MONTERREY, Mexico -- The Americans who traveled to this mountainous city in northeastern Mexico for the World University Championship of American Football were put on a pedestal by many of their opponents during the five-nation, 10-game competition earlier this month.
"Just to have a chance to play with the guys who invented football, it's just like a dream come true," said Eleazar Paiz, a linebacker for Guatemala, which lost its four WUC games by a combined margin of 199-0. "It's like an opportunity of a lifetime."
Mexico proved that just because you invented a sport doesn't mean you own it. In the game that decided the championship, the hosts toppled the U.S. team 35-7 last Saturday.
The Team USA entry was organized by Athletes in Action, a faith-based organization whose mission, according to its website, is "to help sports-minded people think and live biblically at the intersection of sport and Christianity." The team's 46 players each paid nearly $5,000 to make the trip.
As the loss sunk in for the Americans, reality hit.
"It's not just the U.S.A. that's good at football anymore," said U.S. defensive end Fred Clearman III, who played at Malone University, an NCAA Division II school in Canton, Ohio.
The teams came to the tournament from all corners of the world -- Japan and China rounded out the field -- with varying levels of experience and hoping to accomplish different things. But they all shared a love of the game.
Guatemala: A chance to learn
The Guatemalans asked if they could watch the Americans practice -- the day before the teams were schedule to face off.
In the U.S., a request like this would be laughed at, ridiculed, splashed across social media. No team would let its next competitor watch it practice.
U.S. head coach Kirk Talley declined the Guatemalans' request. Instead, he invited them to practice along with his squad.
Word quickly spread through the dormitory on the campus of Monterrey Institute of Technology, where all five teams were staying, that Guatemala and the U.S. would be practicing together. Soon after practice began, about 30 players from China sprinted toward the field with their helmets and shoulder pads, ready to join in. Talley had to improvise. He added 30 minutes of individual drills to the start of practice so the Guatemalans and Chinese players could get hands-on training.
"I have personally learned a lot from the American guys because they spend time teaching you," said Oscar Perdomo, a 33-year-old middle linebacker and left guard. "They are really good guys. They are conscious of how football is in Guatemala."
Three years ago, American football was barely alive in Guatemala. Interest was low. Participation was even lower. But Perdomo and others who believed in the sport began building it at a grassroots level. Perdomo runs the First Down Academy in Guatemala -- what he says is the largest football academy in the country with about 50 kids ages 5 to 14.
A year ago, a high school flag football league was started. Recently, the first field specifically for American football was built in Guatemala City.
Most of Guatemala's players, who range in age from 17 to 35, have been playing the sport for six years or less. It didn't matter to them that they were held scoreless during the WUC event.
"To be here and to play and represent our country and to be the first guys in a world championship, that means a lot to us," said receiver Pablo Martinez, a 28-year-old engineer. "We know that we don't have the biggest team or the many numbers of the guys on the team. We are representing our country. It doesn't matter."
Japan: Giving '120 percent'
When Japan arrived for the tournament, it understood its limits.
The Japanese players were fundamentally and technically sound. They understood their schemes intricately. But they weren't as big or as strong as the United States or Mexico -- and that meant they knew they weren't going to win a gold medal.
"Our kids have good skill -- catching, blocking, quickness -- but not more power," Japan coach Hideaki Toriuchi said. "We are not big enough. We play against USA, give 120 percent, then play Mexico. No power. It's hard."
Unlike some of the teams here, Japan wasn't in Monterrey just to learn from the United States or Mexico.
"Strategy? That's the same thing. We understand it," Toriuchi said. "We do the same thing in Japan."
Football has been part of Japan's culture since at least the 1930s, and the sport experienced a boom about 30 years ago when Americana became popular throughout the country. During football's peak in Japan, the NFL and NCAA staged games there and the sport was a common sight on TV.
