Football

Review: Runs in the Family

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Cover image of "Runs in the Family" by Sarah Spain and Deland McCullough

Runs in the Family, Sarah Spain and Deland McCullough. Simon Element (ISBN: 9781668036280) 2025.

Summary: An adopted child in difficult circumstances rises to coach in the NFL before finding his biological parents.

The couple had just lost a child. The father was a popular DJ in the town’s rock and roll station, the first Black DJ. The mother, Adelle, was a strong woman with an accounting background. They were popular and their house was a favorite party location on the East side of Youngstown. In March of 1973, they found a Black child in an orphanage in Pittsburgh. The adoption was easily approved and he was named Deland Scott McCullough.

Sadly the marriage did not last long. Adelle, Deland and his older brother Damon were on their own. The next years were harrowing as Adelle sometimes resorted to drug dealing to keep the family afloat and got involved in a string of abusive relationships with men. Growing up in those circumstances with the high crime rates of early 1980’s Youngstown, it did not look promising for Deland. But Adelle was determined to raise them right. Eventually, she cleans up her life. Damon sticks close to him as does an uncle. And Deland discovers a talent for football, working harder than other teammates at Campbell Memorial. Never a good student, he works hard to pass college entrance exams.

He led his team to winning seasons. Then Sherman Smith came into his life. Smith was the running backs coach for Miami University. He formerly played in the NFL. And he got his start at Youngstown’s North High School. He saw past the family’s impoverished circumstances and McCullough’s potential to the kind of young man he was coming, someone he hoped to mentor. McCullough accepted the scholarship offer, going on to have an outstanding four years, setting rushing records. He was frequently at the Smiths, watching their family and soaking up life advice.

He went on to a brief professional career, ended by injuries, worked at a juvenile center where he met Darnell, who he would marry, and at a charter school. Then the opportunity to coach at his alma mater came along. He sought Sherman Smith’s advice. By then, Smith was an NFL coach. Eventually, he took a position at Indiana, and had the opportunity to do a coaching internship under Smith. Others remarked how alike they were in coaching philosophies, and even mannerisms and the way they walked. Clearly, Smith met a need for a father as well as a mentor for Deland. Ultimately, Deland made it to the NFL as a running backs coach.

But not knowing his parentage troubled him. The book explores the reasons why adoption records were sealed and the struggle many adoptees had with not knowing their birth parents. Furthermore, both Deland’s birth and adoptive father abandoned him. He struggled to understand things about himself, why he reacted as he did at times. But slowly things changed. Eventually, Pennsylvania opened up birth records for adoptees. The day came when he received his birth certificate. His mother was a sixteen year old girl, Carol Briggs. He had been born Jon Kenneth Briggs. But no father name was on the birth certificate.

I will not say more about how the story unfolded except that it was amazing and transformative not only for Deland but for his birth parents. It was also difficult for Adelle and it meant both redefining the relationship on adult terms and reassuring her that no one had more influence in Deland’s life. She was always his only “Ma.”

The book is powerful at several levels. One is Deland’s success in life, in sports and marriage. He became the father he didn’t have. A second is the powerful exploration in this book of the longing for belonging and identity of adoptees. Finally, the resolution was one of those “beyond your wildest dreams” endings. Finding one’s biological parents doesn’t always work like this. But it warms your heart when it does.

Review: Third and Long

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Third and Long, Bob Katz. Minneapolis: Trolley Car Press, 2010.

Summary: When a drifter, once a Notre Dame football star, shows up in Longview, Ohio, he quickly becomes the town’s hope to save its major factory, lead its football team to victory, and maybe save the town.

He’d drifted from town to town after a brief football career, dropping out of Notre Dame. With experience in clothing manufacturing, he got off the train in Longview, Ohio in 1997 to apply for a job as factory manager of the Made Right Clothing Company, the major business in this Ohio River county seat. He almost didn’t make the cut until Marie, the administrative assistant who had taken a shine to him let slip he had a football injury. His abbreviated career at Notre Dame, under the name of Nick Nocero was enough to change the owner’s mind.

