One Yard at a Time: A Mystery

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Pablo Torre?

  This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it, with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef. The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory. Two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles side by side. So every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill. My move?

• 1:28Pablo Torre?

  QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California. And for delivery, fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess, once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all.

• 2:13Pablo Torre?

  On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I

• 2:58Pablo Torre?

  am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  He opens the door. He just said, "My son." And it was like, ah, the tears start rolling again, you know, because I'd never been referred to as somebody's son.

• 3:14Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  You're listening to DraftKings Network.

• 3:33Pablo Torre?

  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. 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 [bleep].

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, that was my response when I first heard the story, was pretty much, holy [bleep].

• 3:59Pablo Torre?

  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, of birthing this?

• 4:12Speaker 03

  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 [bleep], why did I choose to do this?

• 4:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I should say, I mean, to quote Tony Kornheiser. About his own hands. These fingers don't really type anymore.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Well, I am worried about you after you did that interview where you said some of your articles, you actually changed the words and sentences so that the ends of them would line up in a paragraph, so it looked nice. I was like, oh, he should never write a book.

• 4:50Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that, that, that whole thing about how you are not burdened by the neurosis of writing. I, for those not familiar, was making my paragraphs into like, perfect symmetrical rectangles before I gave myself permission to write the next paragraph, which is a thing.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Have you seen someone for that?

• 5:07Pablo Torre?

  Uh, you, it turns out. Um, I'm seeing you for that, and you have not helped.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  My bad.

• 5:31Pablo Torre?

  Could you give just like the log line of this movie before the thing that we're dancing around?

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the protagonist and co-author, his name's Dylan McCullough, he is currently the Raiders' running backs coach.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Coach Carroll and all of the upper management has done a great job of, first of all, putting together a great staff, I believe, a really, really, really good staff. And then getting, you know, we, we got, obviously, OTA is going on right now, and it's been, it's been very encouraging, I'll just say it like that. Been very encouraging.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  He was most recently with Notre Dame, helping them to the national championship. Previous to that, famously with the Kansas City Chiefs, helped them to a Super Bowl.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  Dylan, how special is it to be a part of this?

• 6:16Speaker 05

  I mean, it's unbelievable. You know, I, I know I made a statement a couple of days ago just about the dream that you have as a, a youth football player in high school and college about getting to this level.

• 6:27Pablo Torre?

  I didn't know Dylan before the Super Bowl with the Chiefs, in which it was like, oh, that's the guy who he's been coaching, you know, Damian Williams, where they are just like scampering all over the field.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  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 gotta 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 gotta do something with this.

• 7:09Pablo Torre?

  So I just need you to know that what we're gonna 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.

• 7:54Pablo Torre?

  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 Dylan's adoptive parents lived in a place that would be economically decimated by the collapse of the steel industry by September 1977, when Dylan was just four years old. And that place was Youngstown, Ohio.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  It's hard to believe this is happening after working here for so many years. It's hard to believe that we're put out on the street and don't know what we're gonna do. 5,000 steelworkers, many of them skilled veterans of 20 to 30. ...years, lost their jobs. In Youngstown and nearby Campbell, they have a name for the day disaster struck. They call it Black Monday.

• 8:54Pablo Torre?

  That is where Dylan McCullough comes from.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  He's adopted by a young couple who's very much in love that already have a son, welcomed to the family. And the dad is this guy named A.C. McCullough, who's a popular local radio DJ in Youngstown.

• 9:12Pablo Torre?

  What kind of local DJ are we talking about? What's kind of the affect here for, for his adopted father?

• 9:17Speaker 03

  It's the guy who would announce on the radio if there was a snow day. The guy who would introduce you to the latest top 40 hit. The hottest hits. Hot 101. And you'd get to hear the song for the first time. This is the 70s and 80s that he starts out. So the radio, in particular, local radio, was such a huge part of people's everyday life.

