind the scenes look at the world of college basketball anymore, but there are plenty of walk-ons who can.  Maybe they don’t have as strange of an imagination as I do (and I can guarantee that their jumpers aren’t anywhere near as moist as mine), but I’m sure they can offer a different perspective on some of the same hilarious and disrespectful aspects of being a walk-on basketball player.  I don’t know yet how things will work when the season does eventually get here, but I do know that I want this blog to be less about one man’s thoughts and more about how awesome the collective benchwarming community is.  I’ve had fun writing about celebrities and wiffleball this summer, but it’s time to get back to the fun and relevant stuff (like the FIFA 11 review I’m writing in the near future).

The purpose of this blog entry is to accomplish two things.  The first being that I want to call on the Trillion Man March to email me with any ideas you have about what we can do on the blog during the upcoming basketball season.  I already outlined in a previous post how I envision quirky player profiles and interviews of different walk-ons around the country, and maybe even guest posting from time to time (from current and former walk-ons/benchwarmers).  Basically, anything that can give these guys an opportunity to let their voices be heard while also providing different perspectives of the walk-on role for the TMM.  So if you have any good ideas, please don’t hesitate to email me.  As always, if your ideas suck please keep them to yourselves.

The other objective with this blog entry is to inform the TMM about the one thing I have decided on for this upcoming basketball season.  In the same previous post, I discussed how I plan on eventually having a Club Trillion awards ceremony in the future, where I would give out a scholarship to my favorite walk-on and a custom made WWE belt to the walk-on who recorded the most trillions during the season.  Well, as of right now, it’s looking like the scholarship isn’t going to happen this season due to the small problem of not having any money.  Rest assured, the scholarship will eventually happen, but probably not until I get a job and spend my first big chunk of money on a SHARK JETSKI/SUBMARINE (HOLY F’ING BALLS). The most-trillions award, on the other hand, is most definitely going to happen and is going to happen in a much more badass way than I ever thought possible.  After an hour of searching for the belt to use for the award, I eventually came across a belt that I’m almost positive was conceived solely for Club Trillion.

You know you want one.

The above picture is a rough idea of what the belt will look like, only there will be CLUB TRIL logos and American flags on the sides.  It has the potential to be the single greatest college basketball award in history.  And by “has the potential,” I mean “is guaranteed.”  Unfortunately, though, I do have to lay out some ground rules for this award because it is going to be nearly impossible for me to track box scores for every player in the country.  Here they are:

• Division I players only – I respect the hell out of all walk-ons, but I’m restricting this to Division I guys for a few reasons.  I’m just guessing here, but it seems much harder to get trillions at the D1 level, not to mention that walk-ons are much less likely to get playing time in Division I games.  Maybe if enough guys from other divisions/NAIA express interest, we might be able to do multiple awards in future years.
  
• To be eligible, all walk-ons must send an email to clubtrilcontest@gmail.com by January 1, 2011 – This rule is in place simply because I don’t want to have to look at hundreds of box scores every night to keep track of all the trillions in the country.  Also, I don’t want the award going to someone who doesn’t know anything about Club Trillion or *gulp* wouldn’t appreciate a custom made WWE belt.  All it takes is a simple email that says you want to be considered for the belt.  Please make sure you send it to the new email address so I can keep it separate from the normal Club Trillion email.  Even if you aren’t a Division I walk-on, I encourage you to find a way to inform the walk-ons for your school/favorite team to email me so they can have a chance at the belt.  Hell, they don’t even have to be walk-ons.  Any D1 player is eligible.  I’m just assuming that walk-ons are the ones who have a legitimate shot at winning.  Either way, I’m writing about this now so everyone has ample time to get their names submitted for the contest.  Spread the word.
  
• ESPN box scores will be used – To avoid any discrepancies, the ESPN box scores will be the official box scores for the contest.  Not all box scores are the same, so to establish consistency, I’ll be looking just at the ESPN box scores.
  
• You can play any number of minutes – The only stat that doesn’t matter for the contest is the minutes played.  Everything else has to be a zero, but minutes played can be any number.  All forms of the trillion are accepted, including the rare 0+ trillions.

