After More Than a Century, High School Football's Quiet Rivalry Plays On

It's a football matchup that predates Cal-USC, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, Florida-Georgia, Notre Dame-USC, and Bears-Packers. Though it has seen the odd hiatus since the teams first faced off in 1903, today it's an annual fixture, and a unique example of the sport's power in the South—one whose players rarely, if ever, stop hustling once the whistle is blown.

It's the historic football rivalry between the Tennessee School for the Deaf and the North Carolina School for the Deaf—the Vikings and the Bears—two storied high-school programs located about 170 miles apart in the southern Appalachians.

"It's one of the reasons that a lot of kids want to come here. Not the only reason, of course," said NCSD athletic director Rene' Skelton. "We have had students who have come here before and have basically been told that they weren't really welcome to be on their public school's team because they had no way of communicating and the parents were paranoid with what to do with them. So they're thrilled when they get to come here and participate."

The hearing-impaired have had a tremendous, if rarely acknowledged influence on the game of football. The quarterback for what is today Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington, D.C., introduced the huddle formation in 1892. He had his teammates gather around in a circle so the opposing team couldn't read the sign language they used to communicate plays.

That same year, the Tennessee School for the Deaf introduced its first varsity football team. The North Carolina School for the Deaf fielded its first squad seven years later, made up of a small number of students and two deaf staff members. (One of those NCSD staffers, Luther Taylor, embarked on a nine-year baseball career when he signed a contract with the New York Giants the following year.)

Tennessee's program flourished in the early 1900s, dominating other deaf schools in the region and going undefeated five times between 1901 and 1908. Of course, the team never played more than four games in any season during that stretch. Still, they were perpetual city champions in Knoxville.

NCSD, meanwhile, had trouble maintaining its football team early on and dropped the program more than once, including from 1912-26, when it was replaced by marching drills.

The rivalry between the two schools didn't truly take shape until the 1940s. With more and more schools for the hearing-impaired building their football programs, seasons grew in length. In 1947, TSD went 8-0-0 and was named the No. 2 prep team among deaf schools in the nation, a distinction voted on by two publications, The Silent Worker and The Deaf American. NCSD captured its first title with an undefeated season in 1949.

Today, eight-on-eight and 11-on-11 football programs are now commonplace at many schools for the deaf across the country. There are, of course, some differences for the hearing-impaired.

"It can be a challenge to communicate with deaf players during games," NCSD coach David Bird, who is deaf, wrote in an email. "We have to wave at the players to get their attention to get our plays in."

There's also the issue of snap count, which requires that every offensive player on the field closely watch the ball before every play in anticipation of the snap. While in the past some deaf programs used a giant drum on the sideline, its deep rumble used to initiate the snap of the football, this method has been largely abandoned today.

"I guess the biggest thing when you get on the field is you get used to it being quiet. On defense you really have to get ready and watch the ball. They move real quick off the ball," said Leonard Baker, who has coached football at East North Carolina School for the Deaf since 1993 and is not hearing impaired.

"Other than that, the game is pretty much normal," he added. "But that part took a little getting used to."

Similarly, referee whistles aren't terribly useful, and officials are often forced to end plays by diving into scrums to separate players, subjecting themselves to almost as much contact as the players in the process.

"When the guys would tackle, usually they didn't hear the whistles," former NFL punter Craig Colquitt said. His father, Lester Colquitt, was a member of TSD's football staff in the 1950s and 60s, and for all of Craig's priceless football memories—including two Super Bowl wins with the Pittsburgh Steelers—the time he spent watching his dad at work still resonates. "They literally had to jump in on the stacks and pull guys apart to stop them. In football, that's just what happens. When you can't hear somebody tell you to stop, you just keep going."

While Colquitt was assisting punters at TSD, NCSD was embarking on its first sustained period of football excellence. From the late 1950s all the way into the 1980s, the North Carolina School for the Deaf excelled against hearing and non-hearing teams alike. They captured five national championships for schools for the deaf in that time, including three straight from 1958 to 1960.

"When I was a kid growing up, I remember seeing the North Carolina School for the Deaf getting off the bus, and they looked like a college team to us," said Baker. "They had a nice bus and great uniforms and a lot of athletes at that time. They were always very competitive."

The Vikings and the Bears have maintained their rivalry in the face of a common problem: shrinking enrollment, which Rene' Skelton, the Bears AD, says is largely due to new technologies and facilities enabling deaf students to attend regular schools. Both programs have switched from 11-a-side to eight-a-side in recent years. NCSD in particular has seen its enrollment plummet, forcing the football program to partner with the East North Carolina School for the Deaf. Located roughly five hours apart, the two schools don't practice together but join forces for games.

Naturally, that has made remaining competitive difficult, and TSD has dominated the rivalry of late as a result. Tennessee took both contests between the schools last season and won their most recent face-off this year, 56-6. NCSD hasn't won against TSD since 2006 and is 3-22 against the team since 2001.

Much of TSD's recent success—including a championship in 2011, the school's first since 1973—was overseen by Dick Henley. A student at TSD who won a national title as a player in 1967, Henley coached the football team for 26 seasons and served as president of the school's educational association before retiring in 2012. That year, he was inducted into the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association Hall of Fame.

"I remember watching him play ball when I was growing up here. My father was one of his coaches," said TSD principal Mark Battle. "Dick has just been a fixture here at the school. He's retired now for a couple of years but he still participates, he still comes out, he serves as our statistician and one of our historians and is still part of the program and actively involved in what we do."

For the players who have come through these programs, it's a truly special opportunity to be a part of one of the oldest rivalries in football's heartland.

"It's more of a level playing field than it is probably anywhere else in their life. Communication is not necessarily needed like it is the rest of your life," said Skelton. "They know there is the history, that they have an impact on hearing society, and they're proud of that."

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