• 9:39Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  All right, so we're A.C. and Kelly, and we have some special guests here this morning. So we want to say hi to Celeste from the shops at Gordman Park.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  So after some of the local concerts in Youngstown, folks would come over to their house for after-parties to get a late night home-cooked meal and keep the party going. So Dylan was around Tiny Tim. Very old-fashioned now for young people. There would always be stacks of tickets to a variety of local, you know, bands or concerts that were happening in their house. But after about two years, the couple doesn't make it. He leaves. And for Dylan, there's a particular pain in the fact that he hears his father's voice every day on the radio, but his father wants nothing to do with him in life. And then his mother brings in another husband, some other boyfriends, really hoping to provide

• 10:34Speaker 03

  a father figure, but her choices never really match her intentions, and they are abusive. One of them has a crack problem.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Although there were men, there was a couple guys there, they weren't, they didn't fit the bill as a true father figure, like, well, I want to do what this guy do and follow what his teachings and what his actions are. I didn't want to do that.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  You need to understand that there were so many people struggling in Youngstown, trying to pay for heat and electricity, trying to put food on the table, trying to stay out of jail. People around him were struggling with so many big things.

• 11:09Pablo Torre?

  And so, Dylan, how long has he known that he is adopted?

• 11:15Speaker 03

  At about seven years old, he's sitting on the floor at a friend's house. His mom is talking with friends and he's playing with a toy and he overhears his mom say, "Pittsburgh, that's where we went to get Dylan when we adopted him." And he says, "I'm adopted?"

• 11:33Speaker 03

  And she says, "Yep," and then goes back to her conversation. And they try to talk about it again in the car very briefly and she sort of shuts it down. And it becomes pretty clear to him that it's not really something to talk about. And for him, there was not really the privilege of, "Let me do some navel gazing about my identity and where I come from," right? It's like, how do I get by today and tomorrow and the next day? And how does my family get by? So, he really didn't talk about it with his mom again for 30 years.

• 12:09Pablo Torre?

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• 12:53Pablo Torre?

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• 13:38Pablo Torre?

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• 14:31Pablo Torre?

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• 15:41Pablo Torre?

  So to be very clear in terms of the kind of family that Dylan finds, it is not a football family, right? This is a football story, but not a football family at the beginning.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, his brother actually plays football too, and he's quite good. And at first, he's in the shadow of his brother. He grew up so shy, and because he had so much self doubt, he sort of was OK being in the background on the football team. He just liked being out there.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I was, you know, still, I'm very, to myself, very quiet. And with football, it gave me a release, you know, at that time, because there were so many things that maybe I wanted to do or say that I couldn't, but I could do it on the football field. I can take it out there. You know, I can burn that energy. I could be.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  And then from somewhere within himself, is this drive to work harder than everyone.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  I was writing letters to smaller schools, and I was pretty much set to go to the Navy. It's what, not to play football, I was going to enlist in the Navy. But then that hard work opened up a talent that showed my senior year on a really, really, really high level.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  He had been both a running back and a defensive back in high school, and there was a great running back ahead of him for most of his career. So he was sort of like, oh, I'm just not good enough. That guy graduates, and all of a sudden, he gets a lot more touches and is blowing people out of the water as a senior.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  And I was able to get, you know, some offers.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Bob Stoops is trying to come after him. Jim Tressel, 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.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Me and my buddies, we look out the window like, ah, everybody's pointing like, and look at this car, candy apple red and gold Mercedes, you know, something that we had, you never seen, something like that before, especially.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  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.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  And it was like a movie, he turned around like, like he turned around slow and the camera was on whatever. And he looked at me and he said, hey, I'm Sherman Smith, running back coach for Miami University.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  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.

• 18:21Pablo Torre?

  Oh my God. I'm flabbergasted that Sir Mix-a-lot is in this story.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, me too.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  But yeah, he goes to the office and meets this guy Sherman and, 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.

• 18:55Pablo Torre?

  So the idea that, again, you know, Sherman Smith played eight seasons at running back for the Seahawks, was a second round pick in the 76 draft, was the guy with Sir Mix-a-lot's car, which is really like the first line in any biography we need to give. But like, how does visiting Miami of Ohio even work?

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Well, Sherman drives back to Youngstown to pick them up and then takes them there over Christmas break. And a lot of folks are home, but there's a couple teammates around, introduced him to the rest of the coaching staff, walked him around, like he loved the school, the facilities, the campus. And then also the character that Sherman showed, Adele, Dylan's adoptive mom, just a good guy who cared about his education, wanted to be a good role model for him. That really impacted them too. Adele wanted to make sure he went somewhere that if he got hurt or if it didn't work out, he still got an education.