But football isn't a popular high school sport in Japan, according to Jiro Arai, an administrator for Japan's WUC team. He estimated about 100 schools have football teams while about 3,000 field baseball squads.
The X League, which has been around since the 1970s, is a popular club association that's a viable option for football players after college in Japan, Arai said, and the quality of play in the country has been improving.
Toriuchi is among a group of coaches who have studied football in America. He's visited top NCAA programs such as Oklahoma, Southern Cal, Alabama, West Virginia, Arizona State, Utah and Iowa.
Japan's skill put the Americans on notice in their matchup in Monterrey. Team USA needed a field goal with three seconds left to move ahead for good. The Americans sealed their 22-14 win with a touchdown after picking off a lateral on Japan's ensuing kick return.
"Japan's really good, they're really technical," Clearman said. "They're really smart about it. They may not have the size, but they take what we do and they make it better."
China: Playing for sheer enjoyment
In his hometown of Beijing, Yiben Wang can't find a football field.
There are only soccer fields across the world's most populous country, and most are covered with artificial turf that former NFL players who coached in China have said would be unsafe for football. And until recently, Wang couldn't even find a set of uprights.
While the popularity of American football has grown in China in recent years, it lags well behind the likes of basketball, table tennis, soccer, badminton and tennis. Peisen Jia, a running back for China's WUC team, said there are teams in Beijing, Shanghai and other major cities across the country, but it's a "very, very low level" to the point where players are still learning how to tackle.
"American football is not an Olympic sport so, actually, the government doesn't regard the sport very seriously because we cannot get something from it, like a gold medal or something," Wang, 22, said.
The country's top athletes have stayed away from the sport because colleges don't offer scholarships (they don't even have teams) and because of the high risk of injury, Wang added.
The 38 players China brought to Monterrey have played the game for the sheer enjoyment. Nothing else.
"We are just normal students," Wang said. "We are not sports students. We're not here for competition. We're just here for learning and experience and letting the world know we have a football team."
The international reach of the NFL has made football fans out of the Chinese players. Wang likes the Seattle Seahawks and studies Drew Brees. At one of China's practices, a player wore an Arian Foster Houston Texans jersey. The Patriots are a popular team because of Tom Brady. For the typical sports fan in China, however, the NFL is still a foreign idea.
"They don't even know who is Peyton Manning," Jia said. "They just know what is football, what is tackling, throwing, blocking."
One government policy, however, has brought Team China together. From the 1970s until last year, families were, for the most part, banned from having more than one child. Jia said football teams give young men an opportunity to bond and feel a brotherhood they weren't able to experience at home.
"I have no brothers or sisters, so I've never had a people connection really close together," Jia said. "So, that's the best part."
Mexico: Ready for success
No team was more prepared for the WUC than the hosts. And as a result, they were able to pull off the most important win in the history of Mexico's American football national team.
A month before the tournament, Mexico coach Horacio Garcia gathered his U-23 national team for a monthlong training camp. There was plenty of familiarity, with 58 of the 61 players coming from just six colleges. Three of those schools each had at least 10 players on the team. While players on the U.S. team spent parts of their weeklong training camp simply getting to know each other, the Mexicans were able to dive right into the fine-tuning of their schemes.
Mexico put together a college-quality squad with a dozen or so assistants, including Leopoldo Treviño Eloy, the head coach of Monterrey Institute of Technology, considered the best college program in the country. The team had strength and conditioning coaches. The players had matching warmups and went through individual drills that were similar to what's seen in the NCAA and NFL.
It all paid off.
After absorbing a quick touchdown by Team USA, the Mexicans dominated the rest of the tournament's final game, cruising to their second straight WUC title 35-7. It was Mexico's first victory over the U.S. in an international tournament. (The Americans didn't participate in the inaugural WUC tournament in 2014.)
Afterward, Garcia was nearly speechless.
"It's impossible to say" how much the game meant, he said. "I'm really excited right now.
"It's really important in the American football history."