Under-recruited running back from a collapsed American city — with a single mom and a dream — wins the Super Bowl. Sounds familiar, right? But NFL coach Deland McCullough’s story, as told through his new book with Sarah Spain, has a twist all its own. (Thanks to a little help from Sir Mix-a-Lot.) P.S. One correction, at the 17:50 mark: Deland McCullough’s senior year of college was 1995, not 2005. • Read "Runs in the Family": https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Runs-in-the-Family/Sarah-Spain/9781668036280 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story behind Dillon McCullough?
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
He opens the door. He just said, my son. And it was like, oh, the tears start rolling again. You know, because I've never been referred to as somebody's son. Right after this ad.
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
With the Galaxy Watch 7 or the Galaxy Ring and the Samsung Health app.
You know, one of the things that I have to do at the top is say, first, thank you for doing this. Sarah Spain, hello. Yeah. And the other thing is to do a thing that is cruel, which is to say, there is a twist in this story, which we're not going to give away because we're trying to be good at telling stories, but holy f*** it.
Yeah, that was my response when I first heard the story, was pretty much holy f***.
And now that story is a book, which is why you are here with us today. It is coming out. It is called Runs in the Family. What's the metaphor that you choose to use to describe the process of birthing this?
Actually, I've been joking. I am throwing myself a book baby shower wherein I buy myself a push present. Because honestly, and though the labor maybe wasn't as painful as a human baby, but at the beginning I was like, to quote you earlier, holy shit, why did I choose to do this?
Yeah, I should say, I mean, to quote Tony Kornheiser about his own hands, these fingers don't really type anymore.
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Chapter 2: How did Dillon's childhood shape his identity?
Dylan, how special is it to be a part of this? I mean, it's unbelievable. You know, I know I made a statement a couple days ago just about the dream that you have as a youth football player in high school and college about getting to this level.
I didn't know Dillon before the Super Bowl with the Chiefs, in which it was like, oh, that's the guy who has been coaching, you know, Damian Williams, where they are just like scampering all over the field.
Williams makes a cut and will roll into the end zone for the touchdown. No flags.
I wasn't familiar with him either, but a friend of mine in Chicago here played college football with him, which is how the story came to me. Sort of out of the blue and out of nowhere, he sat me down when we were grabbing drinks. I was like, oh, I got to tell you this crazy story. And within probably less than three minutes of the story, chills, almost in tears.
And I was like, oh, we got to do something with this.
So I just need you to know that what we're going to do with this today might seem like a story about a running backs coach at this point. A coach whose job, if you were not familiar, is basically devoted to teaching a running back how to shrug off and fight off all of the people who are desperately trying to stop them from moving forward as much as one single yard.
But this story is about more than that. This story is also about a running back. A running back whose entire identity was a mystery. Because thanks to the laws in our country, as we will discuss, adoption as a concept way too often entails mystery.
But what we know is that long before Dylan McCullough beat the Niners in the Super Bowl and became a successful NFL coach and also recently agreed to talk to Pablo Torre, finds out, for this episode, as you will hear throughout, he was born and put up for adoption in December 1972.
And we also know that Dillon's adoptive parents lived in a place that would be economically decimated by the collapse of the steel industry by September 1977, when Dillon was just four years old. And that place was Youngstown, Ohio.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Dillon face in his pursuit of football?
Bob Stoops is trying to come after him. Jim Trestle. Guys who are now essentially Hall of Famers, but were at the beginning of their careers. There's this moment, too, for him where he's deeply embarrassed by his family's situation. He understands how hard it is for his mom, but he also...
is so embarrassed to have these big-name coaches in his living room where they have a giant orange extension cord snaking out of the house, through the window, and into their neighbors to borrow electricity because they can't afford it. They don't have hot water.
He doesn't have a phone until his senior year, which becomes very important as he's taking recruiting calls that they actually do have a working phone. So he's sitting in class, and he looks out the window, and he sees this cherry-apple-red Mercedes
Me and my buddies, we look out the window, like, ah, everybody's pointing at him. And look at this car. It was a candy apple red and gold Mercedes. You know, it was something that we had never seen, something like that before.
And a moment later, he gets a pink slip to go to the office, and the guy that came out of the car was actually there to see him.
