Albert Berg Albert Berg ( April 16 , 1864 – March 5 , 1945 ) was an American football player , coach , teacher , and an advocate , writer and editor on issues of concern to the deaf . Berg was rendered deaf as the result of a childhood bout of spinal meningitis . He played football in Washington , D . C . at the school that became known as Gallaudet University . Despite being a deaf - mute , he became the first football coach at Purdue University , coaching the team to an 0 - 1 record in the inaugural 1887 season . Berg also coached football at Franklin College and Butler University . He later served for more than 40 years as a teacher at the Indiana School for the Deaf . Early years . Berg was born in Lafayette , Indiana in 1864 . His mother died when he was an infant , and he contracted spinal meningitis as a boy . The illness rendered Berg deaf . Berg was sent to the Indiana Institution for the Deaf in Indianapolis where he was a student for nine years . After leaving the Indiana Institution for the Deaf , Berg enrolled at the " Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb " ( later renamed Gallaudet University ) , run by Edward Miner Gallaudet in Washington , D . C . He was a halfback and captain of the football team at Gallaudet . Berg later recalled : " In passing and kicking the ball , I was considered exceptionally strong . " He received a bachelor ' s degree from Gallaudet in 1886 . Several sources report that Berg was an alumnus of Princeton University . Other sources dispute Berg ' s having any connection with Princeton . 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 . " Teaching career and advocacy . After his brief stint as Purdue ' s football coach , Berg worked briefly as an architect ' s apprentice and with the YMCA and the Chicago stockyards . He also returned to coaching briefly at Franklin College and at Butler University . In the late 1880s , he became a teacher at the Indiana School for the Deaf . He taught there for between 41 and 45 years until retiring in 1933 . He received a master of arts degree from Gallaudet in 1895 . He delivered his thesis on " Labor and Capital " to an audience that included President Grover Cleveland , though Cleveland reportedly fell asleep during Berg ' s presentation . Berg also became an advocate for the deaf . He lobbied for better pay for deaf teachers , wrote several books , served as an editor for " The Silent Hoosier , " and published " Who ' s Who of the Deaf . " Berg also sold life insurance , mostly to the deaf , for an eastern insurance company . He reportedly sold over $ 1 million in policies . Berg preferred not to be remembered as a football coach . In his autobiography , " From My Reliquary of Memories , " Berg wrote : " Many years ago , my picture appeared in ' Believe It or Not ' in newspapers over the country , as ' Deaf Mute Football Coach at Purdue . ' Friends in several distant cities sent me the clippings from their home papers . Each football season , papers here and there have printed something about the role I played , one or two with my picture , and I have been asked to write articles on my coaching experiences , as though I had never done anything else worth while in my life . I got fed - up long ago and know I have not yet heard the last of it . The subject may wind up in my obituary . " Family and later years . In approximately 1890 , Berg was married to his wife , Maude , who was 21 years old and had been a student at the Indiana School for the Deaf . They had two children , Myrtle born in May 1891 , and Lloyd born in September 1898 . After retiring in 1933 , Berg and his wife moved to the Mount Airy neighborhood in Philadelphia , where he was employed by the New England Life Insurance Company . In October 1939 , Berg fell and sustained a broken hip . After the injury , Berg and his wife moved to Council Bluffs , Iowa , where their son Lloyd was employed as the superintendent of the Iowa School for the Deaf . Berg never recovered from the broken hip and remained confined to his room for the final six years of his life . His wife died in 1942 , and he died three years later after suffering a stroke at age 80 .