It became clear he faced a challenge. There had already been layoffs. Foreign competition was making it more difficult to get contracts. Yet the change was noticeable. Nocero cared, and would help out wherever needed. Working with the union steward, they met some rush contracts and business was up. But that just appeared to make them more attractive to some visiting Korean businessmen discussing a “strategic partnership.”

Longview High School, playing at Made Right Stadium, had fielded a string of mediocre football teams, the Bobcats, under Coach Pruitt, who has just suffered a stroke. The assistant, Sherman, was a math teacher who could do stats but knew little of the game. The Made Right owners put the pressure on for Nick to help. He assists and then takes over, which Sherman was only too glad for him to do. And the team starts winning. Marie’s son Brian plays for them, and he not only plays better, but starts becoming a better student.

Suddenly he is in demand. To speak to the Chamber of Commerce. To swap stories at the American Legion. To get a celebrity to the town’s Christmas tree lighting event. Both for the town and for him, it’s “third and long” and everyone is hoping for a miracle. The company, the school, the town have been just hanging on. Marie, a single mom sees a man who is worthy of her.

It’s hopeful. The team’s winning, the company is making respectable gains, and romance is budding. But there is a secret in Nick’s past that could trip him, and the whole shebang, up, downing them all for a loss.

Bob Katz has captured life in an Ohio town. The cover even looks familiar, like I’ve been in this town. Nearly all the small county seats are just hanging on, if that. If that one big employer pulls out, it changes everything. It has for a number of them. He also captures how a winning team can lift a whole town. Nick both intrigues, with the sense of mystery surrounding his life, about which he say little, and his ability to lead and inspire. Katz understands what a famous pastor once observed, that people love to be led well. The people of the town did, the kids did, and I found myself rooting for Nick, as he tries to make the most of this “third and long” shot to show what he can do, who he can be. This is a finely written story speaking to the hopes we cling to for ourselves, and for the places we call home.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author.

Review: Love, Zac

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Love, Zac: Small-Town Football and the Life and Death of an American Boy, Reid Forgrave. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2020.

Summary: The account of Zac Easter, who grew up in the football culture of small town Iowa and his family, played hard, until he began to experience the consequences of repeated concussions, when his life began to unravel.

Zac Easter grew up in small town Iowa in a football family. His father Myles was a player, college and high school coach at his high school. Both his brothers played. Small for his position, he made up for size with intensity. Hit after hit, using his head as a weapon to make up for his size. Hit after hit. Getting his “bell rung” many times. A final concussion and an alert trainer ended his athletic career in his senior year. Sadly, by then the damage was done.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. Zac didn’t know what to call it then. He had problems with short-term memory, impulse control, headaches, and focusing his attention. Things didn’t get better. In fact, additional concussions during a stint in the National Guard compounded the problems.

Reid Forgrave renders a sobering account of Zac’s downward spiral from a happy-go-lucky team captain to the abuse of drugs and alcohol in an attempt to self-medicate, alternating with attempts to get his life back on track, with the support of his family and girlfriend Ali Epperson. It was a spiral that ended one night at his favorite lake, as he took his own life.

Forgrave sets this against the backdrop of the American ideals of football, in which masculinity equates with the physical toughness that shakes off injury and pain, including a few “dings” to the head. Every player has them and carries the wounds of battle with aching knees and other injuries. “Playing hurt” is what “real” men do. Only sissies take the bench.

It’s one thing when it results in a gimpy leg. Then came Mike Webster and Junior Seau and a Pittsburgh researcher working with brain tissue of players who had died early, some by suicide, identified brain plaques that were the sign of something with the ominous name of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. This was the result of the brain’s attempt to heal itself from repeated concussive injuries.

Zac learned of this research and began to suspect that this is what had happened to him, and was going on inside of his brain. He visits a number of doctors, but none really can make him better. Somehow, he finishes college and works for a time with his brother.

