City of Champions: An American story of leather helmets, iron wills and the high school kids from Jersey who won it all

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 f...