Hi, I'm Grant Wall, and welcome to the Planet Football Podcast, where I go in-depth with the most intriguing people in the world of soccer.

In this episode, I'm joined from Columbus, Ohio by Mark Titus of The Ringer and One Shining Podcast.

Mark is a huge Columbus crew fan and we talk about the inspiring story of Save the Crew.

Just a quick reminder, it's a huge help if you subscribe to, rate, and review the

podcast. It helps people find us. Onward!

Our guest today is Mark Titus. He's a writer at the Ringer, the host of the

terrific college basketball podcast, One Shining Podcast, and a former basketball player

at Ohio State. For our purposes he's also a huge

fan of the Columbus crew which has provided us with one of the most remarkable

stories in the history of MLS with the crew being saved and now

on course for what could be a giant turnaround in Columbus Ohio. Mark coming to us

from Columbus Ohio. Thanks for coming on the show.

I'm very happy to be here. It is a great time to be a crew fan. That is something I've not been saying a lot lately, so I'm going to keep saying it because it's it's been a very long time

since I've said those words so I'm I it's awesome it's like 20 degrees outside

in Columbus right now and I don't really even care because the team is back and that's all it matters.

So we're recording this on January 10th and yesterday they had this big sort of gala announcement of new ownership for the Columbus

crew of Caleb Porter is the new coach, of Tim Besbichenko is the new president, and before I get into your thoughts on that day yesterday, I want to go back to a different day and I want to ask you where were you

on the night of October 16th 2017 when the news came out that Columbus was likely to move to Austin, Texas.

I will never forget where I was. I was laying in my bed checking Twitter as I'm one to do before I go to bed just to make sure I don't miss anything

make sure I can turn my phone off so that I'm not missing some big story and lo and behold

your face pops up on my timeline and I couldn't believe the words like I had to read the tweet like five different times they fully understand what was happening and I was like this can't be true like it doesn't work this way this isn't how it happened like if I was just so

confused I just I was frozen in bed like I didn't sleep the rest of the night I don't think I mean I was like

...