And it was like a movie. He turned around, like, he turned around slow, and the camera was on him or whatever. And he looked at me, and he said, hey, I'm Sherman Smith, running back coach for Miami University.
Sherman Smith had played for the Seahawks and stayed after to coach and had just left Seattle for Miami of Ohio to go coach at his alma mater, and he drove out this car that he bought from an up-and-coming rapper named Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Oh, my God. I'm flabbergasted that Sir Mix-a-Lot is in this story.
Yeah, yeah, me too. But yeah, he goes to the office and meets this guy Sherman, and he realizes that this aura is coming from someone who had really made it, was from Youngstown, was like him, but had gone on to the NFL. And now he was talking to a guy that had been a star at the highest level and who believed that he might be that too.
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Chapter 4: How did Dillon make it to the NFL despite being undrafted?
Every kind of damage, you know, compound fracture, MCLAC, all that stuff. And he, over the next couple of years, really puts his time in to try to make it back to the NFL. Then the CFL, and at one point even gives a little time to the XFL. The XFL.
And then I just stopped playing because I kept on saying, people say, I can't do this. It was always for me proving people wrong, proving people wrong. And nobody would think I can come back after three knee surgeries, and I did. But at that point, I said, you know what? It's time for me to transition to something different.
He really wanted to try to make it work as a player. But ultimately, this guy just keeps getting handed a tough deal and finding a way through it, finding resilience. And he actually wanted to get into education to help kids who had come up in tough times like he did. So while he's trying to make it in football, he's working his way at residential centers for at-risk youth.
Then he goes into teaching and he's trying to help kids and then he becomes a principal. So like all these ways he's trying to learn how to be an impactful male figure in the lives of young people, especially those who have tough childhoods. And football starts sneaking its way and everybody hears that he was the big football player.
So he starts coaching and he realizes he can use football to uplift kids and make it even more compelling for them to want to stay in school and learn these lessons by using this sport that he loves.
Yeah, it's just hard, Sarah, to escape this notion that there's a gravitational pull on Dillon.
He tries to leave Youngstown, Ohio, makes it out because Sherman Smith ends up convincing him that Miami of Ohio is the place where Youngstown, Ohio kids can use it as a springboard to go to the NFL, but then the NFL chews him up, spits him out, and he tries to then fight what seems like destiny at this point because where does he wind up after trying to be an educator outside of the football field?
Well, football pulls him back. And of course, he ends up at Miami of Ohio is where he gets his first college coaching gig. And he's not there for too long. He has pretty immediate success, gets recruited to go coach at Indiana, has success there, helps a couple running backs to the NFL. And he gets nominated for Coach of the Year honors.
And he starts doing some coaching internships in the NFL and really starts to set his sights on some bigger programs and the opportunities at the pro level. He ends up doing one of his coaching internships actually with the Seattle Seahawks, which is where Coach Sherman Smith was, coaching under Pete Carroll. And he gets a chance to really use his skill set.
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Chapter 5: What lessons did Dillon learn from his coaching experiences?
And she messaged back, yes. So I was in a meeting at that time, and I got up and walked out of the meeting. So I said, what did you name the baby? And she said, John. And she spelled it the exact same way it is on here. And the water work started at that point.
So she had been a 16-year-old honor student, had had an oopsie, and her family sent her off to an orphanage slash home for mothers and girls in Pennsylvania to have the baby in private, be pregnant in private, and then go back to school with no one the wiser. She didn't tell anyone but her parents and her one cousin.
She didn't even tell the dad because he was already off to college and she felt responsible.
I said, where are you? She said, Youngstown. I told her where I was. I said, I lived in Youngstown. You know, come to find out we were only 10 minutes from each other.
Probably passed him in the aisles at the grocery store. They were in the exact same place. And it just happened to be that the family that adopted him out of Pennsylvania was a family that lived in Youngstown.
Yeah, this is where I just commend Dylan the reporter, by the way, Sarah. Like, you're a good journalist. Like, Dylan just like... He found out, Pablo. Dylan McCullough finds out is an impressive feat. And one, by the way, that I imagine... I'm just trying to put myself in his shoes for a second.
Because this is overwhelming, I must imagine, on some level, to know that his mom was actually around very nearby this whole time.
