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By GREG AUMAN, Times Staff WriterIn Birmingham, Ala., USF's basketball coach found his calling under a legendary mentor.
His team is on the road tonight, but Robert McCullum is at home.
As the Bulls try to end a five-game losing streak against Alabama-Birmingham, their coach returns to the place of his birth, to the city where he learned to play basketball, where he spent his coaching infancy. For those who knew him then, his return is a reminder of where hard work can take someone.
"Everyone here wishes him well," said Willie Scoggins when asked about the reception McCullum will get at Bartow Arena, where his mother, brother and sister will be in the crowd. "This is home, and he should always be glad and proud to come home."
Scoggins is a Birmingham legend, having won 862 games in four decades of coaching at Hayes High, where McCullum played for him, and at Ramsay High, where McCullum spent four seasons as an assistant. In his mid 20s, McCullum turned down head coaching jobs at other high schools for the chance to learn more under Scoggins.
"I could have turned my program over to him," said Scoggins, a member of the Alabama High School Hall of Fame as the state's second-winningest coach. "He and I are very close, as close as any player I've ever had. He was always a very disciplined young man, always aggressive, always wanting to make more of himself. He had high aims."
McCullum, 50, put in 18 years as an assistant for seven college programs before he became coach at Western Michigan five years ago. But he cut his coaching teeth in six seasons in Birmingham, first at Council Junior High and then with Scoggins at Ramsay.
"It was very rewarding for me, from a learning experience," said McCullum, who taught physical education in junior high and social studies at the high school. "I think the best coaches are good teachers."
Birmingham was the crucible of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a difficult place to grow up, and McCullum, as a teenager in a single-parent, low-income home, found his inspiration in basketball and a "strong father figure" in Scoggins. Asked what traits he shares with his old coach, McCullum said the best parallels have little to do with basketball.
"The emphasis he placed on character, pride, integrity, competing," McCullum said. "He was an extremely strong disciplinarian. He had a way of making everyone well-behaved. If you played for him, you were well-behaved."
McCullum was learning from Scoggins before he ever played for the Hayes varsity.
Scoggins stressed hard work, sending his players to youth work camps in the tobacco fields of Connecticut each summer. It provided them with money and kept them out of trouble while they bonded. That chemistry would help them to the state championship game in 1972, McCullum's senior year.
McCullum showed the same work ethic as a young coach, driving across the country to work at college camps each summer. The benefits were twofold: It allowed him to get his name out to numerous coaches, and taught him to work with all kinds of players, each camp presenting a different mix of strengths and weaknesses with unique coaching needs.
Scoggins encouraged him to join the National Association of Basketball Coaches when he was 24 and just a junior varsity coach, convincing him to go to the national coaches conventions at the NCAA Final Four to network and build relationships.
"That was all through him, and that paid off and led to the recommendation to Cliff Ellis," said McCullum, who got his first break in 1982, joining Ellis' staff at South Alabama.
Once he got into the college ranks, he became a role model. When he was coaching at Ramsay, McCullum became friends with Eddie McCarter, another young junior varsity coach in Birmingham. The two met often, just to talk basketball or take in a college game, a friendship that has continued for 25 years.
The same time McCullum got the college job with Ellis in Mobile, McCarter took a head coaching job at a high school in Troy, Ala., and the two lost touch. A year later, after McCullum returned to his hometown to join the coaching staff at Samford, McCarter drove two seniors to Birmingham for an all-star game.
Samford coach Mike Hanks spoke with the two players and introduced them to his assistant.
"That moment inspired me to be where I am today," said McCarter, now in his 13th season as coach at Texas-Arlington, which came to the Sun Dome to play the Bulls in December. "There's not many guys that can go from being a JV coach to being a college assistant. And he wasn't just some grad assistant, but a full-time guy who was on the road with the team, someone who recruited and did everything. I was so impressed, and I said to myself, "That's what I want to be. I can do that.' "
McCullum's Bulls won 81-51 in December, the first time in 25 years he and McCarter had gone head-to-head as coaches. After the game, they met for dinner, two old friends talking basketball, but McCarter said he learned long ago to listen and learn.
"His friendship has always given me someone to talk to. I really just pick his brain," McCarter said. "You get ideas from him, things I've already implemented with my team this season. I've learned so much from Robert McCullum that he doesn't realize."
Scoggins has retired but said he still points to McCullum as an example of what a young man can become with hard work. The two talk often, though it's rarely about basketball. The exception is when Scoggins reminds his former student to keep his head up as he faces the challenge of turning a program around while preparing to join one of college basketball's premier conferences, the Big East, next season.
"Where he is now, I knew he was thrown into the lion's den," Scoggins said. "I try to give him some encouragement, to tell him it takes time to break out of the cage. I know him, and I know he'll do well."