• 19:47Pablo Torre?

  Right, and so positionally then, what is the, what's the job?

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Well, he's gonna be a running back. And in the weeks before he arrives, they tell him, "We're actually gonna put you at flanker." Um, he's gonna get a lot of playing time. And he was in practice one day, they're getting ready for their last kind of scrimmage, and...

• 20:05Speaker 02

  I'm watching one of the backup running backs, and he is just doing outstanding. And it's against the backups, but I'm just sitting here and like a tear went down my face and I said, "Man, I'm a running back. I'm a running back. I'm a running back."

• 20:23Speaker 03

  And so we went to meet with Sherman Smith and said, "I'd rather take a redshirt year and really work to be a running back than be a flanker." So we did that. He actually stepped away from playing time to get to do the thing he wanted to do most, which meant, um, being on the scout team, being a redshirt, and having to sit and watch for a whole season.

• 20:41Pablo Torre?

  And presumably, um, he believes that the coaching staff believes in him. And so Sherman Smith, the coach, uh, his leadership style is best described as what?

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Just a, a real player's coach, an inspiring guy with really high standards, extremely high standards. He would say to every team at the beginning of the season, "None of you ask me to be a father, but I'm gonna treat you like you're my sons." He cared as much about how do I make these players full human beings that are gonna be successful in life as he did about the football side.

• 21:19Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say that for Dylan McCullough, who grew up searching for a father figure and never got one, you can guess why this style of coaching felt like more than a cliche.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  And so, even though Dylan is mostly working with assistants, because the starters are the ones who get most of the time with the running backs coach and the head coach, he still goes after practice and spends a lot of time just connecting with Sherman and really asking him for advice.

• 21:45Pablo Torre?

  But before Dylan ever gets to take a single snap at Miami of Ohio, the same thing that happened with Dylan's biological father and Dylan's adoptive radio DJ father proceeds to happen once again with his new mentor in college.

• 22:02Pablo Torre?

  Sherman Smith leaves. Because not long after recruiting Dylan McCullough to Miami of Ohio, Sherman himself got recruited by the University of Illinois, where he would become an assistant coach at a way bigger program in the Big Ten.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  And he doesn't want to go at first, but the rest of the coaching staff says, like, this is a great opportunity. You gotta go.

• 22:25Pablo Torre?

  And so as Sherman Smith goes a different way, eventually making it all the way up to the coaching staff of Pete Carroll's Seattle Seahawks, his old team, Dylan McCullough understands, he does, why his new mentor had to go. And while the two of them will stay in touch from afar, Dylan finds himself again back on his own, fighting to push ahead by himself, one yard at a time. Darty off to McCullough. He comes to the near side. He's at the 35, 30. And out of bounds inside the 15-yard line. He might break that Miami record today if they keep giving him the ball.

• 23:09Pablo Torre?

  And that is ultimately how it happened, by the way. By his senior year of college, skipping ahead now to 2005, Dylan McCullough would in fact break that Miami record, the school's all-time rushing record, after leading the team in rushing for four straight seasons. His whole bet had paid off. But it also imprinted permanent expectations of a different kind.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Well, everyone was convinced he was getting drafted. This was a guy whose numbers were up there with the top running back prospects. And he was sitting with his agent on draft night, watching, expecting to be called, you know, maybe third or fourth round.

• 23:51Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and you look at the statistics. I mean, hard to do better than that. And so where does he get drafted?

• 23:57Speaker 03

  The Cincinnati Bengals call him early in the draft. And they're like, hey, man, you excited? He's like, yeah. And they're like, all right, we're thinking about you. He's like, whoa, okay. He doesn't get drafted. Couple of teams call right when the draft ends and, you know, extend the training camp offers. He ends up with the Bengals. It is the best situation because of their depth chart. He is going to make the surprise move of an undrafted guy making that roster. He's leading the NFL in preseason rushing yards.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  And then

• 24:25Speaker 02

  With two minutes left in that final preseason game of that, you know, of that my rookie year, my knee get blown up and several like, like all the ligaments get blown up.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  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.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  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

• 25:51Speaker 03

  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.

