Club Trillion (basketball slang for a benchwarmer’s statistics)
“One trillion” is basketball slang is when a player plays one minute, followed in the box score by a row of zeros—0 field goals, 0 three-point field goals, 0 foul shots, 0 points, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 steals and 0 blocked shots. These are the statistics of a benchwarmer who plays only after the game has been decided.
Scott Hastings used the “trillion” term in 1990, when he was a benchwarmer for the Detroit Pistons. Mark Titus, a benchwarmer at Ohio State University, wrote a blog called “Club Trillion” (or “Club Tril”) for this type of player.
Wikipedia: Glossary of basketball terms
one trillion
A box score showing one minute played and zero for all other statistics, resulting in a one followed by twelve zeros – the conventional American rendering of “one trillion.”
Wikipedia: Mark Titus
Mark Titus (born June 25, 1987) is an American blogger and former walk-on basketball player for Ohio State. Since October 2008, he has written about his basketball-related experiences in his blog ‘Club Trillion’. He has worked as a contributing writer for ESPN Insider on men’s college basketball and in 2011 began contributing material for ESPN’s new site, Grantland.com.
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During the 2008–2009 basketball season, Titus created his own blog, “Club Trillion”, with the name referring to his line in the box score for many games: ‘1’ in the first column (minutes played), followed by zeroes in the other twelve columns (points, rebounds, etc.).
23 April 1990, Chicago (IL) Tribune, sec. 3, pg. 9, col. 4:
Sub’s lament: Pistons benchwarmer Scott Hastings on his usual game: “I get what we call a trillion. That’s when the box score reads 1 minute played followed by a row of zeros.”
Sam Smith
Basketbawful
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Word of the Day: one trillion
By Basketbawful at 8:25 AM
one trillion (wun tril’-yun) noun. Denotes those occasions in which a player logs one minute of playing time without recording any other statistic. The term is derived from the player’s statistical line in a box score, which (sometimes) reads as a one followed by 12 zeros—the conventional English-language numeric representation of one trillion.
Usage example: Notching a triple-double is something you tell your family about; notching a one trillion is something you tell no one about.
Word History: The term was invented by Scott Hastings, who managed to hang around for 12 seasons as a career backup/role player/scrub. Near as I’ve been able to determine, he created the trillion in 1990, as evidenced by this reference in the Sports Illustrated Vault: “Scott Hastings, little-used Piston forward, who claims to lead the NBA in a category that he calls the ‘trillion’: ‘That’s when the box score reads one minute played followed by 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 0 0 0.’” (Props to Hastings, not only for the uncommon self-awareness, but also for inventing a statistic to quantify his suckitude.)
Eleven Warriors
BILL SIMMONS MEETS CLUB TRILLION
By Jason Priestas on December 16, 2008 at 10:48p @11w
Club Trillion is going global.
Mark Titus appeared on Bill Simmons’s BS Report today and though the podcast is billed as “Bill introduces the world to Club Trillion”, in reality, Club Trillion was introducing the world to Simmons.
Urban Dictionary
Trillion
Getting into a basketball game for one minute and not recording a single statistic. The line of the box score would have a 1 followed by 13 zeros.
An Ohio State benchwarmer achieved the trillion when he got in the blowout win over Michigan.
by theshark34 January 05, 2009
New York (NY) Times—“Off the Dribble” NBA Blog
Keeping Score: After an Unproductive Minute, One of the Trillions
By JUSTIN KUBATKO DECEMBER 23, 2010 7:00 AM
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Although Titus’s blog brought the Trillion to a larger audience, the term has been around for quite a while. According to the longtime Philadelphia 76ers statistician Harvey Pollack, the former N.B.A. player Scott Hastings came up with the name in the 1980s.
Hastings’s definition of a Trillion allowed for more than one minute played, and Pollack later amended the definition, writing in his annual statistical yearbook that “a committee voted to allow a player to join the club if he only had a personal foul.”
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(For the pedants out there, yes, Trillion is a misnomer. Sources vary, but most modern box scores have minutes played along with 15 other statistics, so Quadrillion would be the proper term. But we’ll stick with the colloquial version.)
Grantland
Introducing the Club Trillion National Player of the Year Belt
NOVEMBER 18, 2011
by MARK TITUS
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As I mentioned earlier, the Club Trillion National Player of the Year Belt is essentially only for walk-ons, because the only way to win it is to record the most trillions over the course of the season. For those who don’t know, a “trillion” occurs when a player gets into the game but doesn’t record any statistics, resulting in his box score reading one minute played followed by a bunch of zeros. (Note: It doesn’t actually matter how many minutes are played, only that the player records no stats.)
OCLC WorldCat record
Don’t put me in, coach : my incredible NCAA journey from the end of the bench to the end of the bench
Author: Mark Titus; Tyler Seiple
Publisher: [New York] : Books on Tape, 2012.
Edition/Format: eAudiobook : MP3 : Biography : English
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
An irreverent, hilarious insider’s look at big-time NCAA basketball, through the eyes of the nation’s most famous benchwarmer and author of the popular blog ClubTrillion.com (3.6m visits!). Mark Titus holds the Ohio State record for career wins, and made it to the 2007 national championship game. You would think Titus would be all over the highlight reels. You’d be wrong. In 2006, Mark Titus arrived on Ohio State’s campus as a former high school basketball player who aspired to be an orthopedic surgeon. Somehow, he was added to the elite Buckeye basketball team, given a scholarship, and played alongside seven future NBA players on his way to setting the record for most individual career wins in Ohio State history. Think that’s impressive? In four years, he scored a grand total of nine—yes, nine—points. This book will give readers an uncensored and uproarious look inside an elite NCAA basketball program from Titus’s unique perspective. In his four years at the end of the bench, Mark founded his wildly popular blog Club Trillion, became a hero to all guys picked last, and even got scouted by the Harlem Globetrotters. Mark Titus is not your average basketball star. This is a wild and completely true story of the most unlikely career in college basketball.
Carroll County Times (Westminster, MD)
Take it from a ‘Club Tril’ member when it comes to chants
Matt Laczkowski
JANUARY 19, 2016, 5:56 PM
I’m a proud, card-carrying member of “Club Trillion.”
Though the term was coined in the 1980s, it has come into common parlance only somewhat recently, referring to a seldom-used basketball player — a benchwarmer who, on the rare occasion (s)he sees playing time, fails to record a single statistic.
“Club Tril” as it has come to become known, gained popularity in the late aughts thanks Mark Titus, to an Ohio State walk-on-turned-blogger-turned-writer.