By Tommy Deas, Sports Writer Tuscaloosa News
Lure of football kept McCullum on right path
TUSCALOOSA - Charles McCullum barely knows his own mother. He met his father only once, when he was still a toddler. The grandparents who raised him passed away before he finished high school.
McCullum could have dropped out and ended up on Atlanta’s mean streets. He could have ended up like his best friend, dead from a drive-by shooting.
Instead, Stillman College’s senior quarterback is on course to graduate next spring and will likely finish his playing career as the Tigers’ all-time leading passer.
McCullum’s final season at Stillman will start Saturday at 5 p.m, when the Tigers host Concordia College. That he ended up at Stillman, or in college at all, is improbable, considering his troubled background.
“It was so close,” said Keven Bell, Stillman’s running backs coach and McCullum’s offensive coordinator and position coach in high school. “Everybody knew he had it rough. Everybody just wanted to see him get out of there and have a chance.
“He used [athletics] as a means of propping himself up.”
McCullum’s journey to Stillman started at Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta, where he was part of a football program that had produced National Football League players like Jamal Lewis and Ahmad Carroll, as well as Darrell Hackney, UAB’s all-time leading passer.
As the city high-jump champion and a standout basketball player, as well as the school’s starting quarterback by the time he started his junior year, McCullum seemed to have it made.
Behind the scenes, however, McCullum had little family structure. His mother had turned him over to her parents to raise him after his birth, and his father had bothered to see him only once, when he was 2 years old. Then, in the span of a year, both grandparents died, leaving McCullum to live with aunts and uncles, even friends and coaches, for his final two years in high school.
“I did what I could for him at that time,” Bell said. “A lot of the time he would stay with me. His parents were gone, grandparents were gone.”
Depressed and suddenly alone, McCullum took to the streets.
“When they died, I wandered off. I had football to grab me back. I’d probably be dead or in prison without it,” he said.
McCullum’s love for the game kept him in school, and he played well enough to earn a football scholarship to Florida A&M, where he quickly found himself in the middle of the action. In an early-season game at Florida, the team’s senior quarterback was injured and McCullum got the call.
“Before I knew it they said, ‘Come on rook, it’s time to go.’ That was my first career drive as a college quarterback was against the Florida Gators. There were a whole bunch of superstars on that team. They threw me in the fire, 18 years old. I had to grow up quick,” he said.
McCullum played in five games that season, completing 19 of 42 attempts for 203 yards and a touchdown with three interceptions and running for 54 yards. He earned a place in school history by becoming the first freshman to quarterback FAMU to a victory over Tennessee State in 25 years, and was the heir apparent to take the starting job as a sophomore. Then the NCAA came investigating, and the football program was threatened with the loss of scholarships. McCullum figured it was time to leave.
“I couldn’t afford to pay for a college education out of state,” he said. “It was just a bad situation.”
No sooner than McCullum had packed his bags, longtime friend and former high school teammate Sylvester Campbell, a defensive back at Stillman, called with a simple message.
“We need a quarterback,” he said.
McCullum wasn’t sure.
“I had no idea. I had not heard of Stillman,” he said.
McCullum came to check out the school and found his old high school coordinator, Bell, recently arrived on the staff. His decision was made.
“He’s been like a father figure, really,” McCullum said. “He taught me the fundamentals of how to read defenses and throw. He’s the reason I came to Stillman.”
After sitting out a season, McCullum began his charge on the Stillman passing record book. He passed for 1,470 yards with 11 touchdowns and four interceptions while running for 308 yards as a sophomore, then passed for 2,103 yards last season with 18 touchdowns and seven interceptions, adding 330 yards on the ground.
Going into this season, he needs 1,479 passing yards to pass Tyvun Green as the school’s all-time leading passer, and 19 touchdowns to break Green’s record for touchdown passes.
“That means a whole lot. If I get those records my name will be here at least until someone else comes along,” McCullum said.
