Sound and the Fury

Hottle often joked that the brothers, who shared a dorm room, also shared a brain -- Calvin and Joshua could read each other's minds on and off the field. Calvin, the most punishing tackler on the team, was quiet, wrote poetry and was a chick magnet. Joshua was a social butterfly. He signed fast, laughed a lot, loved a good joke. Since Calvin was not deaf but hard of hearing, he could hear Hottle when he spoke loudly. Joshua was completely deaf. ("He couldn't hear an ambulance if it was next to him," Calvin says.) Hottle opened the door of the wrestling room, his preferred meeting space, and set up a projector. He motioned for a player to turn off the lights. Game film came on the screen. Hottle pointed to different plays with a red laser, then signed, "Lights on." He wanted to make a point about the defense, but if the lights weren't on, the players couldn't see him signing.

"Remember what we talked about yesterday," Hottle signed. "More aggressive blocks. Defensive ends, you must do a better job. These guys are faster."

Hottle signed, "Lights off," but not all of the guys got the gist of what he'd said.

Joshua looked quizzically at his brother. A couple of other players looked over at Calvin.

Calvin reinterpreted Hottle's signs. Hottle didn't always get it right -- campus interpreters said his language was like a child's. He used incomplete sentences, sometimes a wrong word choice. At the end of last season, he meant to tell the players, "Make sure you get your award." Instead, he signed, "Make sure you get your vagina." The players erupted in laughter.

When Hottle wasn't clear, the players often shot a look at Calvin for translation. During games, it wasn't uncommon for Hottle to be screaming from the sidelines, "Callllllvin!" Most often, Hottle signed plays to the entire team. Other times, when he was angry, he forgot and yelled out the formation, leaving some players unsure about what to do next.

ON THE DAY OF THE 2006 GAME AGAINST SALISBURY STATE'S JV, HOTTLE PACED AN EMPTY FIELD. Game days often made him think of his father, Edward Hottle Sr., a Fairfax County police officer who divorced his mother when Hottle was 16. His father had coached him in rec leagues and was proud of his son when he went on to become a nose guard at Frostburg State -- the place where Hottle got his first assistant coaching job. Hottle often wears a silver whistle on a cord around his neck. After his father died on Good Friday in 2005, it was the only thing Ed Hottle Jr. took from his father's house.

The Salisbury State players unloaded their gear near the tailgating grills. Gallaudet's cheerleaders were practicing on the sidelines. They kicked and clapped in sync, moving to an internal, inaudible beat.

"Seventeen minutes left," Calvin Doudt signed to his teammates back in the locker room. The team was nervous.

Coleman was used to the anxiety. Since the Bison had started winning, he'd become a bit of a celebrity on campus. He swaggered to class, often wearing perfectly pressed warm-up suits. But teammates said he was quiet and didn't let people really get to know him. He always sat in the back of the team bus and stood during meetings while everyone else sat. That morning, he wrote on the blackboard, "Eat Them Alive."

Game days were always emotional. Many Gallaudet players had lots of pent-up frustration and baggage they carried from the past: the middle school bully who screamed the name of the unaware deaf kid to the amusement of others; the high school coach who kept the deaf player out of games because he didn't want to deal with the communication challenges. But when that deaf player got to Gallaudet, the stigma was gone, even if those scars lingered. On the field, the players' fury unfurled. The Bison said they relished the moment they could wrap their arms around a hearing player's chest and toss him backward.

Before kickoff, Hottle reminded the referees that because his players couldn't hear the whistle, they didn't always know when a play was dead. They might tackle their opponent anyway, resulting in a penalty. "You have to get up close to them," Hottle told the refs. "They need to see the signals."