The Eternal Appeal of the Underdog

A President picked at random from from among residents of America's homeless shelters would appeal to millions of Americans. We are a sentimental people and frequently go for a hard luck story.

The author suggests, toward the conclusion, that we like underdogs because we Americans were underdogs when we rebelled against Great Britain. I think something else is at work: Our memories of our Childhood.

When we were children we always felt like the little guy. After all, we were little, literally. And we were often taunted and pushed around by older siblings, schoolmates, teachers, kids we played with and of course those monarchical supermen in our lives, our parents and other adult relatives.

Our early memories, of being on the bottom of the totem pole, give us a lifelong sympathy for the underdog. I think, on balance, this is a good thing. I think it inculcates charity, philanthropy and a liberal spirit.

DEPRESSED? If you think about situations and people worse off than you, it will help you feel better. We support underdogs in part because we want to show empathy, and on another level because we're hedging our bets. If we support the underdog in the campaign but vote for the top dog at the polling place, we would be certain to win. Now to me Cruz is an exception. Of nobody else have I ever read so many opinions that to know him is to despise him. He is the least popular of all the Senators. It takes a really exceptional talent to alienate all your colleagues. I have no pity for Cruz since his arguments are pitiless, toxic, corrosive and minimizing. That said, I feel just fine committing to Hillary. Why? Because there is no other human being who has had her years of experience in preparation for the job of President. Hillary's 8 years as First Lady of Arkansas, 8 year in the White House as First Lady, 8 years as Senator of New York and 4 years as Secretary of State make her the best qualified candidate in the history of our nation. I like Bernie a lot--more than Hillary, in fact. But, as a voter, when I hire someone to work for me, I want the person with the best skills. Just the way that people want to get the best surgeon around to operate on them.

The underdog is the idea that the team really is about as good as the other if they could just put it all together at the right time, and the reason they hadn’t involves “heart.” They’re amateurs in the best sense; the other guys are pros.

Unfortunately - and sometimes tragically - this love of the underdog has morphed into identification with the "victim." Every conflict anywhere - domestically or internationally - must be parsed in a conflict between the "victim" and the "victimizer" As Kristoff once said in these pages, in every conflict he must find and side with the victim. In fact that is his definition of what being a liberal means. No other facts are necessary to be considered: maybe the victim, through intransigence, corrupt leadership or - even - warped ideology which puts him in a hopeless or non-negotiable position has put himself in this position (case in point: those poster children of victimhood, the Palestinians).

The obsession with victim/underdog is the basis for facile righteousness (a fatal flaw of the Left in western societies) where we can, en masse, "stand in solidarity" with the oppressed without much personal cost or sacrifice. - or even necessarily fully understanding the issue(s) in the conflict.

My local team, CSU Bakersfield, is in the tournament for the first time ever. And that's exciting for me, considering I didn't even know they HAD a basketball team.

There's only one underdog in the Presidential race and that's Bernie Sanders, a man who has spent his entire career in public service representing American underdogs.

Of course, being an underdog is also a political marketing tool hijacked by all of the other fake Presidential underdogs:

Donald Trump: “It has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me. I started off in Brooklyn. My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars. I came into Manhattan, and I had to pay him back, and I had to pay him back with interest. But I came into Manhattan and I started buying properties, and I did great."

Ted Cruz - a $1 Million Dollar Loan from Goldman Sachs (where wife Heidi Cruz worked) catapulted him to the Senate and his current campaign of national Cruzifixion...(and Ted Cruz is not the son of a 'humble pastor' - his father Rafael Cruz is a radical hellfire and brimstone preacher and Christian Shariah Law champion)

Marco Rubio - a battery-operated right-wing marionette funded by billionaires Norman Braman, Sheldon Adelson and the wealthy war industry

John Kasich - employed by Lehman Brothers when that firm helped drive America over the 2008 cliff of 0.1% greed and rapaciousness

Hillary Clinton - a speaking fee lottery winner and the most famous female on the planet with just slightly more charisma and charm than Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I've always loved underdogs...and hated people who impersonated underdogs.

Feel The Bern (version 2.016)

Thanks for shedding some light on why we behave the way we do. This is so true and marketers in everything from sports to religion to food to phones have taken advantage of it.

Political parties have individual CANDIDATES and teams have individual PLAYERS. Years ago, people may have rooted against the Yankees as "Evil", but it was rare to see them boo Derek Jeter. In a sport rife with athletes willing to compromise themselves to get ahead (steroids, corking bats, pine tar, etc.), here was a player proving that nice guys don't necessarily finish last. He was never an "underdog," but he enjoyed almost universal support for how he conducted himself as WELL as his talent. Now consider Alex Rodriguez... he wasn't always despised. He was a talented favorite early in his career, but he always wanted that... EDGE. He saw all the people around him going to shady doctors and boosting their stats, so he did the "practical" thing and started juicing too. And he had success for a time. But his obvious ethical shortcomings made him a pariah to many baseball fans no matter what records he set. Put plainly, Rodriguez KNEW what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway. Being on the same team facing similar temptations, Jeter's undeniable sense of fair play was a constant and inherent rebuke of Rodriguez's character. Alex's indignation and rationalizations upon questioning only made it worse. In sports and politics, there will always be a heavy price for pursuing goals via unethical shortcuts. You trade fleeting success for long term trust. Trying to rationalize it or play the victim only adds interest to the bill. Eventually, everyone must settle up.

