NFL Coach’s Miraculous Discovery of Birth Parents Gets Big Screen Treatment
By Movieguide® Contributor
NFL running back coach Deland McCullough’s truly miraculous story of finding his birth parents is told in the Kendrick Brothers’ emotional movie, SHOW ME THE FATHER.
“She said she’s in Youngstown,” McCullough recalled about speaking to his birth mom, Carol Briggs, for the first time. “And I said, ‘Well, that’s where I grew up. I said, how’d you end up in Pennslvania? And she explained to me how things were different and her parents had sent her there to have me.”
At age 16, Briggs gave McCullough, who she named Jon Kenneth Briggs, up for adoption.
“My mom found out I was pregnant like, on a Tuesday or Wednesday and on that Saturday I was on my way to Pittsburgh,” Briggs explained in a clip from the movie. “It’s a big deal to have a baby, and I knew that I wasn’t prepared to be anybody’s mom. And I didn’t have any negative feelings about my decision to give him up for adoption because I knew that I was doing the right thing for him.”
“I thought about Jon all the time,” she said. “Every December the first from the day I joined Facebook, I put a message out, “Happy Birthday Jon Kenneth, wherever you are.’”
As McCullough started his new relationship with his birth mom, he sent Briggs photos of his family, his wife and their four sons.
“When he started sending me all these pictures of his children, and he’s go these four beautiful boys and my daughter-in-law is just drop dead gorgeous. I’m like man, how lucky can I be to have this happen to me? You know, he’s just fabulous and he’s so handsome,” she said through tears. “And I’m thinking well, this is just more than I could’ve even imagined.”
A positive connection with his birth mom isn’t the only neat thing about his story.
When she told him the name of his birth father, he felt like he was about to pass out.
“Your father’s name is Sherman Smith,” Briggs told him.
McCullough knew Smith his whole life and had been compared to him many times. He never had any idea that Smith was his real father.
“If you would have told me to pick who my father was, there’s no way I would have picked him because I might have thought I wasn’t worthy for him to be my father,” McCullough said. “I felt like my blessings came full circle because I’d always wanted to be somebody like him.”
McCullough first met Smith in high school. Smith was the running back coach at Miami of Ohio when he recruited McCullough. They kept in touch after McCullough went to college and knew each other for 28 years before they found out they were father and son.
Smith was a Seahawks running back for eight years and eventually became their running back coach. Incredibly, he and his son both shared the same title as an NFL running back coach.
“He was everything,” McCullough recalled. “If anything was going on, I was going to talk to Coach Smith. Everybody in that room gravitated towards 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.”
Smith never knew he had a son. Briggs had never told him. The news took a little time to sink in for Smith, but he welcomed McCullough with open arms.
“I know as a Christian that I have to be vulnerable and swallow my pride,” Smith told Dove.org. “So I wasn’t worried about what people would think. As Jesus said when they brought in the woman caught in adultery, ‘Let those without sin cast the first stone.’”
At their first meeting since the discovery of their biological relationship, Smith greeted McCullough with “My son.”
“For so many years that I was around him, the embrace was, ‘Hey, Coach, how you doing?'” Smith said. “But this is, ‘Man, my son.’ Maybe I was doing it for me, to help me really, fully understand.”
“I know he was saying it from a place of ‘I’m proud. This is my son,'” McCullough said. “I’d never heard that. I’d never been referred to like that before — period. It really hit me hard emotionally. When I sit here at this point, and I’m looking at the things that I’ve done, I’m happy that I’m able to be somebody that he’s proud of.”
“Now I know who I am and where I’m from,” McCullough said. “I got all of the pieces to the story. I got them all now.”
“I’m glad God could use my story, to benefit the kingdom by talking about fatherhood,” Smith said. “My friend Pastor Tony Evans told me in 2017 when I found out that I was Deland’s father that God was going to use the story for His glory.”
And God certainly did, proving that restoration and grace can be given even when it’s not expected.
McCullough’s and Smith’s story is told in SHOW ME THE FATHER, along with other incredible stories about fatherhood.
Movieguide®’s +4 review of the movie reads:
SHOW ME THE FATHER is a wonderful, inspiring documentary. It tells six emotionally powerful stories about fatherhood. Four stories involve two football coaches who mentor four young men from broken families to become better men and better fathers. Another story tells how God performs a miracle in helping a man and his wife find the perfect daughter to adopt. A sixth story shows how an older man overcomes a serious bout with depression to bless his own three sons.
SHOW ME THE FATHER is a must-see movie. It will brighten your day and inspire you. The filmmakers let the people involved tell their stories. It intercuts these segments with great visual aids and archival footage that move the story along. The emotionally powerful stories ultimately lead to three great heartwarming, surprising twists. SHOW ME THE FATHER has a strong Christian, biblical worldview, with many great biblical references. Just as good, if not better, the movie overtly stresses that Jesus Christ is the visible image of God the Father. As Jesus says in John 14:7, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
Other Kendrick Brothers movies — FACING THE GIANTS, OVERCOMER, WAR ROOM and COURAGEOUS — have all won Movieguide® Teddy Bear Awards®.
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