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 deaf, 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. 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." After the loss to Butler, Purdue did not field a football team again until 1889.

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.

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.

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". 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. 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.

Head coaching record