Youssef Mosallam believed as deeply in football as any man in America, but he didn't want to be principal of a football school.

Technically, he was no longer the principal. In the spring of 2015, he finished his Ph.D. at Wayne State. Nights and weekends. That fall, the district bumped him up to a gig where he could save the whole damn system. But to the kids who came up through Fordson High School, no matter what else he does for the rest of his life, Youssef Mosallam will always be their principal. He'll be in Florida or Vegas, or at Shatila Bakery on Warren Avenue, and someone's going to shout, "Mr. Mosallam!"

He was the type of principal that teenagers like—just not right away. He was tough. He played inside linebacker on the '93 state-champ Fordson Tractors, one of Michigan's great high school football teams. Coach Jeff Stergalas ran the program for more than 20 years with military toughness. When they won the title, the biggest mosque in the country—the Islamic Center of America—sent them a plaque: "We are proud of you all."

Mr. Mosallam wanted to play college ball. If he couldn't play, he would coach. Coaching led him into teaching. He was only 34 when they made him principal. The grown-ups were wary of his age because, as his predecessor said, "If Fordson fails, the whole community fails."

Fordson is one of those highly scrutinized American schools, where something much bigger always seems to be at stake. The community of Dearborn itself, population now close to 100,000, has the largest Arab Muslim population in America. It is a city that existed blissfully under the American wack-job's radar until 9/11. The hatred many people have targeted for Muslims since then has come to affect Arabs of all religions. Fordson is over 90 percent Muslim.

Fordson takes in refugees and immigrants. Kids born into fractured homes and actual war zones. When Mr. Mosallam took over, Fordson was newly ranked in Michigan's academic percentages, at seventh from the bottom. It was a football school. There were students like Hussein, a 240-pound lineman whose father was gone, whose mom was raising him and his siblings on her own. "Football was his savior," the principal said, "but he knew if he didn't keep his GPA up, he wouldn't play football." If Hussein wasn't at school, Mr. Mosallam would go looking for him. Check in, check out. That was their system.

The Fordson Tractors have produced a Super Bowl winner and remain a Michigan high school football powerhouse. (AP Images)

Those outside Dearborn were intrigued by another type of system that had come to be known as the Night Practices, when Ramadan coincided with the first week of training camp. Fordson players would break their fast, sometimes as late as 11 p.m. Have a little snack. Practice until 1 a.m. And again, from 2 to 4 a.m. Then they'd all feast together at one of the halal butchers on Warren. In a time when the true believers have come to lament the mollification of football, the Tractors had made some preternatural commitment to the game. Fans in neighboring districts, who still called them "sand niggers" and "Hezbollah High," had to swallow their admiration. Nothing rattled Fordson. Dearborn High and Crestwood, which had half as many Muslim kids as Fordson’s team, sometimes emulated the Night Practices. Sometimes non-Muslim coaches and players would even join the fast.

Mr. Mosallam believed as deeply in football as anyone in America, but he didn't want to be principal of a football school. In the hallways, he would ask, "How do you want to be remembered?" He made them recite his mottos: PRIDE. TRADITION. LEGACY. He said it so often that the students shortened it. PTL. He was tough on them, but he was one of them. "We just never give up on anybody," Mr. Mossallam said.

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There are certain indelible characters who, at once, embody and transcend Dearborn. There's the principal. There's Ali Abdallah, better known as Bulldog, who makes viral videos about Dearborners. (Check out The Ed and Moe Show on YouTube.) You want to buy a new pickup truck, they say, "Go see Catfish." (His name is Moe "Catfish" Beydoun.) There's the butcher on Warren, who is missing part of his right thumb and index finger. (Thirty years slicing meat, and he lost it operating a snowblower.)

And then there is Mike Ayoub, who bought that RE/MAX ad on Monday Night Football at more than five times his average buy. "I knew it was going to be watched in Dearborn," he said.

When Henry Ford opened the Rouge plant in Dearborn, paying $5 a day, the population began to swell. By the time the Arab-Israeli wars broke out, entire sections of Dearborn had become completely Arab.

They came from two different towns in South Lebanon: Bint Jbeil and Tebnine. Immigrants from the two villages had a rivalry, expressed in this country by who chased the American Dream harder. Metro Detroit became fertile ground for a unique sort of radicalization: football fandom. The Cowboys and the Steelers preyed on these eager new Americans.

The Lions weren't just hopeless. Between 1958 and 1981, they made the playoffs exactly once. (Dallas knocked them out in their lone appearance in 1970.) Eventually, they would "achieve" a perfect 0-16—the type of suffering that went unacknowledged in the rest of this country. If you had arrived from a village in Southern Lebanon, eager to become American, it was easy to find some sense of belonging in what that very American voice on NFL Films called America's Team. This is what happened to Ayoub. "I don't know who came from where," he said. "My idol was Tony Dorsett. It was that simple." The Cowboys were always on national TV. They had the star on their jersey. Dorsett was the man. "It was easy to like them. They were a winner."

"'Eh-rabs, camel jockeys'—you try to turn the other cheek," says Ayoub. "But it's hard, especially in sports when the fire's already burning."

Like Mr. Mosallam's parents, the Ayoubs didn't have the first clue about football. Mike's dad worked in one of Chrysler's plants, literally breaking his back working the line. Mike was the youngest. He was eight when Jackie Smith dropped the pass in Super Bowl XIII. He broke his dad's new 19-inch TV with a pillow. Neither of his parents understood, and neither could read English—they'd wait for their children to get home to read the mail. Mike Ayoub played football for Fordson, fullback and linebacker.

While the NFL was a choice, Michigan and Fordson are your identity. Well, that and your garage. "A garage is not for cars" is a saying you will hear around Dearborn. And on the Friday night before New Year's Eve, Ayoub was in his nephew David Makki's garage, all reclaimed barnwood and corrugated steel and scented smoke in the air. "David's garage is nicer than the inside of his house," another cousin joked.

The garage was heated by propane—Dearborn's interpretation of Michigan garage culture is a cold-weather throwback to the courtyards in those villages of Southern Lebanon—and a framed Jerome Bettis jersey hung over them. But as 10 men huddled together watching the Orange Bowl, they all wore Michigan blue.

They talked about the rivalry with Dearborn High (known to Fordson Tractors as the Cake Eaters), where David had started on the defensive line. "Undefeated, unscored upon, the only team in the history of the whole United States to do it, and we can't get no respect!" he yelled at Ayoub.