Underdog no more, a deaf football team takes California by storm

My spouse (hearing) spent some time immersed in the Deaf community and the learnings she got from just scratching the surface was really eye opening. All of what you said is true - there's no use for many of english adjectives because body language tells it equally as effectively.

The Deaf community was way more nuanced and interesting than I expected. ASL is a really cool language and it's fun and relatively easy to learn.

What is a “hearing person”?

I've been interested in learning ASL for a few years but never made the effort. Do you have some resources to suggest for getting started?

Are they still using audiotoxic medicine that burns the cochlea hairs to deal with bacterial meningitis?

i.e. is she deaf from medicine? or from the meningitis?

My kids are involved with wrestling and the sport is generally all about getting more people involved in anyway possible. There are rules for the deaf to allow a translator to walk around the outside of the mat to sign. There are rules for the blind that require contact be maintained throughout the match. Amputees are not unheard of and sometimes present major challenges since missing a leg might bring a seriously stronger person down a couple weight classes.

Nothing really to say about this article other than I'm happy they're able to get out there and play. I just wanted to point out a sport that seems to be doing it right at the national level, not just one instance.

It's a feel-good human-interest story; not meant to be accurate. It doesn't investigate any of the claims made as to why the team is successful.

> Mr. Adams, who coached the team for two seasons starting in 2005 and began his second stint four years ago, attributes the turnaround to rigorous conditioning and an especially talented cohort of players, some of whom have played together for years at lower levels.

Seems the most likely explanation, since sign language isn't a new innovation for deaf football players. The rest is just "since the team is good, it is a hook to talk positively about deafness.

Ironically, the California team is described as not needing to huddle — which makes sense since their opponents presumably don’t know ASL

> Many teams try to use hand signals to call in plays, but they are no match for the Cubs, who communicate with a flurry of hand movements between each play. No time is wasted by players running to the sidelines to get an earful from the coaching staff. No huddle is needed.

Maybe they could point some bright colored lights at the field and flash them when the play ends? That seems like a pretty low-budget way of achieving the same thing.

Good point, what about asking ref to press some button when the foul is detected. Then, some small watch could vibrate and notify a player. Sounds like a simple enough idea to implement.

To the best of my recollection American Football does not wrap the playing field in animated ads like European Football/Soccer does. I assume that's partly because everybody just hates the idea for every possible reason...

Noise can be a problem in really large stadiums and college/pro fans will sometimes successfully disrupt the opposing offense by making it too loud for them to hear each other in the huddle.

I played football in college against Gallaudet University (which is a school for the deaf.) They used a very large drum (6 ft diameter) on the sideline for their snap count as well as whistle plays dead.

But referees warned us that they were not going call late hits on the other team unless they were egregious and that we should keep aware on the field and protect ourselves accordingly.

What I find annoying, as a (partially) blind person, is when people say I'm inspirational because I'm good at something where my disability isn't even a factor. For example, one time I did karaoke at a bar where I had never been before, and while I was singing my first song, a guy was saying stuff like, "guy is blind, that's awesome... this guy is inspirational". (I know this because he posted a video on Facebook, which got back to me via a friend.) So, I'm inspiring because I'm blind because I can sing? How does that make sense? "Blind musician" is such a stereotype, I figured the reaction would be more like, "he's blind; of course he can sing."

This really makes me think about myself. Misattribution is probably the most annoying thing. I didn't get far in the software industry in spite of my loss of vision or hearing (in fact it was my vision declining that made me focus on computers and to quit sports). On the other hand, I'm decent at competitive shooters despite my disabilities. So sometimes it's just like "why are we talking about my disability, it has nothing to do with this." Sometimes we want to be celebrated for just the "normal" amazing things, and especially things our abled peers couldn't achieve (or maybe I just hold myself to way too high of standard).

Many teams at all levels already do depending on how they structure play and defensive calling. I was an offensive lineman and linebacker through high school and college - our line coach used hand signals for blocking schemes and the OC had 2 different signals he used to indicate which plays should be used from our wrist list. Linebackers communicated changes to defensive backs and safeties with hand signals based on what we saw lineman do or changes we head from the QB.

Not hard at all. Baseball, from juniors to the majors, also uses sign language.

In professional (and hearing) football and baseball hand signals are used as well. Security through obscurity mostly works fine. The teams generally change the meaning of the signals from game to game or even play to play, and it mostly keeps the defense from knowing what the signals mean.

In this context if the other team did happen to have somebody who could interpret the signals quickly enough, it would be pretty easy for the players to just have a few codes which change the meaning of the signals. And of course you can just agree what codes mean what in the huddle or the sideline where the other team can’t see.

I don't know if the article makes this clear, but it if they are just using ASL, the benefit there is that they've been communicating via ASL their whole lives and understand it "natively". It's also a language that was refined over time to communicate things quickly and concisely.

Other teams do develop their own language, with both verbal and hand signal components. However, I'm not sure high school football coaches are necessarily adept at making new languages, sure maybe it is good enough for what they're doing, but is it as robust as ASL or English? Of course not. Then, the players need to take time to learn it, if they ever even fully grasp it. Then, the players will come and go, so once a senior, who probably fully gets it leaves, the coach is left with a bunch of new players they have to teach - for this reason, the language is hard to refine. For all of these reasons, the team using their native language has an edge in communication.

This is probably better at the pro level since a player on each side has a direct line in their helmet from the coaches and the players stick around long enough to master the new language.

Overall, though, I think this line in the article is downplayed: The coach attributes the turnaround to rigorous conditioning and an especially talented cohort of players, some of whom have played together for years at lower levels. It's a great human interest story to talk about turning a perceived disadvantage into an advantage, but it sounds like, deaf or not, this particular group of players shows great teamwork and a great work ethic.

Deaf person here and attended that high school. I was surprised to see my high school in the news.

The team can learn sign language if they prefers or they can use pidgin. Pidgin is a simplified form of the communication to convey it. Pidgin itself is not a language, it is more of jargon in a sense. Pidgin is very common uses outside of Deaf communities.

Baseball use call signs, and that is pidgin. Crane operators have their hand signs, that is pidgin too! Same for military, they use pidgin. Pidgin is easier to learn than sign language as it can be simple handshape or call sign, similarly to emoji in a way. Sign language requires efforts and you will be surprised to find thousand muscles you never thought you used before.

> Their major advantage is that they can communicate through sign language.

I read the article and I played football against Gallaudet in college, and I fail to see how that is an advantage at all. We came the line of scrimmage and our quarterback announced the play we were running and on the line we would verbally agree on the pass blocking scheme. “I’ve got 64, you take 73 cause it doesn’t look like the linebacker is coming.”

I suspect they’re succeeding because they’re well coached, very fit and physically talented. And while their deafness is no real liability I don’t see it as an advantage.

I read that at the start of COVID when sports teams were still playing games in empty stadiums, there were no screaming audiences, and the players reported better focus on the game.

I wonder if the deaf team has an advantage in that regard.