At first, he thinks, well, wait, if you're in Youngstown, do I have siblings? Like, I might know them, right? If you had other kids, I might have grown up with them. Who else in my family might I have known? And she did not get married. She didn't have any other kids. And she'd been looking for him for years.
And it's just really heartwarming how much joy she felt in not only finding out he was okay and successful, but now she has a son and grandkids and this extended family.
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Chapter 6: How did Dillon's upbringing influence his coaching style?
Yeah. He says, it doesn't list a father on my birth certificate. And he asks her, do you know who my father is?
And she said, your dad is a man by the name of Sherman Smith. When she said that, I was like, my mind was blown.
It's just the sort of twist you dream of, you know? It's just jealousy is what I feel. I feel jealousy. I feel awe. I feel like I'm watching a weird version of The Sixth Sense in which, you know, Dylan has been seeing his dad the whole time, actually. And that's f***ing wild.
Your dad is a man by the name of Sherman Smith. Like I said, when she said that, I was like… my mind was blown. And she said, well, like I was like, you can hear, she could obviously hear me kind of choke up and get emotional. She said, well, what's wrong? I said, oh, I know him. He recruited me. He was my coach and he's been my mentor over the last 20 whatever years, 20 plus years.
How does Dillon then tell Sherman what he has found out?
Right. He's nervous about it and isn't sure what to say, but he asks his birth mom, Carol, if he can be the one to tell him.
So I reached out to him. I sent him a text. And I said, hey, coach, I need to talk to you about something.
45 years later, he's going to get a phone call from someone who says, I'm your son, that he knows.
I just kind of jumped right into it. I said, hey, what's going on, coach? Hey, what's going on? I said, you know, I'm adopted. Yeah, I know you're adopted. I said, I found my biological mom. So my dad is really strong in his faith. He's, oh, man, you know, man, you know, God is good, man. That's a blessing, all these different things like that. And I said, well, it's a little bit more.
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Chapter 7: What role did Sherman Smith play in Dillon's career?
everything would be this idyllic setting you imagine, an adoptive family that really wants a baby and can't have one of their own. And instead, he has this really tough childhood. And so it's almost a role reversal of a lot of adoption stories you hear, right? Where the birth parents are struggling or fighting something, they give up a baby and here come the saviors to fix everything.
And instead, you've got these two incredible, well-adjusted, successful adults looking at this woman who did her very best, but still struggled at times. And so to really understand like what he got from Adele, his adoptive mom, and then what almost certainly came to him through DNA, how similar he is to Sherman, even though they didn't meet until he was 17 years old.
And even though he was in his life as a mentor, but not all the time, like how he became, I mean, the same exact life.
It's surreal. I mean, it really is. We both from Youngstown. We both went to Miami. We both go into the Hall of Fame at Miami. We both go and play pro ball. We both our careers end because of knee injuries. Both of us, right after playing football, go into education. Both of our first jobs in college was at Miami. Our next job was both in the Big Ten.
won a Super Bowl, lost a Super Bowl, both of them to Tom Brady, had sons, son goes to Miami of Ohio, plays defensive back, is a teacher. It's just, it's remarkable.
At the center of that Venn diagram, along all of these overlapping circles, is at least one dude, in this case, Pete Carroll, who happens to be the guy who employed both of these men as coaches in the NFL. Can you catch us up to just... The unending gravitational field around Dylan McCullough and his life.
Yeah, I mean, he just took a job with the Raiders, and he is now coaching under the boy wonder who I guess never ages and retires, Pete Carroll, who could be both the head coach of his dad as a running backs coach and now the head coach of Dylan with the Raiders.
And it is funny to hear Dillon tell us about what Pete Carroll had detected back when Dillon was an intern with the Seahawks and Sherman Smith was a coach on the staff. Because Pete Carroll kind of sniffed this out before, you know, the DNA test did.
Like in the beginning, one of the staff meetings, Coach Carroll, you know, he'd go into his thing and he just looked down and he said, hey, you know what? Something's going on here. He said, we're sitting up watching you two guys looking across the field at you guys working with the running backs. You guys walk the same, point the same, talk the same. He said, it's just crazy. And we just laughed.
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