Don't Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible NCAA Journey From the End of the Bench to the End of the Bench
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I can’t get into specifics about the tryout because I signed a confidentiality agreement with the team and could face up to three buckets of confetti poured on my head if I violate it, but I can say that I hadn’t yet been fully cleared from shoulder surgery and therefore couldn’t take part in any contact drills at the tryout. I assumed this wouldn’t be a huge deal because I’ve seen my share of Globetrotter performances, and there is about as much physical contact as there is at a fifth-grade dance. But surprisingly, I assumed wrong.
I couldn’t participate in most of the tryout, and when all was said and done, it essentially consisted of shooting about 25 jump shots (all of which were really deep threes). Having a bum shoulder wasn’t ideal, but I’d told the Globetrotters from the start that I wouldn’t be 100 percent until September, so they knew what to expect.
I was a little rusty, and while I wasn’t exactly terrible, my jump shot was a ghost of my usual silky smooth J. Still, like I mentioned, it’s not like I provided a large enough sample size for them to make a well-informed decision (especially considering that it was only three days after I was cleared to start shooting again). But naturally, common sense wasn’t about to stand in their way.
After the tryout, we were told that we’d have individual meetings with the Globetrotter coaches and front-office personnel. My meeting was set for 8:00 p.m., and since we got back to the hotel at around five, I figured I’d grab some dinner. But when I left the hotel to find a place to eat, my phone rang. “We were just wondering where you were because the coaches are downstairs waiting to have their meeting with you right now.”
“Of course they are,” I said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
At this point, changing the meeting time without telling me was really just another drop of water in the ocean, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating. The meeting actually went pretty well, but like I said, it was a moot point because I had already made up my mind that the Globetrotters could massage their tonsils with my balls.
I left Long Island expecting to never hear from the Globetrotters again. After all, it was pretty clear to me that they never wanted me at the tryout in the first place. Nonetheless, they told me when I left that they’d let me know about their decision in a few weeks, and strangely enough, they followed through on that promise. Some two or three weeks later, the same Globetrotter rep who had been calling me throughout the past few months was on the other end of the phone telling me that I’d be a perfect fit for the Washington Generals, which as you may know is the team that the Globetrotters play on a nightly basis and consequently dominate on a nightly basis. Doing my best to hold in my laughter, I respectfully declined. After all, this was like getting drafted by the Lakers and being asked to play for the LAPD’s coed Gus Macker team instead. Anyway, in the next few months the Globetrotters called me no less than four times and asked me to either reconsider their offer or to at the very least play for the Generals when the Globetrotters came to Columbus.
Each time they called I tried my best to make it clear to them that I had no intention of playing basketball after college and the only reason I had been even slightly interested in playing for the Globetrotters was because it was such a unique and bizarre opportunity that I thought it would be fun to follow through with it. The last I heard from them was in December 2010, when I ignored an email that asked me to again reconsider their offer, and in doing so I ended my six-month affiliation with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Now that you know the whole story, let’s break it down. Here’s what I think happened from their perspective, although I’m probably giving them a little too much benefit of the doubt with some of this: I think they drafted me because they knew I had a cult following from my blog, they knew I was a good shooter (and specifically a good trick shot artist), and they knew I considered myself an entertainer of sorts. But more importantly, they knew that drafting a white guy who never played in college would generate some media interest and get people talking about the Globetrotters again.
Then, sometime after the draft, they decided that waiting for me to heal from shoulder surgery wasn’t worth it and/or that they had gotten all the media attention and fan interest from drafting me that they were after. I wouldn’t have had that big of a problem with this, except for the fact that they failed to relay this news to me and consequently left me hanging about what was to happen next.
My email to the Globetrotter rep put them in a bind and ruined their plan to ignore me. They most likely wanted to respond by saying, “Sorry, Mark, but we only drafted you for a flash-in-the-pan thing that would put us in the media spotlight for a few days. We’re unfortunately going to have to tell you that we don’t think you’d be a good fit for us, and we don’t want to waste your time by making you come to our training camp.” But instead, they shrugged their shoulders and thought, “Ah, what the hell, we might as well give the kid a shot.”
They must have then scrambled to add me to everything, but somehow forgot to book me a hotel room or put my name on the roster. At the tryout, they saw me shoot a handful of threes, and since I hadn’t had time to work on my shot after my surgery, I missed a little too often for their liking, and they decided that I wasn’t good enough to play for them.
In my opinion, the Globetrotters’ biggest mistake was thinking that I had to actually play to be effective. What they failed to realize was that they would have been much better off assigning me the role of “team benchwarmer” since that was what I was known for anyway. They could have made my role on their team an extension of my role at Ohio State, by having me sit on the bench and either not play in the games (I could’ve interacted with the crowd in some fashion during the game) or only play in the final minute and make a big deal about me trying to score (or both).
Meanwhile, I could have maintained my blog and given fans the same access to the Harlem Globetrotters that I had given them for the previous two years to the Ohio State Buckeyes. In fact, even if they did think I was good enough to play for them, they still should have used this strategy. Instead, they made a series of baffling moves that still have me puzzled.
By the way, since most of you probably think I came across as a whiny asshole, it should be noted that the Globetrotters were the ones who sought me out. It’s not like I’m bitter because I begged them to give me a chance and then they told me I wasn’t good enough. If anything, I’m upset that they wasted my time and failed to see the potential in a partnership between us. It’s not like I had planned for years to join the Globetrotters after college, so being rejected by them really had no impact on my life at all. It’s like being on The Price Is Right and never getting off of Contestants’ Row—sure it would’ve been nice to have a chance to win, but it was unexpected to be in that situation in the first place, so it’s not like my life is for the worse now.
Anyway, just so we’re clear, I’m a whiny asshole not because the Globetrotters ruined a dream of mine but because they were an unorganized cocktease and dragged me into a situation that I would’ve wanted no part of if I had known what awaited me. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s a perfectly excusable type of whiny asshole.
Even though my time with the Globetrotters ended up being a crusty turd of an experience, it’s hard to get too upset over everything. After all, if someone had told me on my first day at Ohio State that in four years I’d be drafted by the Harlem Globetrotters, I probably would have asked them why they were wasting their ability to predict the future by being my personal soothsayer and not using it to gamble or save lives like that guy from Early Edition. Then I would’ve tried to wrap my mind around how exactly a math major basketball manager and aspiring orthopedic surgeon was going to get a chance to play for one of the world’s most historic basketball teams. It would’ve made absolutely no sense to me at that time, but that’s because I couldn’t have possibly known that I was about to embark on an incredible journey.
While it would’ve been nice to actually play for the Globetrotters, simply be
ing drafted was enough because it validated just how amazing and unique this journey really was. I would have never thought I had even an inkling of a chance to someday get drafted by the Globetrotters or do any of the other cool things I got to do, but thanks to a combination of minimal skill, a few valuable relationships, and a whole lot of luck, I was able to achieve my childhood dreams and then some. I know exactly how blessed I am to have had the opportunities I did, and I’ll forever be grateful to Coach Matta, everyone at Ohio State, and the passion of the Buckeye faithful for making it all possible. I truly will cherish every second of my four years at OSU and look back on that time with the fondest of memories, because I can say these two things with absolute certainty: there’s no place on Earth like Ohio State.
And Michigan still sucks.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARK TITUS is the creator of ClubTrillion.com, and a contributor at Grantland.com. He was featured several times in the New York Times, ESPN.com, and Bill Simmons’s podcast, among others. He graduated from Ohio State in 2010, a hero to millions. Don’t Put Me In, Coach is his first book.