Don't Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible NCAA Journey From the End of the Bench to the End of the Bench

by Mark Titus

  The very next day following the West Virginia loss, Noopy requested his scholarship release so he could transfer to another school. Some have suggested that this was because he played only 12 minutes against West Virginia after not getting much playing time in our nine other games (mostly because when he did play he completely and utterly sucked ass). But I know the real reason. Noopy quit because he and I had come to blows just two days earlier, over the same thing that has sparked just about every fight throughout the history of mankind—a rack of baby back ribs from Applebee’s.

  TWENTY-SIX

  As much as I liked to make fun of The Villain for being a head case during his first couple of years at Ohio State, he was nowhere near as crazy as Noopy was. From my perspective, The Villain was more of a case of “it’s cute how upset he gets at trivial things,” whereas Noopy was “I genuinely fear for my life because he has blown everything out of proportion and is fuming over something that should’ve never been an issue in the first place.” The Villain only got the attention as the mentally unstable guy on the team because he was older and already established as a bit of a nut, but Noopy was borderline psychotic and would ream into teammates on a daily basis for not being able to catch his no-look passes that he rocketed off their ankles or faces. Even with these daily outbursts, I don’t think anyone could’ve anticipated him completely blowing a gasket like he did when he tried to fight me before the West Virginia game.

  About a week before the West Virginia game, and the night before the Iona game, we gathered at our arena to take a team bus to a hotel on campus. In case you don’t remember from the story earlier in the book about Ivan getting a beej while I was 10 feet from him, let me remind you that it was standard procedure for us to stay in a hotel on campus the night before weekend games as a way to prevent guys from going to parties or bars all night. And to deter guys from sneaking out of the hotel in the middle of the night, it was also standard procedure for us to meet at the arena and take a bus to the hotel to ensure that we wouldn’t have our cars waiting for us in the hotel parking lot. Because this meant that we were held captive in the hotel all night, the manager driving the bus would always take us somewhere to get food before he dropped us off. More often than not, we would go to a plaza just north of campus that had both a McDonald’s and a Raising Cane’s (a chicken finger restaurant that is popular in the South as well as a handful of other places across the country, including Columbus). Also included in this plaza was—you guessed it—an Applebee’s.

  It was understood that we were to make the process as fast as possible because we all just wanted to get back to the hotel, hang out for a little bit, and then eventually fall asleep (or get a beej with our roommate in the room). Not only that, but our director of basketball operations, Dave Egelhoff, always waited for us at the hotel because he had to be there to check all of us in, so getting our food quickly was kind of the courteous thing to do. The manager driving the bus would just park in between McDonald’s and Cane’s, and the guys would pick one to get their food from (or just sit in the bus because they planned on getting a pizza delivered once we got to the hotel).

  Every now and then, guys would walk to the other end of the plaza to get Subway or even go into the Kroger to get some groceries (I once bought a tub of ice cream to take to the hotel), but they moved quickly and didn’t take any more time than the guys who went to McDonald’s and Cane’s. Simply put, it was understood that we unofficially had about 10 minutes to get our food and get back to the bus. In other words, we clearly didn’t have time to go to Applebee’s. But on this particular night Will and Noopy had a hankering for some baby back ribs and, rules be damned, nothing was going to stand in their way.

  When we parked between McDonald’s and Cane’s, everyone except Will and Noopy got off the bus, went to one of the two fast-food places, got their food, and promptly returned to the bus. After about 10 minutes of waiting on the bus, we finally realized we had no idea where Will and Noopy were, so one of my teammates texted Will and discovered that they were both waiting for food at Applebee’s. I decided to go investigate. When I peeked through a window and saw both of them sitting at the bar with drinks in front of them, I decided that I had seen enough. I returned to the bus and explained the situation to everyone and tried to persuade the manager to drop us all off at the hotel and come back to get Will and Noopy. The manager said he was under strict orders from Egelhoff to not leave until everyone was on the bus, so I had to sit down and wait it out.

  After 10 more minutes of waiting, we got impatient and started egging on our manager to leave Will and Noopy and just come back and get them later. He again stressed that he didn’t want to get in trouble and suggested that I call Egelhoff to ask him if it would be okay to leave, so I stepped to the plate and took on a leadership role since nobody else on the team would. But right as I got done explaining the situation to Egelhoff over the phone, Will and Noopy came out of Applebee’s holding a couple of to-go bags, so I told Egelhoff not to worry about it anymore because we had resolved the situation. When Will and Noopy returned to the bus, I hung up the phone and stopped caring about the whole ordeal because I was just happy that we were finally going to the hotel. This is where I thought the story would end. But sadly, for Noopy the story was just beginning.

  A week later, we gathered around Coach Matta after practice to hear his final thoughts on the day’s practice and the upcoming game against West Virginia. Following Coach Matta’s speech, Egelhoff walked to the middle of the huddle and explained the plans for the evening and told us to meet back at the arena at 8:00 p.m. to go to the hotel, before going on to remind us that when we went to get food before heading to the hotel, we were supposed to get fast food or at the very least get something relatively quick. He then went on to look directly at Noopy and Will and say, “That means no Applebee’s.”