In the meantime, the 6-foot-3, 205-pounder has created enough stir to be in the debate over who is the nation’s top quarterback at a historically black college.
“I think he is, and I say obviously I’m biased in that regard,” Stillman head coach Greg Thompson said. “A lot of our competitors have made mention of that fact.
“With us being on TV a couple of times last year, people across the country have seen him and mentioned him in that regard.”
Said Wade Streeter, head coach at rival Miles, “He’s got the tools. He’s an extraordinary athlete. You have to plan for him. You have to be aware he’s on the field because he’s got the ability to make things happen.”
Anthony Jones, head coach at Alabama A&M, saw McCullum in action last season.
“He’s a dual threat,” Jones said. “He has the ability to throw the ball downfield and he can run the ball.”
Around Stillman, McCullum’s athleticism is legend. Two seasons ago, he vaulted two defenders in full stride to get a first down at Kentucky State. Last spring, he bet with a teammate that he could match the feat of No. 1 overall NFL draft pick JaMarcus Russell by throwing a ball through the uprights from one knee at a distance of 50 yards.
The stakes: 200 pushups. McCullum won the wager.
“He did every one of those pushups,” the quarterback said.
Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference coaches voted McCullum on the second team in the preseason all-conference team behind Lane College’s Sherard Ellis.
“I think I did all I can do,” McCullum said. “I know the guy they put in front of me is not a better quarterback. I had more yards, more touchdowns, higher efficiency.”
McCullum also claims support from Ellis’ former teammate, wideout Jacoby Jones, who was the league’s most valuable player last season. Jones, who is expected to start for the Houston Texans of the NFL as a rookie this season, corresponds with McCullum on the Internet.
“We all know the truth,” was Jones’ message to McCullum when he heard the news about the All-SIAC snub.
Charlie Neal, play-by-play announcer for ESPNU, saw McCullum play twice last season. He believes McCullum is good enough to be considered one of the top quarterbacks at a historically black program.
“A lot of people are very high on him this year,” Neal said. “It’s hard to say when you look at all the different quarterbacks around. I think he probably is up there with the elite quarterbacks.
“Whether he would be the best, a lot of that would be subjective. The people around you, that has an effect. You can be Doug Williams, but if they don’t block for you or the receivers don’t run correct routes and catch passes, those things magnify.”
McCullum believes he belongs.
“Without a doubt, talent level is there,” he said. “Coaching is there, maturity. All the eggs are in one basket.
“All I have to do is go out there and prove myself. It will be proven through December.”
McCullum is also trying to create a better family environment for his two children than he ever had. His daughter, Ka’man Harris, resides in Atlanta but visits two weeks a month out of season and comes with McCullum’s mother to Stillman’s home games. His son, Chad McCullum, lives in town.
“I’m raising him,” McCullum said. “I take him to day care every day. It’s fun.
“Sometimes it gets tiring dealing with school, football practice and being a father. I’m trying to be the dad for him I never had. It’s challenging, but it’s exciting.”
The 23-year-old is on track to graduate with a degree in physical education next May, setting an example in the classroom for his children.
“That’s first and foremost,” he said. “Nobody in my family ever went to college. It was a big deal for me to even go to college, much less graduate. I made up my mind to finish.”
Ask McCullum’s head coach and Thompson will talk as much about the quarterback’s infectious enthusiasm for the game as his passing ability or field generalship. Ask McCullum, and he’ll tell you he loves football because it has probably saved his life.
Last spring, McCullum’s former youth league teammate and lifelong best friend, Courtney Lee, took three bullets while walking on a street in Atlanta. If he wasn’t playing at Stillman, McCullum figures, he might have been the victim.
“I probably would have been right there with him, beside him,” McCullum said. “I was on a destruction track. I’d been astray, very lost. It could have been me.
“I don’t have nobody to play for, just me loving college football. I came from nothing. I’m just trying to be a something.”
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