The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory

Throughout The Boys of Riverside, Fuller explores the concrete benefits of deafness in the context of football. He argues that the CSDR Cubs’ championship season was fueled by the players’ determination “to show the world that deafness was no impediment to sporting glory. On the contrary […] being deaf on the gridiron gave them an edge” (4). Fuller shows that, in addition to enhancing their vision, the players’ deafness improved their communication and concentration and protected them from outside influence and distraction. Fuller’s cites scientific literature to argue that “those who are born profoundly deaf can, on average, see better than hearing people in some specific ways” (28). Research shows that Deaf people “perform faster and better than their hearing counterparts at detecting the movement of objects in their peripheral vision” and are “better at picking up on the movement of people around them” (28). In the context of football, these improved visual abilities translate to players with “a potentially wider view of activity on the playing field” and who can “react more quickly to an opposing team’s moves” (29). The repeated use of comparative words like “faster,” “better,” and “wider” in these passages highlights the tangible benefits of deafness on athletes’ visual skills.

Fuller positions the CSDR Cubs as a case study, evidencing the ways that deafness resulted in improved communication & concentration among the team. In the prologue, Fuller quotes a competing coach who claimed “he had never competed against a squad that communicated so fluidly, and so well” (2). Fuller asserts that this fluid communication “was ingrained in Deaf Culture” (10). He argues that, because “communicating in sign language required unbroken eye contact,” conversations between Deaf people “demanded” full attention to “not only the hands but also the slightest nuances in facial expressions,” resulting in a team that was “by necessity, locked in” to the instructions of their coaches and teammates (10). In these passages, the use of the phrases “ingrained,” “required,” “demanded,” and “by necessity” suggests that concentration is not a quirk of Deafness, but an essential asset of Deaf Culture. Fuller credits this concentration with improving the Cubs’ team cohesion and their performance on the field. Similarly, the Cubs’ deafness decreased the risk of outside influence on their game. Fuller argues that for hearing players, the roar of the stadium “can bring a well-run offense to its knees, leaving players unable to communicate their next moves and intimidated” by the noise of opposing fans (24). In contrast, the Cubs, “by virtue of their deafness” were not affected by their “hearing opponents’ trash talk, not distracted by jeering spectators” (24). Fuller’s book works to reframe deafness as an asset to Deaf athletes rather than a weakness.