  Everyone in the huddle gave a light chuckle, and we went our separate ways. Most of the guys stayed up in the practice gym to get extra shots up, but since I never played and had no desire to get better, I headed straight for the locker room so I could take a shower, change, and go home as soon as possible. And since Noopy preferred bitching about his lack of playing time instead of taking the initiative to put in the extra work and improve his game, he followed right behind.

  When I finished showering and made my way back to my locker to get dressed, Noopy was sitting at his locker waiting for me. “That’s messed up that you gotta go snitching to Egelhoff,” he said and let out what I thought was a playful laugh, but later learned was one of those evil “getting murdered is in your immediate future” laughs.

  I turned back to Noopy. “Yeah, I wasn’t really snitching, though,” I said. “I honestly couldn’t have cared less what you guys were doing, so it’s not like I was trying to tattle to Egelhoff that you were breaking some rules. I just wanted to go to the hotel because I was tired, and the only way that could happen was to explain the situation to Egelhoff. But then you guys came back to the bus, so I told Egelhoff not to worry about it anymore and I hung up on him. It was all just a big misunderstanding. Besides, everyone else was just as impatient as I was. I was just the one who actually made the call.”

  Noopy had no interest in listening to my reasoning, and he walked toward me with an intense scowl on his face. “Nah, you snitched,” he said. “And that’s fucked up.”

  Sensing legitimate anger, I decided the best way to handle the situation was to just laugh it off and pretend he wasn’t even there. This might not have been a great idea, because my laughter pissed Noopy off even more and led to him getting in my face.

  Now, if you’ve been paying close attention to this story up to this point, you might be confused about a small detail that I mentioned earlier but haven’t addressed since. Well, the answer is yes—I had yet to get dressed after getting out of the shower, meaning I was still butt-ass naked as all of this was happening.

  Noopy approached me with clenched fists and tears welling in his eyes, and he said
, “Don’t laugh, bitch. This shit’s not funny. You were trying to get me in trouble ’cause you’re a snitch.”

  Since fighting him was completely out of the question for a variety of reasons (I was naked, he was clearly more worked up than me so his adrenaline would’ve been a huge advantage for him, and it’s a personal policy of mine to not throw down in fisticuffs over baby back ribs), I decided to try to use my nakedness to my advantage and diffuse the situation the only logical way I saw fit.

  Most of the guys on the team were some of the biggest homophobes on the planet, so I thought that my pork sword just flopping around out in the open would be my best defense and would successfully deter Noopy from starting a physical altercation. I made good use of my exposed wiener by saying to Noopy, “Just calm down. You know I don’t like it when you get angry. Look, every time you get all worked up like this, it makes me flaccid.”

  This didn’t exactly work as planned. Noopy shoved me into the wall with both hands and yelled, “This isn’t a fucking joke!” Whoops.

  A couple of teammates walked into the locker room and surely misinterpreted the sight of Noopy trying to pin my naked body up against a wall while he and I were the only two in the room. Upon realizing that Noopy wasn’t aggressively in the process of performing fellatio on me but was instead moments away from trying to beat me senseless, they rushed over to break everything up. Noopy shoved me again, whiffed on what would’ve been a powerful punch to my face, dropped a bunch of F-bombs, and repeatedly alternated between calling me a “bitch” and a “snitch.”

  After my teammates restrained Noopy, I got dressed and had to laugh at how ridiculous it was that Noopy wanted to brawl because I didn’t have the patience to sit on a cramped and crowded bus for 20 minutes while he selfishly got baby back ribs. Even funnier was the fact that every other guy on the team felt the same way I did, so if Noopy was going to have a beef, it should’ve been with everyone else too. Anyway, I finished getting dressed, walked out of the locker room, went home, and to this day have still not spoken a single word to Noopy since the incident.

  Two days later Noopy had transferred, and we all gathered in the locker room to reflect on his brief stint at Ohio State. I rather predictably bragged about how I was responsible for making him quit, which prompted a surprise reaction from some of my teammates. Much like how I was chastised by my teammates when The Villain lost his cool in a practice the year before (the practice where he tried to punch me because I asked him to throw me a bounce pass), some of my teammates criticized me for Noopy’s actions. They claimed that I “should have known better than to laugh” and that I “had to have known that he was going to snap.”

  While that may be true, the fact of the matter is that if I actually did snitch, I also snitched on Will, yet he never once said anything to me about it and never had a problem with me (another example of why Will is my all-time favorite teammate), so clearly I wasn’t the problem and clearly the entire issue should’ve never gotten to the point where I even had the opportunity to laugh at Noopy for getting mad. Either way, this will go down as one of my favorite memories of my time at Ohio State, if for no other reason than it’s fun to reduce the whole ordeal to just “Noopy tried to fight me over baby back ribs from Applebee’s.”