That pretty much sums it up.  If any other problems arise concerning the trillion contest between now and the start of the season, I’ll be sure to address them on the blog.  As the season progresses, I’ll post the leader board at the end of each blog entry so the TMM can pick their favorite benchwarmers and cheer them on to benchwarming supremacy.  Shoot, I even encourage the TMM to gamble on which walk-on they think will take home the title.  Also, I’ll talk to the company that makes the belt and put together a more detailed idea of what the belt will look like.  In the meantime, it’s your duty as a valued member of the Trillion Man March to inform every Division I benchwarming basketball player that you know about their opportunity to win what will forever be remembered as one of the greatest awards our generation has ever had a chance at winning (second only to the “glowing piece of radical rock” from GUTS, obviously). ___________________________________________________

Before you watch the awesome YouTube for this post, I feel like I should clarify something.  It’s true that I find very few things in this life more ridiculous and annoying than awful rappers.  But, when an awful rapper happens to be French, it somehow becomes funny to me.  And when the awful rapper also happens to be one of the better players in the NBA, it becomes hilarious.  With that in mind, here’s your awesome YouTube, sent in to my by Matt B. There’s your shout-out, Matt. And here’s your video.

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

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

The Most Famous Walk-on of All-Time

I graduated from Ohio State about three months ago, which is another way of saying that society told me three months ago that it’s time for me to grow up. Originally, I was under the impression that becoming a grown-up consisted of making a few less fart jokes and acknowledging that I’m supposed to pay my taxes (yeah, whatever that means). I wasn’t too far off with my assumption, but I did neglect one very important aspect of being an adult – having to constantly tell everyone I meet what I do for work.

Seemingly every non-family member or non-close friend I’ve talked to in the last three months has asked either what I’m doing for work or what I plan on doing for work (part of it, I suppose, is because this blog has blessed me with the opportunity to rub elbows with a few celebrities, which somehow makes people assume that Kimmel is going to bring back The Man Show and ask me to co-host). I give pretty much everyone the same answer by saying, “I’m somewhere in between unemployed and self-employed”, which is my way of trying to be coy and mysterious but almost always ends up making me sound like I’m a drug dealer or a male prostitute (not saying I’m not). After I give my answer, an inevitable look of satisfaction strangely comes across the person’s face. Even though they might not say anything, their look says everything. More specifically, their look says, “This is awesome. You think you’re hot stuff cause you had your fifteen minutes of fame, but I’m the one who has the real job with health benefits and 401k, and you’re the one who is two months away from living in your parents’ basement. I will now pull my waistband down to my hamstrings, expose my butt cheeks, and give you the opportunity to kiss my ass.”

The truth is that I’ve got plenty of money leftover from the hundreds of thousands of dollars an Ohio State booster gave me when I played at OSU (you can take my wins from me, but I refuse to give back my Heisman). But Chipotle isn’t cheap and FIFA 11 is set to come out soon, so I’ve decided to do a few freelance things to have a little more discretionary income (nothing is published/available yet – I’ll let you know when it is). I’ve actually been working on my freelance stuff all week and decided to take the week off from blogging, but as I was doing some research for the freelance pieces, I came across something that needs to be more publicly discussed. In retrospect, I probably should have just tweeted this information, but if I did that I wouldn’t have been able to write three completely irrelevant paragraphs about how I’m unemployed. Also, at least five of you would have complained about how I hadn’t written a blog in forever. So instead, I chose to take something that could have been said in one sentence and I dragged it out into a bunch of paragraphs, just to make sure the Trillion Man March knows that I didn’t forget about you. You’re welcome.

Now that we got the drawn out intro/set-up out of the way, here’s what I discovered with my research – According to Wikipedia (which is my most trusted source for anything and everything), Billy Mays was a walk-on linebacker at West Virginia. I’ll say it again. Billy Mays was a walk-on linebacker at West Virginia. Think about that one for a second and then meet me at the next paragraph so we can break down the implications of this.

