Albert Berg - Purdue Football Coach

Purdue Football Coach

A group of students at Purdue University formed the school's first football team in 1887. Berg was hired as the coach. Despite being deaf, Berg was reportedly "the only man in the territory with any knowledge of the game." Berg was 23 years old when he became Purdue's football "coacher." He was paid $1 for each lesson he gave to the newly organized football team and had only one week to prepare the team for its first game. The 1887 Purdue team played its only game on October 29, 1887, against the Butler College team at Athletic Park in Indianapolis. Butler soundly defeated Berg's squad by a score of 48–6. After the loss to Butler, Purdue did not field a football team again until 1889.

Newspaper columnist George Ade (for whom Ross-Ade Stadium is named) described the loss to Butler as "a low comedy reproduction of the Custer massacre at Little Big Horn," and noted that the deaf-mute Berg had been given an unenviable task to "take charge of the halt, the lame, the blind, and the perniciously anemic to imbue them with stamina, courage and strategy."

Berg later recalled how his condition impacted his coaching: "On account of my inability to hear and my ability to talk only to a limited extent and on account of the game being practically brand new in this part of the country, my instruction was mainly by imitation of my own playing, and the way they caught on and improved upon it would have encouraged and delighted any coach." According to another account, Berg's coaching "consisted of excited sign language and some rather bizarre sounds from his throat which his players correctly translated as pure profanity."