Deland McCullough
speaker
90 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Deland McCullough’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, that was my response when I first heard the story, was pretty much holy f***.
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?
Well, I am worried about you after you did that interview where you said some of your articles, you actually changed the words in 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.
Have you seen someone for that?
My bad.
Yeah, so the protagonist and co-author, his name's Dillon McCullough. He is currently the Raiders running backs coach.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Yes.
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 Dillon 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 a father figure, but her choices never really match her intentions.
And they are abusive. One of them has a crack problem.
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. And so, Dillon, how long has he known that he is adopted? 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 Dillon when we adopted him. And he says, I'm adopted? 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 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.
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 okay being in the background on the football team. He just liked being out there.
And then from somewhere within himself is this drive to work harder than everyone.
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