Forgrave chronicles the struggle through Zac’s journals and texts. From one entry:

“Working out was my only escape when I realized something was off with me from the concussions. For years, working out has been the only thing that actually made me feel human again and made me feel less depressed. The only way I knew how to handle my depression and feel good inside was by my one my faith in god [sic], listening to music, lifting, and running. Many people just thought that I was super motivated and determined to be army special forces, but in reality I kept up the super muscle image to look tough on the outside when I was really crying everyday on the inside….It’s hard to hold back tears even now when I think about the times I was feeling so down from depression that I loaded up my .22 rifle or shotgun and put it to my head…”

Zac Easter

Zac’s words are supplemented by the author’s interviews with family, coaches, trainer, and girlfriend. A common theme that runs through all these accounts is an ambivalence toward football. These are people who love their football and even think it a positive influence on young men. And it took Zac from them.

This ambivalence is set against a growing national ambivalence from the numbers of former players afflicted with CTE. On the one hand is reforms to rules on kickoffs and tackling to attempt to take the head out of the game. Each year new helmets come out and concussion protocols are thoroughly implemented. On the other hand is the evidence that even sub-concussive injuries may be causing damage, and players endure hundreds of those. Even when you take the unnecessary roughness out of the game, there is the necessary roughness, without which you would have a game of a different character.

I grew up watching the Saturday night fights on TV when boxing was a big deal, and the epic matches with Ali, Frazer, and Foreman. Ray Mancini grew up in my home town, went to my wife’s high school. When he knocked out Duk-koo Kim in the 14th round of a match, resulting in a fatal brain injury to Kim, Mancini’s life changed, and so did boxing. Forgrave raises the same questions about football. Despite its place in our culture, is it time to ask if our entertainment and the values the game purports to teach are worth the destructive effects on men’s bodies, even if they willing accept them? Men like Zac.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Note: Contains coarse language and explicit material.]

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Chester H. McPhee

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Chester McPhee

Chester H. McPhee, from the 1936 Rig Veda, Chaney’s yearbook.

Recently I wrote about Frank Sinkwich, the Heisman Trophy winner who got his start at Youngstown’s Chaney High School. His coach was Chester H. McPhee. I remember Mr. McPhee, who still visited Chaney when I was there from 1969 to 1972, sometimes speaking at an assembly, or attending a basketball game. At the time, he was on the Youngstown Board of Education, even though he was in his seventies. He was, even then, a tall and imposing figure.

Chester H. McPhee was born March 28, 1897 in Mahoningtown, Pennsylvania, near New Castle. His family moved to Youngstown and he was a star half back at South High School under coach Russell “Busty” Ashbaugh. He also was a talented basketball player. After graduation in 1915, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, becoming a drill instructor at Parris Island. After his discharge in 1918, he returned to Youngstown, working at Stambaugh-Thompson’s. When it became clear to him that the promotions were going to college men, he enrolled as a student at Newberry College in South Carolina.

He went on to play half back on the Newberry College team, winning both freshman and senior All-Star awards. He was All-State center on the Newberry basketball team, which won four consecutive state championships. He also met and married Mabel, his wife for over 50 years.

oh-youngstown-chaney1935bb-r.preview

Chaney 1935 basketball team. Chester McPhee is on the far left of the second row.

After graduation, he taught coached in Laurens, South Carolina for a year. The following year, he returned to Youngstown to teach and coach at the newly established Chaney High School on Youngstown’s West Side. He taught physical education and coached there for 28 years. He coached both football and basketball. He not only coached Frank Sinkwich, but also All-American Frank Terlecki, the Kabealo brothers and his two sons, Chester, Jr. and Frank. He won five City Series football championships outright and shared four others.

He stepped down from his coaching role in 1954, and took a teaching position at West Jr. High School, teaching physical education and history until he retired in 1966. He organized weekend basketball tournaments and worked summers with Youngstown’s Park and Recreation Commission. He was honored on retirement by the Chaney Sports Alumni Association and elected to the Curbstone Coaches Hall of Fame.

In 1967 and 1971 he ran for school board and served as president of the school board from 1970 to 1972, when he retired. In 1974, he was elected to the Ohio High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame. He passed away June 8, 1975 and laid to rest at Forest Lawn Cemetery. In 1977, Newberry College elected him to its Hall of Fame. Mabel lived on until 1996.

