Far from the Cleveland Browns, one neighborhood football program tries to save kids: Mark Naymik

John Phillip Cullum is a Cleveland football coaching legend.

You've probably never heard of him.

But in the city's Central neighborhood, he's more famous and respected than any Cleveland Browns coach or player.

Best known by his nickname, "Coach Phil," he didn't earn his status with long winning streaks or rousing locker-room speeches.

Coach Phil became a legend by gluing sponges and foam into battered helmets and shoulder pads for kids too poor to buy proper gear. He became a legend by tossing orange peels to kids on the sidelines to use as mouth pieces. He became a legend by buying a newspaper delivery truck from the defunct Cleveland Press and turning it into a team bus.

He became a legend by showing up on the worst field in the toughest neighborhood to coach Pee Wee football for a staggering 40 years and counting.

He does it for the love of kids, not the game.

Coach Phil was honored Thursday night at the Central neighborhood's annual football banquet, which recognizes the kids from the area's public housing facilities who played last season in the city's municipal league. The neighborhood's older boys, in the bantam division, won the city championship.

The event was not fancy, held in the gymnasium at the Friendly Inn Settlement, a social-service resource center near East 55th Street and Quincy Avenue. Participants found a few trays of food and several tables of medals, plaques and football-shaped trophies paid for by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.

Dwayne Browder ran the event from a chair and, for a while, without a microphone. He's a housing activist and legend in his own right, who has helped organize sports programs in public housing for decades. Nothing happens without him.

He and a few coaches announced Thursday a change to reflect the magnitude of Coach Phil's contributions. From now on, they said, the neighborhood football team, known as the Redskins, will also carry Coach Phil's name.

That may not seem like a big deal until you realize his name is replacing the name of the late crusading Central neighborhood Councilman Lonnie Burten, whose name was linked to the Redskins before Thursday. Burten's name, of course, will remain on the recreation center and football field.

Cullum, who graduated from the neighborhood's old East Tech, offered a lot of smiles but few words.

"I feel good when kids come back and say they remember what I talked about," he said. "I still love them all."

I had never heard of Cullum before Thursday. I attended the event to learn more about another change Browder planned, one aimed at forcing kids and their parents to better address their own problems.

For the first time, Browder will require any kid who wants to play for the Redskins to sign up for the free counseling or tutoring or other services at the Friendly Inn.

This is not a formal rule of the city's league. It's a rule of the neighborhood.

Browder encouraged parents at the banquet to seek help as well and warned them that football players will have to participate at least two days a week when practices begin this summer.

Browder says many of the kids struggle in school and have behavior, mental or substance-abuse problems. These are the real challenges.

He also hopes that by making kids connect to services outside of sports, some will stay off the streets, where gun violence is growing.

Browder didn't waste the opportunity to take on that issue Thursday, telling the football players, some as young as 6, that they have to stop shooting each other.

"We can't have kids, when they get mad, kill one another," he said.

Browder and others, such as Coach Phil, know that no football program can save a neighborhood.

But they believe it might save a kid.

To reach Mark Naymik: mnaymik@plaind.com, 216-999-4849

On Facebook: marknaymik

On Twitter: @marknaymik

college football ncaa football brian van gorder blazing saddles lsu alabama national championship beezow doo doo zopittybop bop bop