Blast from the Past 23 - Sports movies and underdogs

This series consists of notes that I wrote on facebook in the past. Enjoy reading my thoughts during my college years. Please comment but please be nice! Also please feel free to check out my other Blast from the Past Posts.


From April 2007

Sports movies and underdog

Why do people like the underdog so much? I just watched Coach Carter, which for those of you who have not seen it, is yet another movie about a team who is not good getting a good coach and working hard and becoming good. It was a really good movie, I admit that I and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it brought up the question for me, why do we like the underdog so much? Why don't we like the champions? I mean how many movies are there out there with an underdog rising up and becoming the best? Have you ever seen a sports movie about a team who is already the best? I haven't. And in all those underdog sports movies how are the champions portrayed? The are jerks, they are bullies, they are mean. And what happens? The underdog team beats the great jerky champions, the unbeatable. But when they beat the champions, they become the champions right? Does that mean that they are going to become jerks too? And then in a few years when another underdog team is good, will they rise up and beat our underdog team? Now that would be interesting, lets make a sequel for one one of those sports movies, what would happen? who would we cheer for? And another thing that bothers me about these movies, they only show the reaction of the underdog team which, because of the nature of the movie, probably won. Now Coach Carter was slightly different. The team doesn't always win. And they then show us their reaction, they are of course sad, depressed, wishing they had won, thinking that maybe they just weren't good enough. What they still didn't show is that in all those other games, which they won, the other team felt the same way. That is one of major issues with sports, in every competitive game someone wins and someone loses. Someone goes away thinking they are the best, and someone goes away thinking that there is something wrong with them. And all we look at is the one that won. It doesn't matter how hard you work in life, how much you want it, how much you try, there is always going to be someone better than you. And even if you do somehow manage to become the best of something, then you still have to work at it because there are all those people under you trying to get to where you are. And if you are on top and someone is making there way up to beat you, who are people going to cheer for and wish to succeed? The person under you trying to take your place, everybody is hoping that you will fail. Why is that? I think it's because people see themselves in the underdog. Most people are obviously not the best of anything so when they see someone else who is not the best come in and take on the person who is the best, and win, it gives them hope that they can do that too. Hmm, well I thought I had more, but I guess that is all I have to say. So I will end this note/blog now, and let you all think about how right I am :) and come up with your own conclusions on how this applies to your life :)