The thing that immediately came to mind when I read about this is that Billy Mays is unquestionably the most famous walk-on athlete of all-time, which in turn means that he’s a very big deal to someone like me who writes a benchwarming blog. You could argue that Rudy is more famous because he’s actually known for being a walk-on, whereas Billy Mays is known for selling stuff and having a beard that makes Al Borland look like a pansy. But if you did that, I would be forced to counter-argue by calling you a doucher and punching you in the nuts for being so dumb. Billy Mays had a highly publicized death, was an immensely popular Halloween costume, and had an episode of South Park devoted to him. I’m no expert on celebrities (even though I did write over 5,000 words about them once), but I’m pretty sure that’s the celebrity trifecta. Rudy, meanwhile, only had a movie made about him. Sure it’s one of the best sports movies ever made (Hoosiers being the best), but Joe Montana was quick to point out that it is a movie, after all, and nobody really cared about the real Rudy all that much. In summary, the movie version of Rudy could compete with Billy Mays, but as it stands, the real Rudy couldn’t even sniff Billy Mays’ jockstrap. Especially since he probably routinely soaked his jockstrap in a vat of OxiClean.

Another important thing to consider is that Billy Mays not only walked on, but he was a football walk-on. And played linebacker. This is mind-blowing to me. The guy who was known for looking so welcoming and nice on TV that it was almost uncomfortable spent his college years lighting up wide receivers who had the balls to come across the middle without having their heads on a swivel. I like to think that he came up with his infomercial introduction during these football playing days. I’m guessing that as some scrawny dude tried to run a crossing route through the middle of the field, he yelled “Billy Mays here!” as he took his head off. And then threw in an extra elbow drop to the guy’s groin for free.

Yet another crazy part about all of this is that Billy Mays didn’t just play at any college. He played at West Virginia. This means it’s almost certain that, on at least one occasion, he kissed his sister and was completely hammered off of moonshine. But beyond that, it means that he had to have been relatively good at football. I’m not sure how good West Virginia was during his playing days, but that doesn’t really matter. He was good enough to be a walk-on linebacker for a Division I football team. This means that my aforementioned scenario of him lighting someone up is at least plausible. And that’s enough for me.

You may think that this isn’t that big of a deal and won’t change your life all that much, but I can just about guarantee that the next time someone brings up Billy Mays, you’ll be quick to chime in with this walk-on nugget of information. Personally, finding out that Billy Mays was a walk-on linebacker at West Virginia is life-changing for me, to the point that I would be completely devastated if it turned out to be not true. My perception of the man has drastically changed for the better, which makes it depressing to know that I never respected him as much as I should have while he was alive. I’ve gained so much respect for him, in fact, that as much as I would have wanted to end this blog post by making a ridiculously corny joke about him, I’ve decided that I’ll just take the high road. There’s always a right time and place for jokes and this isn’t it. Any other time, I’d go through with it, but trying to get one more cheap laugh at the end of this blog post by making a corny joke about a guy who recently died would be Mighty Petty. __________________________________________________

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to my by Alex K. There’s your shout-out, Alex. And here’s your video.

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

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Appreciation Makes a Difference!

Appreciation is a core component of two of Life Strategies’ models: Employee Engagement and Let’s CHAT! (a coaching tool). The element was embedded into both models for very similar reasons – many people today feel underappreciated...and appreciation does make a significant difference. According to the Bully Free at Work Blog, Appreciation is one of the top 3 things that leaders can do to minimize the impact of a disrespectful workplace. An article from CIO.com reported a US Department of Labor survey indicating that 64% of people who had left their jobs said they’d left because they didn’t feel appreciated. The same article reported a startling stat from Gallup – 70% of those surveyed said they received “no praise or recognition in the workplace.” No wonder so many leave!

Let’s CHAT! is an acronym for Communicate, Help, Appreciate, and Take Action. When I developed the Let’s CHAT! model to help managers and supervisors with coaching conversations, it was to respond to some of our corporate clients’ in-house surveys indicating that a significant number of employees felt unappreciated. However, there was considerable pushback from managers and supervisors who found the “appreciation” step of the process awkward and forced – they asked if they could replace it with “Analyse” instead. It’s so much easier to engage in problem-solving conversations with our colleagues than it is to show authentic appreciation! Therefore, we stuck to our original model and left appreciation intact. Years later, in Deirdre Pickerell’s research on employee engagement, we weren’t at all surprised to see Appreciation surface as a fundamental component of engagement, also making a significant contribution to employee retention.

