Deland McCullough: USC Football’s New Coach of Principle

Deland McCullough comes to the USC football program with a educational past and hopes of teaching the great running backs of the future.

Familiar faces are all over the place at Howard Jones Field for USC football’s 2017 spring camp. The Trojans returned nine out of ten full-time coaches this year, which is a new phenomenon for a program which has undergone so much upheaval on the coaching staff over the last five years.

The continuity is a welcome gift, but there is one unfamiliar face to get to know — new running backs coach Deland McCullough, who officially arrived at the beginning of March after leaving Indiana.

“We had a really good coach in Tommie Robinson and we replaced him with a really good coach in Deland.” Clay Helton said.

While the Trojan head coach believes McCullough reminds him of the man he’s replacing in many ways, he’s also noticeably different.

Running backs Ronald Jones II and Vavae Malepeai say Robinson was more old school, a grinder. McCullough is somewhere in between the old and new schools.

“He’s going to make you work but, at the same time, he’s going to take the time out of his day to talk to you about what you’re doing,” Malepeai said. “More of a teacher-type of thing.”

Teacher, a word echoed by Jones, is one the coach identifies with himself.

“That’s who I am. At the end of the day I’m just a teacher,” McCullough said. “Luckily, I get a chance to teach on the stage that I love, and teach a position I played.”

He literally was. After his playing days ended, he spent four years as the head coach of Harmony Community School in Cincinnati, Ohio. There, McCullough worked as a teacher, athletic director and certified principal.

Running backs coach Deland McCullough during USC Football practice at Howard Jones Field. (Alicia de Artola/Reign of Troy) /

Though he moved on to coach running backs at his alma mater Miami (OH), teaching remains in his blood. His enthusiasm for it is palpable.

McCullough smiles and bounces, talking about how much he enjoys finding ways to break down protections. He says he goes crazy during meetings. He wants his enthusiasm for learning to rub off on his players.

“You try to become a great student of the game, and then you turn around and be a teacher as well,” McCullough said.

It’s a holistic teaching philosophy, as much about turning young men into productive members of society as producing football players.

Of course, he’s especially good at the latter.

At Indiana, McCullough churned out consecutive NFL draftees at running back, with a third waiting to hear his name called next month.

You try to become a great student of the game, and then you turn around and be a teacher as well.

—McCullough

It’s that success which drew Helton and offensive coordinator Tee Martin to McCullough in the first place.

Martin watched Tevin Coleman with the Falcons, and noted that the Bears’ Jordan Howard made the Pro Bowl as a rookie. Both were McCullough products.

It didn’t turn them off that McCullough was not a heavy hitter in the industry. In fact, he had a familiar story.

“We thought we had a gem, a diamond in the rough,” Helton said. “You look at a lot of us, we didn’t come from the biggest name places but [we’re] really, really good coaches.”

For his part, McCullough was surprised when he got the call that USC was interested.

“I wasn’t particularly looking,” he said. He had interviewed with some NFL teams and looked at other opportunities in the past, but nothing ever came of those.

Running backs coach Deland McCullough during USC Football practice at Howard Jones Field. (Alicia de Artola/Reign of Troy) /

“[My family and I] said, you know what, when it’s supposed to happen, it’s going to happen and it’s going to be the right situation,” McCullough said.

Opportunity found him when LSU hired Ed Orgeron as the new Tiger head coach, and Orgeron turned around to poach Robinson from USC.

Even then, the door opened and McCullough took his chance, but it was quite a leap coming out west.

McCullough was born in Youngstown, Ohio. He went to school in the state and his professional footprint stayed rather small.

His stint in the NFL included time with the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles, before dabbling with the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the XFL’s Chicago Enforcers.

It wasn’t until Indiana’s appearance in the Foster Farms Bowl last year that McCullough had been to state of California.

His first ever trip to Southern California was for his interview at USC.

“[California] was almost like a place that you couldn’t imagine from where I was, from where I grew up,” McCullough said. “It just seemed like a whole other planet. There’s no way I’d seen myself being here.”

Of course, here he is, in the land of sunshine at Running Back U, looking to churn out the next generation of Trojan stars.

“I like to think my results show that I’ve been pretty good with evaluating guys and developing them,” McCullough said. “That’s what my plan is here.”

Already, Helton and Martin say they can see the growth of the Trojan running backs under their new coach.

McCullough emphasizes reads — which he simplified to help the backs play faster — angles, footwork and hand placement. The little things.

“I’m a detail freak,” he said.

But the most visible aspect of his coaching method is undoubtedly ball security.

McCullough and his assistants carry around a boxing glove mounted on a piece of PVC pipe. It’s for punching at the ball while the running backs go through drills.

Running back Ronald Jones during USC Football practice at Howard Jones Field. (Alicia de Artola/Reign of Troy) /

Even the balls they carry are specifically aimed towards preventing fumbles. They use a special nozzle to fill the balls with water instead of air, weighing them down.

Between dedicated ball security drills and going through warm ups with the heavy balls, McCullough estimates they get a dozen minutes or more of ball security work in every practice.

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“It’s one of those deals where, you get what you stress,” he said. “If you stress that as well as other things, you’ll get the result that you want.”

The result McCullough wants –besides protecting the football– is greatness.

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That’s what he looks for in his players, and he sees it in the group of running backs he’s inherited at USC.

McCullough calls Jones II ‘rough-molded clay’ with plenty of details to smooth out, but says he’s bought in. Malepeai stands out too, because he has a competitive “twinkle in his eye.”

“I just like tough guys. Tough guys who want to be great,” he said. “If they have a great attitude and great effort, we’re going to get it done.”

If they have half the gusto of McCullough, the Trojans will be right on track.

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