Asmussen has covered the Illinois football program for the last 13 years as the beat writer for The Champaign News-Gazette. In this volume, he combines great game coverage with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and personal stories.

Fred "Duke" Slater was the greatest African American football player of the first half of the 20th century. Born into poverty, he developed into a two-time All-American tackle at the University of Iowa from 1918 to 1921. When the College Football Hall of Fame opened decades later, Duke was the only African American elected in the inaugural class. He then became the first black lineman in National Football League history in 1922, embarking on a remarkable ten-year career in the NFL. Incredibly, Slater was the only African American in the entire NFL for most of the late 1920s, yet he was widely recognized as one of the League's best linemen. But his pioneering influence extended beyond the gridiron. After retirement, he broke ground in the legal field as just the second black judge in Chicago history. On the field or on the bench, the inspirational life of Judge Duke Slater is a true American success story.

College football is a massive enterprise in the United States, and southern teams dominate poll rankings and sports headlines while generating billions in revenue for public schools and private companies. Southern football fans worship their teams, often rearranging their personal lives in order to accommodate season schedules. The Origins of Southern College Football sheds new light on the South’s obsession with football and explores the sport’s beginnings below the Mason-Dixon Line in the decades after the Civil War. Military defeat followed by a long period of cultural unrest compelled many southerners to look to northern ideas and customs for guidance in rebuilding their beleaguered society. Ivy League universities, considered bastions of enlightenment and symbols of the modernizing spirit of the age, provided a particular source of inspiration for southerners in the form of organized or “scientific” football that featured standardized rules and scoring. Transported to the South by men educated at northern universities, scientific football reinforced cultural values that had existed in the region for centuries, among them a tolerance for violence, respect for martial displays, and support for traditional gender roles. The game also held the promise of a “New South” that its supporters hoped would transform the region into an industrial powerhouse. Students and townspeople alike embraced the new sport, which served as a source of pride for a region that lagged woefully behind its northern counterpart in terms of social equity and economic prowess. The Origins of Southern College Football is an entertaining history of the South’s most popular sport cast against a broader narrative of the United States during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, two momentous periods of change that gave rise to the game we recognize today.

From concussion doctors pushing “science” that benefits their hidden business interests to lawyers clamoring for billion-dollar settlements in scam litigation, America’s game has become so big that everybody wants a cut. And those chasing the dollars show themselves more than willing to trash a great sport in hot pursuit of a buck. Everything they say about football is wrong. Football players don’t commit suicide at elevated levels, die younger than their peers, or suffer disproportionately from heart disease. In fact, professional players live longer, healthier lives than American men in general. More than that, football is America’s most popular sport. It brings us together. It is, and has been, a rite of passage for millions of American boys. But fear over concussions and other injuries could put football on ice. School districts are already considering doing away with football as too dangerous. Parents who used to see football as character-building now worry that it may be mind-destroying. Even the president has jumped on the pile by fretting that he might prevent a son from playing if he had one. But as author Daniel J. Flynn reports, football is actually safer than skateboarding, bicycling, or skiing. And in a nation facing an obesity crisis, a little extra running, jumping, and tackling could do us all good. Detailing incontrovertible fact after incontrovertible fact, The War on Football: Saving America’s Game rescues reality from the hype—and in doing so may just ensure that football remains America’s game.

The Black Bruins chronicles the inspirational lives of five African American athletes who faced racial discrimination as teammates at UCLA in the late 1930s. Best known among them was Jackie Robinson, a four‐star athlete for the Bruins who went on to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball and become a leader in the civil rights movement after his retirement. Joining him were Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Ray Bartlett, and Tom Bradley—the four played starring roles in an era when fewer than a dozen major colleges had black players on their rosters. This rejection of the “gentleman’s agreement,” which kept teams from fielding black players against all-white teams, inspired black Angelinos and the African American press to adopt the teammates as their own. Kenny Washington became the first African American player to sign with an NFL team in the post–World War II era and later became a Los Angeles police officer and actor. Woody Strode, a Bruins football and track star, broke into the NFL with Washington in 1946 as a Los Angeles Ram and went on to act in at least fifty‐seven full-length feature films. Ray Bartlett, a football, basketball, baseball, and track athlete, became the second African American to join the Pasadena Police Department, later donating his time to civic affairs and charity. Tom Bradley, a runner for the Bruins’ track team, spent twenty years fighting racial discrimination in the Los Angeles Police Department before being elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.

When the 1905 football season ended, nineteen players were dead and countless others were critically injured. The public was outraged. The game had reached a make-or-break moment?fourth down and inches. Coaches, players, fans, and even the president of the United States had one last chance: change football or leave the field. Football's defenders managed to move the chains. Rule changes and reforms after 1905 saved the game and cleared the way for it to become America's most popular sport. But they didn't fix everything. Today, football faces a new injury crisis as dire as 1905's. With increased awareness about brain injury, reported concussions are on the rise among football players. But experts fear concussions may only be the tip of the iceberg. The injuries are almost invisible, but the stakes couldn't be higher: the brains of millions of young football players across the country. Award-winning author Carla Killough McClafferty takes readers on a bone-crunching journey from football's origins to the latest research on concussion and traumatic brain injuries in the sport. Fourth Down and Inches features exclusive photography and interviews with scientists, players, and the families of athletes who have literally given everything to the game. It's fourth and inches. Can football save itself again?

Long overdue for an institutional history, Auburn University possesses a rich and storied past. Dwayne Cox's The Village on the Plain traces the school's history in authoritative detail from its origins as a private college through its emergence as a complex land-grant university. Originally founded prior to the Civil War with an emphasis on classical education, Auburn became the state's land-grant college after the cessation of hostilities. This infused the school with a vision of the South as a commercial and industrial rival to the North. By the 1880s, instruction in applied science had become Auburn's curricular version of this "New South" creed. Like most southern universities, Auburn never enjoyed financial abundance, creating scarcity that intensified internal debate over whether liberal arts or applied disciplines deserved more of the school's limited resources. Meager state funding for higher education complicated Auburn's rise and became a source of competition with the University of Alabama. This rivalry was perhaps most intense between 1908 and 1948, when the two schools did not meet on the gridiron, but blocked and tackled one another in the legislature over the division of state funds. Like many universities founded in somewhat isolated locations during the antebellum period, Auburn developed an insular culture, which hindered the school's progress in issues related to race. Cox traces how this insularity also found expression in the school's resistance to outside academic regulatory organizations as well as in conflicts over the university's governance. Auburn University's history is that of a small private college that transformed itself in the face of sweeping national events and state politics, not only to survive threats but to emerge more complex and resilient. Offering much to students of higher education and Alabama history, as well as readers affiliated with Auburn University, The Village on the Plain tells the story of this complex and fascinating institution.