His sons followed in his footsteps in many ways. Chester H. McPhee, Jr., after completing a doctorate at Ohio State went on to a teaching and coaching career at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. At various times he coached football, lacrosse, and swimming for the college. He died in 2012. His other son, Frank, went to Princeton, where he was an All-American in 1951-1952, during an era of great Princeton football teams. He played one season in the NFL with the Chicago Cardinals, and then went on to a successful career in the insurance industry with Prudential. He returned to Youngstown after retirement and passed in 2011.

Chester McPhee established a tradition of great coaching at Chaney High School, a tradition carried on by the likes of Lou “Red” Angelo, Ed Matey, and Ron Berdis. He coached players who went on to success in sports and life, including his sons. He spent most of his life as an educator. Thank you Mr. McPhee. Once a Cowboy, Always a Cowboy!

[After writing this article, I learned of the passing of Ed Matey, one of my teachers at Chaney, and a part of that great tradition. What a reunion he and Red and Chet must be having! My sympathies to the family of Coach Matey. May he rest in peace.]

 

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Frank Sinkwich

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Sinkwich_bulldogs

Frank Sinkwich, Unknown author / Public domain

I was the second generation to grow up on the West side of Youngstown. My parents grew up on the same street where I live and went to high school together at Chaney in the late 1930’s. I remember dad talking from time to time about the great Frank Sinkwich, who played under one of Chaney’s legendary coaches, Chet McPhee. Sinkwich won the Heisman Trophy in his senior year with the Georgia Bulldogs. He went on to a brief pro career.

Sinkwich was born in the town of Starjak in Croatia October 10, 1920 (the same year my parents were born). The family moved to Youngstown two years later, where his father Ignac operated a grocery store. When they first came to Youngstown, they spelled their name Sinkovic’. By 1940, the Sinkwich’s owned a family restaurant. The Wikipedia article on Sinkwich attributes his competitive drive to growing up playing football on the streets of the West side, “I learned early in neighborhood pickup games that I had the desire to compete. When people ask why I succeeded in athletics, I always tell them that I didn’t want to get beat”

Sinkwich was one of the great players to come out of Chaney but was nearly overlooked by the college scouts. Georgia Bulldog assistant coach Bill Hartman had visited Youngstown to recruit another top pick who committed instead to Ohio State. Hartman supposedly was refilling his car at a local service station when an attendant told him about a good player who lived down the street. He met Sinkwich’s dad on the front porch and persuaded Sinkwich to visit Georgia. The rest was history.

As a freshman, he led a team known as the “point-a-minute” Bullpups to an undefeated season. Sinkwich plead with Head Coach Wally Butts to be a fullback but Butts wanted him to play halfback, a position where he would both run and pass. Butts said of him, “He acquired, through hard work and endless practice, the ability to pick the open receiver better than anybody I ever saw.” In 1940, his first year on the varsity squad, UPI named him to the All-Southern First Team. In 1941, his junior year, he set an SEC record with 1103 rushing yards, in addition to 713 passing yards. From the third game of the season on, he did this with his jaw wired shut when it was broken in a previous game. He had a specially designed helmet. He led Georgia to a 40-26 victory over TCU in the Orange Bowl with 139 rushing yards and 243 passing yards and three touchdowns. He was a potent double threat.

The big year was the 1942. He had 795 rushing yards and 1392 passing yards (an SEC record at the time) for a total of 2187 yards. That year, he led the Bulldogs to a 9-0 victory over UCLA in the Rose Bowl, scoring the winning touchdown with two sprained ankles. He was a unanimous All-America choice and was awarded the Heisman Trophy. In three years, he rushed for 2,271 yards, passed for 2,331, and accounted for 60 touchdowns—30 rushing and 30 passing. He was the very first pick in the first round of the NFL draft, being picked by the Detroit Lions.