• 26:03Pablo Torre?

  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, where does he wind up after trying to be an educator outside of the football field?

• 26:33Speaker 03

  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 of 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 skillset. And some of the other internships, they kind of just had him watch, but Coach Sherman Smith puts him right in there. And he starts

• 27:17Speaker 03

  to recognize pretty immediately, Dillon does, that his coaching style is really similar to his old coach. He really picked up a lot of messages from him as, I'm going to be a role model and a leader. I'm going to treat these guys like full human beings. I'm not trying to scare them into anything. I'm going to give them respect and they're going to give me respect in turn. The guys think that he's being a giant kiss ass, that he's just really trying to impress everyone and show them that he's deserving of a spot in the NFL. And they're making fun of him for copying everything Sherman does. You walk like him, you talk like him, you want to be him. And he kind of is at first a little embarrassed and then he realizes, I don't care if they know that this is how bad I want it. And he literally starts changing his passwords to, I will coach in the NFL. He's trying to like manifest it that hard.

• 27:58Pablo Torre?

  Wait, hold on. So as Dillon is like, there's a little swim fan in this, admittedly, a little swim fanning of the National Football League. But this coaching internship with the NFL with the Seahawks then serves to get him where as his next stop in college?

• 28:13Speaker 03

  USC comes calling, one of the greatest programs in all of college football history. So he's on a plane with his family, he's got kids at this point, and ends up in Southern California. And he is getting some major side eye when he arrives. He's got some very unique coaching styles. He likes to fill footballs with water to make them really heavy and harder to hold. And then when you get back to the normal football, you're clenching it tighter. He's got a big pylon with a stick and he's jabbing guys as they're trying to run by to poke the ball out, to get them to practice holding on. And that running backs crew is ready to go. And he has yet another really successful squad.

• 29:01Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say that there is now real pride in Deland's gravitational field at this point. Deland has already interned for Pete Carroll with the Seahawks, where his old mentor, Sherman Smith, was on staff and eager to reunite with him before Sherman himself retired from coaching, permanently imprinting Deland's speeches, by the way, with Sherman's lessons about responsibility. And now, Deland found himself responsible for the running backs at Pete Carroll's old employer, the University of Southern California, at age 44. Not to mention, his own biological kids.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  And he realizes there's still a part of him that very much wants to know who he is. And he starts looking on websites and sort of isn't fully committed. And then, there's a moment that his mom calls him, where the lawyer that helped her facilitate his adoption has passed away, and she can get a box of records from his office.

• 30:03Pablo Torre?

  And Deland, you should know, had zero idea that this box even existed. And his adoptive mother, at this moment, for he's to tell him about some other things inside this box that Deland, at age 44, did not know.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  Things like the orphanage where you were adopted. And he's like, "Wait, an orphanage?"

• 30:23Pablo Torre?

  But the orphanage was just the beginning.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  She reveals his name was originally John. And he said, "Why? Why John?" She said, "I don't know. It's maybe religious or something. Who knows?"

• 30:33Pablo Torre?

  And pretty soon, it becomes apparent that the only people who could actually answer these questions with any clarity were the parents that Deland did not know. And so, Deland McCullough resolves to find out.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  And so, first he starts looking in Ohio, and ultimately is able to get the call back that they found his papers. But the woman on the other end says, "I can't tell you them. I can't send them to you." And he says, "What do you mean?" And he realizes that she's holding papers for a different state. "You remember I said his mom said Pittsburgh? That's where we went to pick up Deland when we adopted him." So even though he grew up in Ohio, he was actually born and adopted in Pennsylvania, and the laws were different in that state.

• 31:13Pablo Torre?

  But then, Deland discovers something crucial.

• 31:18Pablo Torre?

  While he was busy coaching running backs, lawmakers in Pennsylvania, it turns out, had finally pushed a thing called HB 162 through their legislature. And this was a long, arduous process, but they pushed forward one yard at a time.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  As I'm sure everyone's aware, today we'll be holding a discussion about a bill intended to give adoptees access to their original birth records here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The legislation that we're here to discuss is House Bill 162, which has been introduced by the good gentleman from Center County, Representative Kerry Benninghoff.

• 31:58Pablo Torre?

