The Unofficial Football World Championships is probably the most exciting football competition on Earth. Its amazing story involves legendary teams and footballing minnows, classic finals and forgotten friendlies, celebrated players and unsung heroes. An alternative soccer history, Unofficial Football World Champions reveals international football's real champions and offers up a fresh perspective on the greatest game in the world. This fourth edition is fully updated for 2018.

On Christmas night, 1939, two vastly different teams from Garfield, New Jersey, and Miami, Florida collided in the historic Orange Bowl to decide the National Sports Foundation's national championship. Garfield's Boilermakers were children of immigrants drawn to the industrial city's churning factories. Miami's Stingarees were from families from all over the country settling in one of America's most promising and thriving cities. In City of Champions, Hank Gola, a veteran and award-winning football writer, unveils this long-forgotten game. Gola mines stories of the towns and the lives of the players and coaches--detailing the grit (and wild strokes of fortune) that led up to a Garfield victory, stunning the football world. Gola also describes how this game mirrored America, revealing some of the most pressing cultural, economic and socio-political issues of the day.

Black college football began during the nadir of African American life after the Civil War. The first game occurred in 1892, a little less than four years before the Supreme Court ruled segregation legal in Plessy v. Ferguson. In spite of Jim Crow segregation, Black colleges produced some of the best football programs in the country. They mentored young men who became teachers, preachers, lawyers, and doctors--not to mention many other professions--and transformed Black communities. But when higher education was integrated, the programs faced existential challenges as predominately white institutions steadily set about recruiting their student athletes and hiring their coaches. Blood, Sweat, and Tears explores the legacy of Black college football, with Florida A&M's Jake Gaither as its central character, one of the most successful coaches in its history. A paradoxical figure, Gaither led one of the most respected Black college football programs, yet many questioned his loyalties during the height of the civil rights movement. Among the first broad-based histories of Black college athletics, Derrick E. White's sweeping story complicates the heroic narrative of integration and grapples with the complexities and contradictions of one of the most important sources of Black pride in the twentieth century.

Manchester United is the most recognized sports team in the world, with an audience of millions around the globe, surpassing even the New York Yankees. David Beckham's exploits—and marital woes—are known worldwide. The Football Association of England has become a multi-billion dollar industry. But how did English football become not only the defining sport of the nation but also one of the most successful sports in the world? With The Leaguers, football historian Matthew Taylor tells the story of the early days of professional football in England, revealing the distant origins of today's game. Making extensive use of archival materials from football clubs, unions, and associations, Taylor presents a compelling picture of football teams and players in the early days of the twentieth century, tracing the development of the system of professional teams from the hundreds of town, club, and school teams that dotted the countryside. The top tier of those teams comprised the Football League that by the 1920s was synonymous with the very idea of professional football in the minds of fans and sportswriters alike. The Leaguers illuminates the role played by the Football League—and by successful clubs in the League such as Arsenal and Aston Villa—as the rules, standards, and structure of the modern game were being codified. Taylor also considers the careers and influences of early players, including such well-known names as Billy Meredith, "Dixie" Dean, and Alex James. As football's popularity grew and sports media proliferated, players found themselves becoming national stars, their portraits on cigarette cards bought by fans throughout England. The first full-length history of the early days of the Football League, The Leaguers will be essential reading for football fans who want to know how their favorite sport grew from modest origins to the worldwide phenomenon that is English football today.

Arguably the best football conference in America, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) contains some of the most storied programs in the history of college football. In Where Football is King, Christopher Walsh provides a team-by-team history of the SEC and describes the classic games, players and coaches in the conference's seventy-three-year history. The genesis of the SEC really begins with the introduction of football to the University of Georgia in 1891 by a chemistry professor, Charles Herty. While Georgia's first game was against Mercer University that Fall, the South's oldest rivalry was born when Georgia took on Auburn on February 20, 1892 at Atlanta's Piedmont Park. From there, Walsh recounts, the sport took off like wildfire, and the SEC was able to formally organize some four decades later. Originally a thirteen-team conference, through attrition and addition the SEC eventually became comprised of Georgia, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, LSU, Kentucky Tennessee, Mississippi State, South Carolina, and Auburn. From his unique vantage point as beat writer for Alabama football for the Tuscaloosa News, Walsh also gives insight into the culture and traditions of football in the South, where, it is said (and probably widely believed), the game is "greater than religion." Legendary figures and legendary games pass through the pages Where Football is King: players such as Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Herschel Walker, Terrell Davis, and Payton Manning, and games such as the "Iron Bowl," the intense annual rivalry between Auburn and Alabama. As colorful as the SEC is competitive, this history will be essential reading for any fan of the game of football.