  Also, it is memorable for me because, as unbelievable as it may sound, this was only the first of three different times throughout that season that a teammate of mine instigated an altercation with me while I was naked. You can read into that whatever you want, but as far as I’m concerned this trend is obvious proof that guys on the team would notice just how enormous my dong was as I got out of the shower and then would try to fight me because my massive man meat made them jealous and insecure.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  After losing Dave for the season shortly before the West Virginia beat-down, and then dealing with Noopy’s exodus from the team shortly thereafter, we were at a crisis point right as our first conference game was upon us. Luckily, we opened the Big Ten season against a pretty bad Iowa team at home. But Iowa was 10–3 coming into the game, and since they had beaten up on a bunch of cupcake teams for the first half of the season, they weren’t yet aware that they actually kinda sucked.

  We controlled most of the first half and took an eight-point lead into halftime, but Iowa came storming back when the second half started and tied the game before the first media time-out. We responded with a mini-run of our own and briefly led by seven, but Iowa showed a ton of resilience and kept the game close the rest of the way. In the end, we squeaked out a three-point win that was one of those wins that could be interpreted as either “this is just what we needed to get back on track” or “there is serious cause for concern because we should have blown these guys out.” Judging from our results in the immediate future, it was the latter.

  Following the close win against Iowa, we lost by nine at 21st-ranked Minnesota in what was certainly an unmemorable game. But even though the game wasn’t anything to write home about (and let’s be honest—with today’s technology, I don’t think anybody is writing home about anything anymore), the entire road trip itself was probably my favorite of my career. That’s because, thanks to a series of paranoid, mean-spirited, and just flat-out dumb events, I got stuck on an elevator with two of my teammates and our trainer for over an hour.

  Since the blog post I originally wrote a few years ago about this incident seemed to be the consensus favorite among people who followed my blog, I figure I’ll stick with the same retroactive diary format for the book that I used back then. And by that I mean that I have basically just copied and pasted the blog post into this book. But if you are one of the people who read the original that was posted in January 2009, don’t you worry—I did a good deal of editing, so really it’s not the same story but just resembles the original story and is now much better. (I guess this is the same thing the people behind Disney’s version of Doug thought too.)

  Besides, even if it was the exact same, it won’t kill you to reread it. Unless, of course, you’re reading it again while driving a car or operating a flamethrower or something. Then you might be screwed.

  Anyway, here’s how everything went down:

  6:07 p.m.—We return to the hotel from practice at Minnesota’s gym 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 The Villain. Ideas start flowing.

  6:09 p.m.—I get off the bus and make my way to the hotel lobby to wait for an elevator to take me up to my room. I’ve got my headphones on, and I’m listening to Alan Jackson’s “Livin’ on Love,” even though I have an intense scowl on my face that I’m hoping portrays to onlookers that I’m a badass who listens to heavy metal or hard-core rap. The nerdy kid from The Little Giants would no doubt be impressed with this intimidation tactic.

  6:12 p.m.—An elevator finally arrives, and a group of about six players get on board, including Walter Offutt, Will Buford, and myself. I turn my music off because I don’t want my teammates to overhear my sappy country music and make fun of me. Will, however, leaves his music on and is listening to some rapper I have never heard of and bobs his body up and down. Apparently bobbing up and down is Will’s method of dancing along with his music, which I find particularly interesting considering he’s the same guy who always claimed that I was a terrible dancer. (Bobbing up and down versus copious hip thrusting and “suck it” crotch chops—you tell me which is the better form of dancing.) Will continues to dance, and Walter has a Don Vito moment as he gets so upset and starts yelling so quickly it’s difficult to understand what he’s actually trying to say.

  As a guy with a history of paranoia and all sorts of phobias, Walter apparently isn’t too thrilled with Will making the elevator shake. He tries to get off the elevator, but a few of the other guys notice how worried he is and try to hold him back because tormenting Walter is their way of showing brotherly love. But Walter’s adrenaline kicks in, and he punches, scratches, and claws his
way toward the elevator door. In his desperation to escape, he resembles a cornered animal or a girl being hit on by Ben Roethlisberger.

  He eventually sticks his arm into the door frame of the elevator and prevents the door from closing, before finally walking off the elevator. I notice that even though he is off the elevator and free from danger, he is still visibly upset. I realize this is a perfect opportunity to exploit his weakened 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 recording some good footage of Walter losing his mind.

  6:15 p.m.—The next elevator comes. Walter, Danny, our trainer Vince O’Brien, and I board. Danny pushes the button to take us to the 18th floor while Walter, still upset by the scare that Will gave him, silently hangs out in the corner of the elevator with a disgruntled look on his face. I go in for the kill.

  6:16 p.m.—I turn the video camera on and point it in Walter’s direction. “Walter, why were you so scared on that last elevator?” I ask, even though I know exactly why he was so scared.

  “ ’Cause I can’t stand it when people be jumping on elevators!”

  As predictable as Walter’s response was, though, it isn’t nearly as predictable as what happens next. As soon as Walter finishes talking and the doors to the elevator close, Danny says, “You mean like this, Walter?” as he launches himself into the air and stomps his feet when he lands, a lot like Diamond Dallas Page used to do when he’d walk out of the tunnel after being introduced, throw up his diamond hand signal thing, and then stomp on the ground as pyrotechnics exploded all around him. (On second thought, that makes Danny seem much more badass than he actually is, so forget I ever made the DDP comparison.)