  And in fairness to Dylan, I also had zero idea that adopted children in various states in America prior to HB 162 and various state bills like it were not allowed to view their own birth records. That this was, in fact, illegal, until recently. In fact, the only reason I found out about it at all was from talking to Dylan and Sarah and researching this story ourselves. So now just try to imagine how Dylan McCullough felt as he sat there waiting at age 44.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  November 2017, I'm sitting in my office. I was at USC. And I just said, man, I wonder what's going on with this adoption paper. It just hit me that day. And then when I got home, I'm just going through the mail and it was, and I got it right, it was there.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Well, first, he is sort of surprised at how thin the envelope is and figures it must be something telling him they couldn't find it. And imagine getting the mail and it's like, you know, 10% off at Bed Bath & Beyond and then your birth certificate. Like, that's how unassuming this letter was.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  So the top of it says, "Non-certified copy of original birth record. Date of birth, December 1st, 1972." It has the date that it was issued in November 2017. And then it says, "Name given at birth, John Kenneth Briggs. Sex, male. Place of birth, Allegheny County. Parent, Carol Denise Briggs, age 16."

• 33:34Speaker 03

  So they all start Googling. He plugs in Carol D. Briggs in a couple places and ends up finding her, sends her a message on Facebook. And essentially just says, "Did you have a baby that you gave up for adoption in Pennsylvania in 1971?"

• 33:48Speaker 02

  I got a message on my phone saying, "Message read." So my heart was like, "Oh, shoot." Started beating like, "Oh, I'm beating crazy."

• 33:56Speaker 03

  And at first she accepts the message but doesn't answer. And then he sends a follow-up question mark.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  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.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  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.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  I said, "Where are you?" She said, "Youngstown." I told her where I was. I said, "I was living in Youngstown." She, you know, come to find out, we were only 10 minutes from each other.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  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.

• 35:05Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, this is where I just come in. Dylan, the reporter, by the way, Sarah, like, you're a good journalist. Like, Dylan, just like...

• 35:12Speaker 03

  He found out, Pablo.

• 35:13Pablo Torre?

  Dylan McCullough finds out is an impressive, 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.

• 35:37Speaker 03

  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 OK and successful, but now she has a son and grandkids and this extended family.

• 36:03Pablo Torre?

  And the logical next question, obviously, as he continues to find out, is, all right, who's my birth dad?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. He says, it doesn't list a father on my birth certificate. And he asks her, do you know who my father is?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  And she said, um, your dad is a man by the name of Sherman Smith. When she said that, I was like, my mind was blown.

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• 39:27Pablo Torre?

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• 39:58Pablo Torre?

  It's just the sort of twist you dream of. You know, it's just jealousy is what I feel. I feel jealousy. Um, I feel awe. I feel like I'm watching a weird version of The Sixth Sense. In which, uh, you know, Dylan has been seeing his dad. The whole time, actually. And that's [bleep] wild.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Your dad is a man by the name of Sherman Smith. And like I said, when she said that, I was like, my mind was blown. And she said, well, like, I was like, you could hear, she could obviously hear me kind of choke up and get emotional. She said, well, what's wrong? What's, 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.

• 40:46Pablo Torre?

  How does Dylan then tell Sherman? What he has found out?

• 40:53Speaker 03

  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.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  So I reached out to him. I sent him a text. And I said, hey, coach, I need to talk to you about something.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Forty-five years later, he's going to get a phone call from someone who says, I'm your son, that he knows.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  I just kind of jumped right into it. I said, hey, what's going on? Girl, 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, you know, 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, a little bit more. He said, what's that? And I just kind of ran straight through it. I said, um, her name is Carol Briggs. And when I asked her, who was my dad? She said, you, I just ran it straight, just like that. And I remember it was silent on the other hand. So I'm excited.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  He's blown away. And then he, maybe in a couple seconds, maybe even less than a minute later, he said, "Dylan, I need to get off the phone. I need to process this."

