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“You may not be looking for a father, but I’m going to be treating you like a son.”
Powerful and prophetic words from Sherman Smith–introducing himself to countless players under his tutelage during a 22-year coaching career in the National Football League with the Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans, Washington Football Team, and Seattle Seahawks.
Smith, now retired from coaching, also used that line to introduce himself to new players during his five years as a high school football coach and five years of coaching NCAA Division I football at Miami University–his alma mater–and the University of Illinois.
It is a phrase that reflects the kind of values-based coach and person Smith successfully sought to be and serves as an invaluable model for coaches, parents, teachers, and anyone else invested in making a difference for young people, which we will be delving into in the second installment of this two-part series.
Little did Smith realize the irony of his introductory fatherly phrase, not knowing that one of his players at Miami was seeking a father—a back story to Smith’s coaching career that became national news in 2018 and depicted in a recently released documentary film, Show Me the Father.
The Backstory
Smith pulled his bright red Mercedes-Benz into the parking lot of Campbell Memorial High School in hometown Youngstown, Ohio, back in 1990. He was in his second year as running backs coach at Miami University on a recruiting mission to land promising high school running back Deland McCullough, currently the associate head football coach at Indiana University
McCullough received minimal interest from college teams until his senior year at Campbell when he converted from a defensive back into a running back. He suddenly found himself attracting the attention of several college coaches, including Jim Tressel and Bob Stoops. But it was Sherman Smith that commanded his attention and lured him to a four-year career in Oxford, Ohio, with Miami.
What was it that captured his respect for Smith?
“Just the way he communicated with guys,” McCullough explained in an interview for this article. “It’s a genuineness that’s hard to put into words. How you listen and respond to people can tell people that you have that level of authenticity, and that’s what I saw that drew me to him.
“Real recognizes real,” McCullough elaborated. “Real people recognize when ‘this guy’s not real,’ that he’s putting on a façade. You’ve got to be who you are.”
McCullough understood the importance of–and has actualized excellent communication and being authentic. A highly successful 12-year coaching career–including a 2018-2020 stint as running backs coach for the Kansas City Chiefs–would not have been possible without those assets.
McCullough and Coach Smith spent just one year together at Miami before Smith left to be tight ends coach for the University of Illinois, but it was an influential year for the freshman running back. It led to a Miami Hall-of-Fame career that included 37 touchdowns and 4,368 rushing yards (a standing school record), averaging 4.6 yards-per-carry, and a brief NFL stint that ended with a career-ending knee injury in 1996.
Not bad for a kid raised in a single-parent adoptive family for the bulk of his childhood. His unwed biological mother put him up for adoption six weeks after his December 1, 1972, birth in Allison Park, Pennsylvania. His adoptive parents divorced when he was two years old, and he spent the remainder of his childhood raised by a single mom–Adele Comer–in Youngstown, growing up without much fatherly influence.
Enter Coach Smith.
McCullough explained to ESPN radio personality Sarah Spain,
He (Smith) was everything. If anything was going on, I was going to talk to Coach Smith. Everybody in that room gravitated to Coach Smith just because that’s the type of person he was. What he’s about rubs off on you, so I always wanted to be around that.
“I just saw the way he carried himself,” McCullough told me in a recent interview. “If you could just bottle that up, everybody could do that.” Unfortunately, it can’t be bottled, but it sure had a powerful influence on a college kid in need of a dad.
The Search
McCullough finally had a father figure to count on, but who was his biological father? That question wasn’t much of a concern to him until the birth of his first child (December 13, 1999)–Deland Jr.–when the hunger for answers about his unknown biological parents began to nag, and his search began in earnest.
Unfortunately, strict privacy laws governing adoption records in Ohio and Pennsylvania blocked McCullough’s quest for answers until 2016, when new laws in Ohio and Pennsylvania allowed the unsealing of adoption records.
After filing required paperwork, McCullough’s search partially ended in November 2017, when his adoption files arrived, revealing his biological mother's name–Carol Briggs. His biological father was not identified in the information received.
He phoned Briggs a few days before Thanksgiving 2017 after football practice at the University of Southern California, where McCullough was coaching at the time. Early in the conversation, he popped his nagging question–“who is my father?”–as reported by Spain in her ESPN story,
The Big Reveal
That was information rarely if ever, disclosed by Briggs. According to Spain, after a brief deliberation, Briggs decided it was McCullough’s right to know who his father was and finally replied, “Your father is Sherman Smith.”
Yes–Coach Sherman Smith.
Are you shocked? Imagine what McCullough must have experienced upon hearing his mother’s disclosure. The next day he shared the news with his dad.
Smith was stunned. He was 63 years old and never knew that Carol Briggs was pregnant, much less about the boy she had given birth to. A profoundly religious man, Smith was overwhelmed with guilty thoughts and feelings about having left Briggs in that precarious situation and his son–Deland–growing up without his father.
It took 26 years before discovering that the young man he had told, “you might not be looking for a father, but I’m going to be treating you like a son,” was his biological offspring.
The real thrust is to share the wisdom of two highly successful coaches—Smith and McCullough–a father and son with a combined 25 years of NFL coaching experience and five trips to the Super Bowl.
Some of that wisdom was briefly touched upon earlier in this installment. If you’re a coach, athlete, leader, mentor, or parent, exploring this father-son duo's exemplary character, savvy, and coaching expertise may be valuable.
References
Spain, S. (2018). Runs in the Family. ESPN E60
https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/24055521/the-jaw-dropping-story-nfl-coach-search-family
