A search for one’s family, the Oh-So-Close Men and the week’s best sportswriting

Source: Robin Alam

1. “IN JULY, A huge family reunion in Youngstown brought McCullough, Briggs, Smith and Comer together for the first time. All of McCullough’s parents in one place, reflecting on nurture versus nature, what is inherited versus what is taught and the many different forms of parenthood. It was both the culmination of a journey and the start of something new for the families that the journey had introduced. A man found his parents, a mother found her child, and a father discovered a son he never knew he was missing. There is no jealousy, no resentment and no regret. There is just gratitude for the winding paths that brought them all together.

“When I look at Deland, the type of guy he is, it was a gift to us,” Smith says. “And to think — Deland felt we were a gift to him.”

“Now I know who I am and where I’m from,” McCullough says. “I got all of the pieces to the story. I got them all now.””

ESPN’s Sarah Spain penned the jaw-dropping story behind NFL coach Deland McCullough’s search for his family.

2. “Dublin are champions again. Just one more step away from immortality, but weighed down by that same, familiar reticence.

We are a long way off that patriotic dream so until it happens, we have to accept that the squad will be made up of those with varying degrees of love for their country and maybe wonder if the manager is getting the best out of them.”

Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are leading Ireland into the wilderness and there’s nothing patriotic about following them blindly, writes Dion Fanning for SportsJOE.

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