The world loves winners, but not whiners.

Loyalty requires effort, even when the odds are stacked against you
and your team. Gains are made, win or lose.

I rooted for Bernie in the Michigan primary and that turned out very well.
Now, I cheer for my Wolverines.
Go Blue, Go Bernie!

Because I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, instead of being a North Side Chicago Cubs fan, I am a fan of real Major League Baseball as played at U.S. Cellular Field by the home team my beloved White Sox. People are fans of underdog teams that win. Folks love brash winners.

The last time that the Cubs won the World Series Apache warrior Geronimo and Comanche Chief Quanah Parker were both still alive. Billy Taft was President. No American President after JFK except LBJ had been born. And the Cubs play on a garbage dump field with weeds growing on the outfield wall while serving food that neither rats nor roaches nor pigeons will eat. The men's room has cattle trough urinals that Cubs fans wait to half-time to use. Being a Cubs fan is symptom of mental illness including masochism, depression and bi-polar disorder. Then again it may just be the weed and the alcohol and the opposite or same sex hormones at play.

Thus Stephen Curry and Golden State are beloved while Allen Iverson and Philly Sixers are pitied.

I live and date in Manhattan, and here it seems like people and women admire the successful and strong and have contempt for the underdog. Most women seem to want to date tall, dark, handsome successful men who are confident and popular, and most of the community seems to favor winners.

I'm Jewish. Therefore, I was raised to embrace the underdog, the David to the Goliaths of the world. I think doing so is very Jewish. Outside of the Jewish community, kids and adults seem to like winners. As a kid, I always sided with the underdog. I was surprised when other kids supported the favored team/player. Frankly, those kids went on to make more money in adulthood.

I'm feeling the Bern myself, but my guess is that the vast majority of Americans much prefer bullies like Trump.

Some people like the underdog, but obviously quite a few choose to root for the traditional favorite; otherwise, there wouldn't be so many Yankee fans.

Americans love the rise of the underdog, especially when she or he doesn't even play dirty!

You might have mentioned that "underdog" Holy Cross has actually won the NCAA basketball tournament, invited to the tournament in 1947 as the last seed. Some might even remember a player from its roster: Bob Cousy, a freshman who wasn't the team star.

The major difference between sports and politics is that in sports there are unforgiving mechanisms which rapidly eliminate unqualified or under-performing
participants. Whereas in politics, the opposite appears to be true, even though such mechanisms (e.g. recall; impeachment) exist in theory. If politics had the integrity of sports, the country would be much better off, regardless of any appeal of "underdogs".

Since it is the authors, not me who drew the lines of the parallel worlds of sports, more specifically college basketball and politics, more specifically that blood sport the long, long, long Presidential election, may I ask if their subliminal argument is that Trump, or for that matter Clinton are Duke so we are stuck with that finalists and rather be happy with it because that is the normal? Yes, the two of them. OK, maybe one is Duke and the other Tennessee, who cares. Because it is disingenuous to keep attaching to Clinton, whoever of the two the underdog label. Long gone.

The nationalistic imperialism argument thrown onto the end of this article is entirely without evidence, so it is a poor effort at explaining the phenomenon in question. As a professor specializing in the history of American sport, I'd instead point out that we have scores of books detailing Americans' cultural conviction in democratic opportunity ("anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and win") as well as scores of works noting how competition, winning, and profit have become national values crafted over two hundred years of celebrating "free markets" as the means for testing who is most capable among us. These cultural convictions (the reality of them are beside the point) explain the paradox much better than the psychology cited here. Americans have a cultural impetus to identify with underdogs until social recognition and economic gain are at stake. Then we choose the favorite because our own winning or losing ultimately matters more in our national culture than believing in some other underdog. If, as in business or politics, the favorite can don the garb of the underdog, then they'll carry even more support, but that's got less to do with latent convictions of imperialism and more to do with explicitly marrying our cultural belief in democratic opportunity to our cultural emphasis on winning.

When analysts pull a Nate Silver (turn their attention to politics as a minor side interest to their main love of sports) it does no favors either to sports analysis or to political analysis. Stay in sports, and leave politics, which should be about the issues, to the grown ups.

So explain Trump.

The authors seem to believe Clinton being a woman and Sanders a Jew are equivalent in the eyes of the voters. It's hard to count how many times the former has made an issue of her gender. In contrast, Sanders only has talked about his religion when specifically asked about it. And although many women cite Clinton's sex as being a major reason why they support her, I can't recall reading of any Jews who say they support Sanders because of his religion.

