The dark side of the underdog

8th Feb 2010

The under­dog. We love cheer­ing for the under­dogs in sport, it makes it just that lit­tle bit more excit­ing and hope­ful and, fur­ther­more, you don’t feel too bad if your team loses because it’s unlikely they were expected to win. Super Bowl XLIV was another clas­sic case of this, as the hotly fan­cied Indi­anapo­lis Colts took on the New Orleans Saints – a team from a city that was almost wiped off the map by Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, and whose sta­dium (the Super­dome) suf­fered mas­sive struc­tural dam­age. I love cheer­ing for under­dogs but, unfor­tu­nately for me, I am a huge Colts fan and Sun­day night proved to be one of the most depress­ing nights of my life. I was lucky enough to be in the Lon­don Sports Café to watch the event and it was clear from the start who the major­ity of fans were root­ing for. Bar­ring the 15% or so of Colts fans, every­one was cheer­ing on the NFC Cham­pi­ons. The Saints duly won the game 31–17, which included a phe­nom­e­nal 31–7 run through the final three quarters.

By no means was this a “David vs. Goliath” match-up; Saints’ quar­ter­back Drew Brees came ago­niz­ingly close to break­ing the sin­gle sea­son pass­ing yards record last sea­son, and then set the reg­u­lar sea­son record for com­pleted passes per­cent­age this year. The Saints offense is one of the most feared in the league, with an almost innu­mer­able amount of weapons. Of course, while they are ‘one of the most feared’, they still are frac­tion­ally behind the Colts and, more specif­i­cally, Pey­ton Man­ning. Man­ning is con­sid­ered one of the best quar­ter­backs of all time but, espe­cially after the loss on Sun­day, is con­sid­ered some­what of a ‘big-game choker’. Numer­ous losses in the play-offs against New Eng­land and San Diego, and a heart­breaker against Pitts­burgh in 2006 has seen Man­ning amount an extra­or­di­nar­ily aver­age 9–9 post sea­son record. In an ironic twist to the game’s back­ground, Man­ning him­self was born in New Orleans and is the son of Archie Man­ning, who played QB for the Saints from 1971–82. The Man­ning fam­ily are con­sid­ered roy­alty in that part of the world but, for sixty min­utes on Sun­day, that wor­ship­ping was put firmly aside.

Sta­tis­ti­cally, there was not much dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the Saints and the Colts, but the gen­eral con­sen­sus was that Indy would win the game. Brees had bet­ter num­bers than Man­ning this sea­son, and New Orleans seemed to be an all-round more explo­sive team while the Colts gained a rep­u­ta­tion for being very method­i­cal in their approach. The game was expected to be close, and few would have expected a Colts win by two touch­downs so a Saints win by that mar­gin was noth­ing short of extra­or­di­nary. It was thought that Man­ning would not bot­tle it, hav­ing already won Super Bowl XLI, and that the Saints would have the nerves in their first Super Bowl appear­ance. Inci­den­tally, before the game you could have got odds of about 60/1 for “Indy lead­ing at half-time, Saints win­ning the game”.

Per­son­ally, I don’t place too much blame on Man­ning. The pick-six that went for the touch­down was a stun­ning play by Tracy Porter, who rec­og­nized where the ball was going to end up based on hours of study­ing film. The Saints seemed to take more risks – another rea­son why we like the under­dog; there is more of a ‘nothing-to-lose-so-may-as-well-try-something-big’ atti­tude. If only Indy used that same ‘noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained’ philosophy.

I cheered on the Ari­zona Car­di­nals last sea­son against the Steel­ers in the big game. The Cards were mas­sive under­dogs but the Steel­ers only man­aged to win the game in the final thirty-five sec­onds. I felt pretty dis­ap­pointed after that game, but not overly sad. Sun­day night, how­ever, brought me to tears (just like vs. Pitts­burgh in 06), amidst what seemed like bil­lions of Saints fans cheer­ing wildly around me. The other side of cheer­ing for the under­dog is per­haps the most deflat­ing feel­ing in the world if the under­dog becomes top dog (this assum­ing you’re cheer­ing for the sup­posed favourite). In any case, con­grat­u­la­tions to the New Orleans Saints.