Looking for creative ways to show your appreciation? Here are 80 to get you started!

Interested in reading more? Consider Dr. Noelle Nelson’s book, The Power of Appreciation in Business.

Still looking for more? Join me in a one-week e-course to learn more about the Let’s CHAT! model, beginning November 17, 2010. Let’s CHAT! will also be a component of our 3 day leadership training (Keeping Employees Engaged During Business Transformation ) beginning October 20, 2010. To learn more about employee engagement, join Deirdre for a 2 week e-course beginning October 27th (Career Management at Work: Keeping Employees Engaged).

Where Are We Going in 2010 With High Speed Rail in Canada?

This summer has been busy for Canadian business, winning contracts and investing in operating high speed rail lines. The only problem is that it is not happening in Canada.

Bombardier Incorporated, in a joint venture, has won a contract for 40 high-speed train sets from China's Ministry of Railways, worth about $761 million.

Two Canadian pension funds have joined forces to bid for Britain's only high-speed rail line, three people familiar with the matter said. Borealis, the infrastructure investment arm of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, is working with Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) on a joint offer for High Speed 1, which has a 30-year concession to run a 110 kilometre (70 mile) railway linking London and the Channel Tunnel.

In Canada the quest for modern passenger rail service in 2010 continues to be an uphill struggle. The main blame has to go to politicians who lack any type of vision or defined plans for high speed passenger rail.

Alberta - Federal and provincial politicians along with their City of Calgary and Edmonton counterparts are in the dubious position having two current high speed rail studies completed and no action has been taken. It is simply embarrassing that there is no passenger rail service at all between the province’s biggest cities, and the deadly Highway 2 remains the only choice for Albertans who want to travel by land.

Ontario-Quebec - Two current Ontario/Quebec high speed rail studies are not being released. Perhaps its a good thing the studies are not released as the present federal government has no passenger rail vision or policy. It does not seem to matter that the public, municipal, provincial and federal politicians along the line want effective and efficient passenger rail service.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper ignores the issue of modernizing our inter city passenger rail. VIA Rail continues to stagger along with high fares and low speeds that make it not an option for the majority of Canadians.

According to Corporate Knights Magazine, in 2007-2008, the Government of Canada spent only $326 million on passenger rail compared to $20.9 billion on roads.

Recent blogs and editorials have addressed this topic in interesting ways. Blogger Joseph Uranowski has some very negative things to say about Prime Minister Harper and his government’s lack of commitment to passenger rail. Joseph fails to mention that no previous federal governments have moved forward on high speed rail either.

Then there is an article by Robert Pressor in The Metropolitain, a bilingual newspaper in Quebec that started in 2008, on high speed rail. I won’t take Pressor to task about some of the statements about true high speed rail in his articles. Okay just one example.

His suggestion that the existing schedule between Toronto and Montreal was ok and that the government's current investment will make it even better is weak. As I have mentioned several times, the federal government's money for VIA Rail improvements on the Toronto to Montreal line will only bring schedule time improvements like we had in 1975! I am not sure how that is anything to cheer about.

Pressor did suggest using the cheaper solution by running faster trains on existing track.

The fundamental flaw is that CN Rail doesn't even want passenger trains on their lines. Who can forget then CN President Paul Tellier's speech in front of a New York business audience where he let slip,"I wish we could get rid of them".(in reference to VIA Rail)

For a good present day example; MoreTrains website has the latest on the ongoing saga about a CN leased line (to Rail America, an American short line rail company). For over a year Rail America has been fighting VIA Rail to try and keep them from adding more trains through Kitchener and Guelph into Toronto. The dispute is currently at the Canadian Transportation Agency.

I do love Pressor’s Bombardier's Jet Train example though. I had high hopes that it would be sold somewhere. (Alberta, Florida) It seems the High Speed Rail Canada Youtube Video Channel footage of the Jet Train operating on the test track is becoming increasingly rare footage. I have been looking for over a year for where the Bombardier Jet Train is being kept. It seems to have disappeared from public view.