These sports:politics comparisons are always annoying during presidential elections, and it's a narrative largely created by pundits and writers who get paid to do horse race analysis, because god forbid you talk about actual ideas.

This election though, I'd say it's more dangerous than it is annoying. Our populace is so ill-informed that we are about to nominate a reality show white supremacist to battle it out for the most powerful position in the world. All of this with a Congress controlled by men stuck in 1864 and a democratic "front-runner" who is very unlikely to inspire any big changes is congressional balance.

If when looking at this dire situation, all you can think of is college basketball, maybe it's time you turn your reflection inward. To me, it looks like we have finally reached the dystopian future that was once the stuff comedies were made of. Idiocracy ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ ) 2016.

Love this!

We like the underdog until they lose.

Many years ago, I made peace with my inclination to prefer association with achievement over the brief thrill of the underdog or upset victory, and rejoiced in my Yankees fandom. At first, I felt guilty, but then realized what this article observes. Most enjoyable is where Goliath falls behind 3-0, then you root for him without guilt.

Interesting....but I disagree with the conclusion....We root with our hearts but make choices with our brains. So, when we fill out our brackets, we tend to pick higher ranked teams.....It is fun to root for the underdogs up until the point that they knock us out of the office pool.

The writer seemingly passes over the fact that in the Team A vs B scenario, when the original favorite is down 3-1 it becomes the underdog, so fans that switch to it are actually keeping their faith in the principle.

Politics is not sports. We "won" WWII and were soundly beaten by the Japanese, business wise thereafter. Germany is a European power house. We are in debt up to our ears.

Maybe the underdog is just a bit more frugal and less prideful.

As a participant, I confess that I am annoyed by fans supporting teams or candidates simply because they are likely to win. Yes, I am a Republican with the typical Republican idealism of preferring to help the real underdogs, the people in their humble communities, to winning an election. In the words of Henry Clay, "I would rather be right than President."

The under dog phenomena has its roots in the power over mentaility of the winner loser dichotomy. As long as we are mired in the patriarchal system of our times, we will continue in this black and white way of thinking. In other words, nothing matter excepts winning. Many a marriage has failed because most of the time, the man is more interested in winning than solving problems or even loving his mate. They apply the principles of winning to everything in their life, and consequently, miss the best part of what life is about. For this reason, our civilization can often be considered shallow, lacking empathy and compassion. Enter Trump.

In my view, love of the underdog has historically been responsible for both the ascent and in recent times, the descent of the West.

Pro-underdog developments in the West, particularly England, have been continuously expanding the circle of empowerment and education at least since the Magna Carta in 1215. Then we have Habeas Corpus (1679), the English Civil War which ended with Charles I beheaded (and which included distinctly pro-underdog egalitarian factions like the diggers and levellers), Glorious revolution, the various representation acts of the 19th and 20th century culminating in universal adult franchise, feminism, the sexual revolution of the 60s, gay, animal, transgender rights, gay marriage, illegal migrant rights and possibly chimpanzee/cetacean personhood in the near future etc.

For centuries, this trend helped expand the proportion of educated and empowered people able to push back the frontiers of science and technology. It is no coincidence that England, where this egalitarian trend first manifests, also underwent the industrial revolution before other nations. Thus for centuries, a leftward (I.e pro-underdog) drift was both a cause and consequence of technological progress.

However, around the early 20th century, this impulse has run into diminishing or even negative returns as power has diffused to underdogs whose empowerment is fraught with great costs.

See tarkmarg.blogspot.com "rise and decline of the West" from 14 December 2015 for more detail.

Rooting for the underdog fades with age. This year, I'll root for Michigan State because Izzo has been around forever and he seems like a heck of a guy. The same with West Virginia and Huggins. I favor the ACC, because basketball means more in tobacco country, with the exception of Duke, which is really located in New Jersey. When 7 Pac 12 teams make the tournament, and none of them is UCLA, and the best of the bunch is Oregon, you know something is wrong out West. Even though Sean Miller is in his 40's, I root for Arizona because he's paid his dues and there is no better coach in the country. I like Kentucky. They're the ultimate overdog. But young talent never loses its appeal, and most of the criticism of Callipari is jealousy. I could never root for Kansas or Indiana. Midwest basketball is an oxymoron, with apologies to Hoosiers and Phog Allen. When you've been around the block, there is too much history to simply root for the lower seed. The closest I come is Wichita State, a midmajor superstar that has been unfairly seeded in recent tournaments and still has players with tournament experience. I'll root for the Shockers as long as they're in it. They've got enough history for me.

Shopping is not nearly as important as the tournament. But I do as much shopping as I can at Sears. They were the ultimate overdog turned into an underdog, and their prices and merchandise are better than you think. I think they've been around for awhile, too.