His first two years looked like the beginning of a stellar career. In both 1943 and 1944 he was named All-Pro, and MVP in 1944. Then he went into the service, and while playing for an Air Force service team, he suffered a serious knee injury that basically ended his career. He tried to return to the pros in 1946 and 1947, but was never the same and retired. He briefly tried coaching, with positions at Furman and at the University of Tampa, and a semi-professional team in Erie, PA in 1949.

After this, he returned to Athens, Georgia where he operated a successful beer and wine distributorship. Apparently, he never contemplated returning to Youngstown after his years in the South. He was reported to have said, “I’m from Ohio, but if I’d known when I was 2 what it was like down South, I would have crawled here on my hands and knees.” He died October 22, 1990 in Athens after an extended battle with cancer. Vince Dooley, then athletic director at Georgia said of him, “We’ve lost one of the great legends in football history. He was not only a great player but a wonderful person and citizen of Athens”

In addition to the Heisman, his greatness was acknowledged both in life and after his death. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954 and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1967. He was inducted into the University of Georgia Circle of Honor in 1996 and his jersey was retired, one of only four Bulldog players to receive th8s honor.

Frank Sinkwich was one of the great football players to come out of Youngstown, and out of Chaney High School. As he said, the streets of the West side gave him his competitive fire. But then Youngstown has always been a football town.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Penguin Football

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logo_of_youngstown_state_penguins

Today, Youngstown State’s football Penguins go up against Jacksonville State in the second round of the FCS Playoffs. It is great to see Youngstown back in championship contention. It was something we never saw during my years growing up in Youngstown and as a student at Youngstown State. Back then the competitive sports at Youngstown State were basketball and baseball under Dom Roselli.

Those were the “Dike” Beede days. It seems that Beede’s main contribution to football had nothing to do with winning. It was his idea to invent the penalty flag which was first used in a game between Oklahoma City University and Youngstown in October of 1941, at Rayen Stadium, where Youngstown played many of their games, even during the years we were students.

It’s not that there weren’t some players that went on to excel. Ed O’Neill perhaps made it the biggest. After playing for Beede, he went on to the Steelers, got cut in 1969, and then returned to Youngstown to pursue training in acting. He managed the Pub in Kilcawley when we were students before going on to Broadway, TV and Modern Family. While we were there, Ron Jaworski was the quarterback, known then and later as “the Polish rifle.” He went on to play for the Eagles and is still a sports commentator. Cliff Stoudt also was at Youngstown in the 1970’s before going on to play back-up to Terry Bradshaw with the Steelers. Ironically, Stoudt’s son Cole is currently an offensive assistant coach at Jacksonville State.

The closest we got to championships in our time at Youngstown was in 1974 when Ray Dempsey led the team with Stoudt at quarterback to an 8-1 record before losing in the first round of the playoffs. Dempsey went on to an assistant coaching job with the Detroit Lions the next season. For that season, I actually paid attention although few of us went to the games. There were often not many more people in the stands than on the field. Far more people in Youngstown went to high school games back then. The irony was that northeast Ohio is football country–all those sons of steelworkers! Thinking back, it just didn’t make sense that for so many years Youngstown State was uncompetitive.

Things got better after we left. Bill Narduzzi led them to a couple conference championships and a few playoff victories. But things really turned around in the Tressel years when they won four national championships and were runners-up twice before Tressel went on to coach at Ohio State. We live in Columbus and there were a lot of questions about Tressel but we talked about what he did at Youngstown. Sure enough, in 2002, he won another championship and went on to be the third winning-est coach in Ohio State history.

It was during this time that Stambaugh Stadium, also know as the “Ice Castle” was built. An internet search turned up no definitive answer to where this nickname came from except that the west side of the stadium represents the highest point in Youngstown, and in the blustery weather of late fall can be downright cold. It’s also fun to think of it as a place where the Penguins put their opponents on ice. Bleachers on the east side of the field added another 3,000 seats for a seating capacity of 20,630.

In his second season, current coach Bo Pelini has the Penguins in the second round of the FCS playoff. Here’s hoping that this marks the beginnings of a new winning tradition. Go Fighting Penguins!

Update at 5:40 PM Saturday, December 3, 2016. Youngstown State has just defeated Jacksonville State 40-24!