I had hoped President Obama's vision and action plan of revitalizing passenger rail in the USA would have spurred on our own government to action. Unfortunately nothing has happened. We will keep pushing and make modern passenger rail service a reality in Canada.

Reflecting on 9/11

I don’t watch the National Geographic Channel all that much for a variety of reasons. The most obvious of these reasons is because I’m not 11-years-old, which is another way of saying that topless tribal women don’t really do it for me anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong – if someone tells me that topless tribal women are on Nat Geo, I’ll still change the channel and check it out. I’m only flesh and blood, after all. It’s just that now I casually observe and make a mental note that Charles Barkley’s man boobs will probably look like these women’s breasts in the next 10-15 years (assuming that they don’t already look like them now) and I no longer giggle with my classmates in school the next day about how I saw real life boobs on TV and they weren’t even blurred out.

The reason I bring up Nat Geo is because, frankly, I wanted to discuss topless tribal women, but also because I watched the channel for the first time in a long time the other day after discovering that they were showing a bunch of 9/11 documentaries. I consider myself to be a bit of a historian and don’t exactly know why, but I’m a sucker for any kind of documentary about tragedies. I could watch hours and hours of shows about things like the JFK assassination, the Columbine shootings, or Pearl Harbor (as long as those hours and hours aren’t directed by Michael Bay). But what sets 9/11 apart from seemingly every other American tragedy is not only that I can remember it happening, but also that I could fully understand the magnitude of what was happening as it happened. The only other tragedy I can say this about is the recent futility of Michigan football, which is completely different because it’s a tragedy that I enjoyed. That’s right. Despite what Nick Saban may think, there actually is a distinct difference between college football and the most devastating terrorist attack to ever take place on American soil. Hard to believe, I know.

After watching a couple hours of these 9/11 documentaries, I started talking to my friend Keller on Skype and I eventually brought up what I had just watched. Our ensuing conversation followed my typical 9/11 conversation script. First we discussed how much that terrorist dude who came up with the whole plan (not Osama, but the other guy) looks like a cross between Ron Jeremy and Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. This went on for at least 10 minutes. We then shifted our focus towards hypotheticals and what-ifs, because if my friends and I aren’t playing “would you rather…”, we’re either playing FIFA or we’re discussing hypothetical and often outlandish scenarios (this sentence was supposed to kinda be a joke, but it’s actually frighteningly accurate. I can’t decide if this is a good thing).

We each went back and forth with crazy what-if situations that are completely irrelevant (“if you were on one of the planes and had a parachute, would you have jumped out and saved yourself or would you have tried to stop the terrorists and died a hero like the guys on United 93?”), and almost always lied with our answers to make us seem more badass (“Are you kidding? I would have murdered all the terrorists on the plane, landed the thing safely, and then made my exit like the Jet Blue flight attendant dude. Except I would have done the Stone Cold Steve Austin thing with the two beers I stole”). This macho discussion of random what-ifs went on for an hour before I decided to turn things up a notch and make Keller do some real soul searching. Here’s what I wrote(copied and pasted from our conversation):

“While backpacking through the hills of Afghanistan and whatever countries border Afghanistan, you wander into a random cave to get some shade and you find Osama bin Laden. He’s alone and he’s watching re-runs of Jersey Shore on DVD because his cable went out and he can’t risk telling the cable guy where he lives. Nobody in the world knows where he is, not even the terrorists that he used to work with (you know this because Anderson Cooper just recently broke the news on his Emmy award-winning show, Anderson Cooper 360°, that Osama was overthrown by his people and is now in hiding). He has no weapons on him. All you have in your backpack is a delicious Chipotle burrito and the half-full bottle of green jalapeño sauce you obviously stole from the restaurant because, let’s face it, that’s all you really need.

