No Excuses – a Football Story

No Excuses

Derrick Coleman was diagnosed as being legally deaf at the age of three.  In this book he tells his story growing up in and around Los Angeles.  He moved often with his mother when meant trying to make friends at new schools all the time.  He used sports to channel his energy and frustration.

He became a standout high school football player and then went to UCLA to play.  He was considered to have a good chance in the draft but wasn’t drafted after his senior year.  He went on to try out for several teams as a free agent before finding a more permanent job with the Seattle Seahawks.

This was an interesting story but it seemed to drag during his younger years.  He was only 23 at the time of the writing so there wasn’t a lot of life to cover.  It didn’t get really interesting until he was in high school and older.  It also seems to minimize his deafness more than you would think.  I feel like he is so used to it that it doesn’t seem like an issue to him so he doesn’t understand why people are so interested.  He mostly just says that it isn’t an issue and then moves on to talk about something else.

His insights into what it takes to get into the NFL and compete at that level are interesting.  That is the main focus of the book.  It covers the lifestyle of a player that isn’t a superstar.

I had never heard of him until I saw this audiobook on the library website.  I don’t have television so I hadn’t seen a commercial that he did for Duracell about being a deaf football player.  He did it for fun, a little money, and a year’s supply of hearing aid batteries.  He was most excited about the batteries because he needs to change them every few days.