• 41:58Speaker 03

  He's spent his entire life wondering about his birth parents. But for Sherman, it's zero to 45-year-old son with no warning. He hasn't been looking for that. He has a happy wife and family and kids. But he almost doesn't want to imagine that he could be the kind of person who made a choice that resulted in other people having to be responsible. He had always told his players, "There's no such thing as irresponsibility. When you're irresponsible, someone else becomes responsible for what you didn't do." He has led a life, leading young men and telling them how to be, and then he recognizes that he might not have been the guy he always thought he was. And so at first, he's not overjoyed the way Dylan would hope. He needs some time.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  I initially took that as a blow. But then I quickly flipped because he sent me a text a little bit later on and he said, "Hey, man. Girl knew she had a baby. You knew you had parents out there." I knew nothing.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  And then he starts thinking about how the story isn't his, it's Dylan's. How Dylan has spent his whole life looking for this piece of himself and how he needed to stop centering himself and consider what it meant to Dylan to find him and really consider that it could be true. They get a paternity test. It's 99.9999999%. And as he's waiting for those results, he realizes that he will in fact be very sad if he is not his father. By this point, he's come around to the idea that they've had this connection, that this story is almost faded.

• 43:30Pablo Torre?

  How long does it take for Sherman Smith, the coach, to become Sherman Smith, the dad? How does the language around that change, given their relationship has been long and intimate, but in this, again, non-biological way?

• 43:48Speaker 03

  It isn't crystallized until they see each other in person for the first time after knowing their connection as father-son. Dylan's actually got recruiting trips that allow him to get near Tennessee and where Sherman lives in retirement and goes there for the very first time to see his dad as his dad.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  There's this just incredible moment and I cry every time I think about it. I cried writing it. I cried the first time Dylan said it. But Dylan goes to see him for the first time in person after they know of their connection as father-son. And he's nervous and sitting in the car. And Sherman looks out the window and sees him sitting and he's like, oh, this cat's nervous. Like, he's just sitting out in his car, not coming up, even though we've known each other for years. And when Dylan gets to the doorstep.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  I get up on the porch and he opens the door. He just said, "My son." And it was like, ah, the tears start rolling again. Because I'd never been referred to as somebody's son. He embraced me fully, forearms wide open, and said, "My son." And he embraced me and it was, here we go.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  His adoptive dad left when he's two. He hasn't had a dad since. And he didn't realize how much he was carrying feelings of, "Am I enough? Am I worthy? Does someone want to claim me?" And for this man, this ideal of a person, to embrace him and call him his son, he just sort of let his inner child release and cry and be embraced by this man.

• 45:25Pablo Torre?

  And so now we're in the present, Sarah, and they have this relationship. They have talked to you about it. You're updating your reporting. What's it been like? What's it been like since they got to have that, I mean, truly cinematic level of embrace?

• 45:46Speaker 03

  It's been joyful mostly and also complicated. And for me, doing the story the first time, we did a lot of work on it, but nothing like writing a book. So the hours and hours of interviews, all the people I talked to, all the detail I unravel. And, I mean, there's a twist with his brother that I didn't know the first time I reported it, that I think is day one stuff if I was talking to someone and his brother didn't think it was day one stuff. So I didn't find out till I start writing the book that there's a whole nother parental twist that goes on. In his family, even before what happens with his dad. And so you have to read the book for that. There's a tease that we're not giving away in this interview. But yeah, as I'm, as I'm doing more of these interviews and I'm, and I'm talking to everyone in the family,

• 46:29Speaker 03

  I am working so hard to understand each perspective. You've got an adoptive mom in Adele, who sacrificed so much to raise these two boys as a single mom, thinking that she was going to have this partner in AC, the, the radio DJ. And instead she's alone, post-industrial collapse, not a lot of money. And they turn out so well. They become these successful young men. And then here come these birth parents who have a lot of judgment at first about what he went through as a kid. They wanted the best for him. Both Sherman is someone who cared about him and had met him as a young man. And then Carol, who gave him away with the expectation he would end up in a two-family home. Everything would be, you know, this idyllic setting you imagine,

• 47:11Speaker 03

  an, 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.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Like how he became, I mean, the same exact life.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  It's surreal. I mean, it really is. We're 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.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Which 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, like is a teacher. Like, it's just, it's remarkable.

• 48:35Pablo Torre?

  At the center of that Venn diagram, along all of these like 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?

• 49:00Speaker 03

  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.

• 49:16Pablo Torre?