Your first choice is to engage him in hand-to-hand combat, and hope that all the time hiding out in the cave has made his skills rusty and his aging body a step too slow. Best case scenario: you win the fight, do that one move that they do in movies where the one guy breaks the other guy’s neck and instantly kills him, enjoy your delicious burrito, and become a national/global hero. Worst case scenario: he manhandles you, puts you in a sharpshooter, steals your burrito from your bag, and eats it while you squirm in agony. Oh, and then he does that one move that they do in movies where the one guy breaks the other guy’s neck and instantly kills him.

Your other choice is to give Osama the burrito as a peace offering. He will obviously accept it and will immediately abandon any thoughts of harming you he might have had, because even radical Muslims can appreciate free Chipotle. You make small talk with him and learn that, like you, he also secretly resents his family for never trying to go on Family Double Dare. You leave the cave with his full trust, hike your way back to civilization, and eventually come back to America to inform the military where he is hiding. They then travel to the cave and kill Osama, hopefully after they remember to light a bag of poop on fire, put it by the front door, and ring the doorbell like you suggested. Best case scenario with this choice: Osama gets a rocket launcher to the nuts, courtesy of the red, white, and blue. Worst case scenario: Osama leaves the cave before the military arrives and continues his life in hiding. To make matters worse, you’re out a burrito and your chance at becoming a global hero.

WHAT DO YOU DO?”

We both agreed that we would try to fight bin Laden, mostly because we both think we’re much tougher than we actually are. Some of you might argue that not trying to fight him would be the cowardly thing to do, but others would argue that doing so would be the smart and safe play (plus you could also argue that you’d rather have bin Laden die by getting blown to smithereens than die from a neck-breaking maneuver that would probably take a few attempts). For me, fighting him is a no-brainer because it’s my personal philosophy that any time I have a chance to cement my legacy as an American hero, I’ll risk life and limb to make it happen. Even if I die, I’ll know that I died defending the two things that mean the most to me – my country and my Chipotle. Words can’t even begin to explain how much honor there is in that.

For those who care, here was Keller’s take:

“I’d try to fight him for sure. If he beats me and puts me in the sharpshooter, I’d refuse to tap out, to the point of passing out from the pain like Stone Cold at Wrestlemania 13. Because that’s F-ING AMERICAN. But even if I’m on the brink of death, the pretend Wrestlemania crowd's chants of ‘U-S-A! U-S-A!’ will allow me to summon one last bit of strength and break his neck via a Stone Cold Stunner.”

In case you weren’t aware, the nine year anniversary of 9/11 is on Saturday. Personally, I think it’s important for all of us to reflect on the tragedy and think of ways we, as Americans, can become better people and better citizens of this great country (if you’re reading this and you aren’t American, I wish I could say I’m sorry but I’m really not – love it or leave it). You can accomplish this by watching footage from 9/11 in hopes that it will help you conjure up feelings of patriotism, but reliving the horrors of that day seems pretty depressing to me. Instead of looking at the past, I encourage you to focus on the future or, more specifically, a hypothetical and completely unrealistic future. The what-if scenario I wrote about gives you an opportunity to do some soul searching and evaluate your commitment to this country. There are no wrong answers to the question, as long as you have America in mind with your decision. How you react isn’t important. Knowing that you’d do anything to kill bin Laden if you found him in a cave while backpacking is. So do some thinking Saturday (after you say a prayer for the victims’ families and our soldiers who are currently at war because of 9/11) and put yourself in that situation. Ask yourself what you would do. But most importantly, ask yourself what you would risk for your country – your life or your delicious Chipotle burrito? __________________________________________________

I’m bypassing Trillion Man March YouTube submissions, because this post obviously needs to be properly ended with a patriotic video. Luckily, my favorite national anthem performance of all-time happened to be at a basketball game, so it fits into the basketball-related theme that all the YouTubes at the end of posts have. I’m sure virtually all of you have seen this, but it’s worth watching over and over again. Anyway, without Freddy Adu, here’s Marvin Gaye at the 1983 NBA All-Star game.

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

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder

Globetrotter Tryout

Alright, so here’s the deal. I’ve spent the past month or so changing my mind back and forth as to whether or not I was going to tell the Trillion Man March what happened at the Harlem Globetrotter tryout in early August. I signed a confidentiality agreement with the team, but then thought that maybe I could write about some things from the tryout anyway, but then changed my mind and realized that I probably shouldn’t mess with the confidentiality agreement, but then changed my mind again, but then changed my mind again, but then changed my mind again, but then changed my mind again. Get all of that?

