Brother to Brother: Renewed USC Legacy

Each time Sultan McCullough touches the ball, he has something to prove. The USC tailback wants people to watch him and think of something special.

He wants them to think of his older brother.

Saladin--not Sultan--was the natural-born football player in the McCullough family, the one with all the moves, the one expected to become the next great Trojan runner.

Somewhere along the way, he stumbled. Trouble sent him spinning through two junior colleges, landing him at Oregon, the only school that would take him. He has since disappeared from the spotlight, forgotten by almost everyone except his little brother.

“He’s a much, much better back than me,” Sultan says. “It’s a proven fact.”

Never mind that Sultan ranks among the top sophomore rushers in the nation, having gained more than 100 yards a game in his first season as a starter. Never mind his dazzling touchdown runs in an otherwise disappointing season for the Trojans.

“If I can do it, Saladin can do it twice as good,” he says. “If I get 100 yards, it means he would have gained 200 yards.”

Saladin will be in the Coliseum on Saturday, watching younger brother face Notre Dame in the rivalry he always wanted to be part of. He will cheer and also feel a little sad.

“It was my dream to play here,” he says. “But, you know, I’m living it through him.”

The McCulloughs are a big, rambling family where distinctions blur between brothers and cousins, where a kid might live with an uncle for a while, then return home. The one thing that brought them together was sports, throwing a football in the street or playing basketball in the park.

When Saladin was young, he learned from his older brothers Alcus and Kasem. When he began playing Pop Warner football, he dressed his younger brothers Sultan and Shaheed in his pads and conducted blocking drills in the front yard of their Pasadena home.

“Just line ‘em up and tell ‘em to hit,” Saladin recalls. “Just see who can knock each other out. That’s how they learned.”

As Saladin became a star at Pasadena Muir High, Sultan began playing youth football, trying to copy his moves.

“We both had speed,” Sultan says. “But he had that God’s gift. He was a pure running back.”

Saladin was a high school All-American in 1992, headed to USC on a football scholarship. Then his SAT result was invalidated. He had taken the test twice, improving his second score by more than 500 points, an increase test officials said was nearly impossible.

Deemed ineligible, Saladin sat out a year before playing the 1994 season for Pasadena City College, putting up spectacular numbers but getting suspended for fighting and missing practice. The next season he played at El Camino College, where he and a teammate were arrested, but not arraigned, in a misunderstanding over a friend’s car.

This young man who seems so sunny, so calm, could not stay away from trouble.

“It was a learning period,” he says.

By the time he settled down and earned enough credits for college, USC was no longer interested.

A disappointed Saladin accepted a scholarship to Oregon and, in 1997, returned to play USC at the Coliseum as one of the nation’s best all-purpose runners. He wanted badly to defeat the team that scorned him but the Ducks lost, 24-22, when their kicker missed a short field-goal attempt.

“I was in the locker room crying,” he says. “Literally crying my head off.”

That season, Sultan followed in his brother’s footsteps at Muir, becoming one of the top prospects in Southern California.

He differed from Saladin in several ways. A sprinter with a fast-twitch brain, Sultan lacked his older brother’s fluid running style and instinct for finding cracks in the defense. He also cared little about USC, not even the big game with Notre Dame.

“I was always more interested in Muir and Pasadena, my high school rivalry,” he says. “Besides, I was a Washington fan.”

But when recruiters came calling, USC got help from an unlikely ally. For all his bitterness, Saladin was still a fan.

“I kind of lured my brother to go there,” he says. “I told him he could stay close to home and it’s a good program.”

A McCullough finally made it to USC in the fall of 1998, five years later than expected.

Sultan’s speed was never in question--he won the Pacific 10 Conference 100-meter title as a freshman--but coaches wanted him to read his blocks better and run harder upfield. They wanted him to become more like his brother.

“I remember Saladin when he was in high school,” says Kennedy Pola, the USC running backs coach. “He had a lot of talent and he just seemed tougher.”

For two years, Sultan waited his turn, lifting weights to make himself bigger and learning the offense. This fall, he has made up for lost time.

Among three players expected to share time at tailback, he quickly established himself as the starter, gaining 128 yards against Penn State. Strength and knowledge gave him confidence to run inside, through the heart of the defense.

“He runs in there and he sees color, but that color might be five yards away,” Pola says. “If he takes one or two more steps, he allows a guard or a tackle to get on that color.”

In the first few games, most of his yards came in small chunks. Sultan wanted more but his older brother counseled patience.

“I told him not to run up his lineman’s back,” Saladin says. “If the hole’s not open, believe me, it’s open somewhere else. You’ve just got to look around.”

Against Oregon, Sultan bounced to his left and sprinted 59 yards for a touchdown. It was the first of several long scoring runs, most the result of his adjusting, finding a seam where there wasn’t supposed to be one.

Though he has expressed some displeasure at his number of carries, he goes into the final game of the season with 1,149 yards, placing him among the nation’s top 25 rushers.

“It’s scary what he’s going to be,” Saladin says. “He’s a home-run hitter every time he touches the ball.”

A hint of anger marks Sultan’s voice when he talks about how USC lost interest in his brother.

“The baggage, the stuff that happened . . . they thought he was going to bring trouble,” Sultan says. “But if he would have come here, USC would have won a national title.”

Saladin smiles.

“That was a long time ago,” he says. “I don’t hold grudges.”

After leaving his name in the Oregon record book, he tried out for the Oakland Raiders but was playing with broken ribs and was cut. There was also a short stint in a spring league.

“I never give up,” he says. “Never let down.”

These days, Saladin is trying out for Los Angeles’ new XFL team. At 25, he is still fit but is competing for a spot with former NFL backs Ken Oxendine and Rashaan Shehee.

The team held its mini-camp last weekend, so he was not able to attend the USC-UCLA game. He was running drills in an empty Coliseum while his younger brother ran for 105 yards and a touchdown in the sold-out Rose Bowl.

But Saladin will be in the stands for the Notre Dame game.

“I’m fired up every Saturday,” he says. “I want to be there, rooting him on.”

And little brother will be down on the field, trying to remind the fans of another McCullough.

“If I’m doing something good,” Sultan says, “it’s showing everyone how good he is.”