  And it is funny to hear Dylan tell us about what Pete Carroll had detected back when Dylan was an intern with the Seahawks and Sherman Smith was a coach on the staff. Because Pete Carroll kinda sniffed this [BLEEP] out before, you know, the DNA test did.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Like, in the beginning of one of the staff meetings, Coach Carroll, you know, he going through 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, the two 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.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  And so, understanding that we are both a product of what made us and also of everything around us, also implies choice, which is like the through line of this book. Is yes, you are handed certain genes. Yes, you are handed certain family, certain circumstances. But your choice at every turn impacts whether you make it out, whether you make it right, whether you make it good, whether, like Dylan, you decide to end a bunch of cycles that you don't think- Serve you or your kids. I don't want to be a father who abandons his family. I don't want to be abusive. I don't want to be somebody who doesn't stick around. I want to be the opposite of what I saw. And I think especially with adoption, that's very poignant. Because with adoption, it's I could be anyone. I could live anywhere.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  I could be named anything like. Instead, he said at every turn, I'm in charge and this is my choice.

• 50:57Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that's the thing I realized about the way I've been hearing this story up till really now, which is, I thought that this was a story about a guy sucked into a gravitational field beyond his control. And then you realize that actually he is the one making these calls himself. And part of what it is to live in this profoundly seemingly scripted, unscripted story is that the choices he makes are the ones that bring him back to who he is.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  We always say you don't get to choose your family. And he did.

• 51:33Pablo Torre?

  God. Put that in the trailer. Put that in the trailer for the movie, Sarah. I mean, is it hard? Is it hard to not think about the movie? I mean, look, we talked about managing the surprise in the reveal.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Well, and here's your final fun fact. Two of the executive producers on the film we are planning to make, but have not yet signed a studio to are Russell Wilson and Ciara.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Just like Sir Mix-a-lot, I'm just dropping that in.

• 51:59Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  And guess what? The potential for this film is unlimited.

• 52:02Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God. Does Sir Mix-a-lot know this story? Does he know what you're up to, Sarah?

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Gosh, he does know what I'm up to. He used to be a regular listener to Spain and Fitz on ESPN Radio.

• 52:20Pablo Torre?

  So this is where I need to report that I have now spent a chunk of my Memorial Day weekend reaching out to Sir Mix-a-lot for comment. Comment on whether he does in fact know what Sarah Spain is up to lately with this book, with this story. And also whether Sir Mix-a-lot is aware that former NFL coach Sherman Smith bought his candy apple red and gold Mercedes. And then used it to recruit a running back that Sherman Smith would only realize decades later was actually his baby. A baby he didn't know about. But a baby. He got back.

• 53:06Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I just wanna let that one sit for a second.

• 53:13Speaker 03

  I remember that I posted about the car and it being Sir Mix-a-lot's on Twitter and tagged him. I don't think he responded, though. I remember the last exchange I had with Sir Mix-a-lot was, not surprisingly, about butts.

• 53:25Pablo Torre?

  I'm searching for this and February 3rd, 2020, @SarahSpain. Don't know what prompted it. Quote, "Are we talking butts today?" Question mark. I'm in. And you replied via quote tweet, "We always know. We can count on you."

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:44Pablo Torre?

  @therealmix, winking emoji. But I don't know if that's true anymore, honestly. Because what I'm also here to report is that Sir Mix-a-lot has not yet gotten back to me. I sent him and his manager a whole bunch of texts over the weekend. I even dialed his hotline per what I thought were very clear instructions.

• 54:11Pablo Torre?

  And I got nothing. And so Sir Mix-a-lot, near the end here, if you are listening, sir, we have our own hotline, actually, that we would like you to call. So please dial the PTFO tip hotline at 513-85-PABLO. That is 513-85-PABLO, a very real number you can call.

• 54:36Pablo Torre?

  And please do get back to us.

• 54:40Pablo Torre?

  This has been a lot to find out today, Sarah. I have a feeling that that is not in the book, that exchange.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  Yes, that Twitter exchange is not in the book, but lots of other good stuff is. So, you know, read it, buy it, order it, tell your friends.

• 54:53Pablo Torre?

  Sarah, thank you for making the choice to do this with me. It's been a real pleasure.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 55:10Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

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