Many of you have asked me about the tryout either by emailing me or by stopping me at Chipotle, and I keep playing the confidentiality agreement card, which usually makes you as upset as my fiancée gets when I refer to her as “my future first wife.” And rightfully so. My dodging of the question made me more of a puss than Carson Daly’s single painted pinky fingernail. In my defense, the last time I ever even thought about challenging authority was when I refused to go to the principal’s office in 6th grade after I pulled a chair out from under Brandon Brocker as he was trying to sit down at lunch (he totally deserved it). Unless, of course, you count the time I angrily told Coach Matta to “suck it” at practice and emphasized my point by crotch chopping at him (this really happened and I really wasn’t messing around. I got pissed when he said something about how I suck at rebounding it prompted me to have a rare outburst of anger. Luckily, everyone thought I was joking, including Coach Matta. For the record, although I’m undersized and I’m as athletic as Rosie O’Donnell, I’m a force on the boards). Or if you count the time I never signed my real name on the per diem sheets last basketball season. Or if you count the time I used all 15 minutes of my fame to raise hell with the 2009 NBA Draft. Or if you count basically my entire high school sports experience. Ok, so I have a long and sometimes notorious history of challenging authority. Give me a second to search for another excuse…

Alright, I got it.

What if I told you that I didn’t write about the Globetrotter tryout for a few weeks because I honestly didn’t know if I made the team or not? What if I told you that I didn’t want to write about the Globetrotter tryout because I was saving it for something much bigger and much more important than my blog? What if I told you that these past three sentences sound like a 30 for 30 promo for ESPN if you read them out loud? What if I told you that I killed this paragraph by writing all these sentences in the form of questions and because of that I’m just going to move on to the next paragraph?

As I so eloquently alluded to in the last paragraph, two better reasons for not writing about the tryout are that I didn’t know my fate for a very long time and after I eventually learned my fate, I realized the entire experience was too good of a story to waste on a blog entry that nobody would read. But if you are reading this you obviously are interested enough to have read a blog about what happened at the tryout. And many of you have inquired about my status with the Globetrotters because the Globetrotters are coming to your city (no, I’m not going to link to Big & Rich) and you want to know whether you should buy tickets. Considering all of this, I feel obligated to let you know if I’m on the team in the next paragraph. Just be warned that I might come across as a bigger tease than the chick from “Chattahoochee.” (By the way, can we assume that Alan Jackson’s cure for blue balls is a greasy burger and a grape snow cone? I have no idea how that could possibly work. Can anyone confirm or deny this method?)

Since I’m running out of ways to prolong the announcement, I’ll just cut to the chase – I will not be playing with the Harlem Globetrotters for a variety of reasons (one of which may or may not be because they don’t want me on the team). I know that many of you are thinking to yourself, “Of course you aren’t. You suck at basketball and being good at the sport is kind of a prerequisite for being on the Globetrotters.” My response comes in the form of two counterpoints. The first is this. The second is that I can guarantee you that there is much more to the story than my sucking at basketball. My short-lived relationship with the Globetrotters was so entertaining, that I decided a blog entry wouldn’t do it justice. Instead, I’m going to devote a chunk of the book I’m writing (tentatively titled “Don’t Put Me In, Coach”) to my time with the Harlem Globetrotters. Obviously, this seems like it’s nothing more than a tactic to get you to buy my book when it comes out (hopefully in March) and I can assure you that it absolutely is just that. However, this will also give me a chance to have a lawyer look over my confidentiality agreement and let me know what exactly I can write about (I seriously do plan on finding a lawyer). In the meantime, the Trillion Man March can speculate about what happened during my 36 hour trip to Long Island in early August and fill in the details as they see fit. Hint: there were black people there. ___________________________________________________

Your awesome YouTube was sent in to my by Nick Z. There’s your shout-out, Nick. And here’s your video.

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

Mark Titus

Club Trillion Founder