Last night, the opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament began. Commonly known as "March Madness", the spectacle now seems to be a time-honored tradition. People who haven't watched a single contest all year are struggling to get the picks in their brackets correct for their local pools.
Basketball is played with only five players on a team at a time. One superstar can take a lackluster college team quite far in the tournament. The current reigning MVP in the NBA, Steph Curry, led Davidson--at the time a virtual unknown quantity--to the Elite Eight. Many of the teams are actually quite evenly matched. This leads to a number of surprises with the scrappy underdogs upsetting the giant programs with their storied history. It happens every year and it never seems to lose its thrill.
In the NY Times, Jon Werthheim and Sam Sommers write about the eternal appeal of the underdog story. Here is a key excerpt:
There’s science behind this allure of the underdog. Researchers at Bowling Green State University — perhaps none too coincidentally, a typical underdog school — once documented the phenomenon. They told more than 100 survey respondents that Team A was playing Team B in a best-of-seven series in an unspecified sport. Team A was highly favored to win. Which would they root for? Eighty-one percent said the underdog. But then the subjects were told that Team B, the underdog, had, improbably, taken a 3-0 lead in the series. Now which team would they support? Half switched over to Team A, the original favorite, but now the squad on the verge of elimination.
I found this paragraph on how it literally changes your perception of the game to be fascinating:
Another study revealed that underdog status doesn’t merely inspire rooting, it also changes our perception of what we see on the court. When told that a team was the underdog, research participants saw a play like a defender getting close to an opponent and knocking the ball away as reflecting hustle and grit. When watching the very same play, but under the impression that it came from the favored team instead, people saw the tough defense as more of a reflection of natural ability, not effort.
Most of us like to hear about the underdog winning because we see ourselves in the feisty non-favorite. We like to think that, given the same opportunity, we might overcome the obstacles to our own success. At the same time, the article goes on to point out that even though we prefer the story line of the underdog, we wager quite differently.
Yet with our fondness for the underdog, we usually say one thing and do the other. We love underdog independent bookstores but still spend more money at Amazon. We love the neighborhood Italian joint but still take the kids to Olive Garden. We say all the right things about supporting local businesses, but convenience and discount prices often win out.
....
It’s an intoxicating, yet often fleeting and shallow fling, our romance with the underdog. We’re enthralled by David, but wager more on Goliath. We’ll spend this Thursday and Friday rooting for basketball Cinderella stories, but still festoon our walls with the logos of favorites.
Personally, I root for my alma mater. Unfortunately, the Hoyas didn't make the tourney this year. Now, I'll just root for entertaining games.
Here is the link to the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/opinion/the-eternal-appeal-of-the-underdog.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
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