Risk, Reward, and the American Dream: The Underdog
Graphic by Sophia Rascoff
From “Miracle on Ice” to “Rudy,” American sports history is filled with moments when the least likely competitor defied the odds. When the United States men’s hockey team stunned the world with their victory over the former Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games, it was more than a semifinal win: it was a Cold War-era pronouncement that dreams do come true and good does prevail. When the diminutive Daniel “Rudy” Ruettinger recorded a sack in his one-and-only play for the Notre Dame football team, it became a cinematic shorthand for those same ideals. But what is it about the underdog that feels so uniquely American, and why does it resonate so deeply with us?
These underdog stories resonate far beyond the scoreboard—they reflect a distinctly American belief in resilience, perseverance, and the possibility that hard work can rival skill or pedigree.
Our obsession with the underdog is not just a sports trope: it has been hardwired into the American psyche, ever since the scrappy thirteen colonies defeated one of the world’s most dominant empires. In a nation built on the promise of the “American Dream,” there is a belief that anyone, regardless of personal background or racial identity, can rise and claim victory through pure determination and grit.
Nowhere is this belief more evident than in American sports culture, where playing fields become metaphors for socio-economic barriers and where a team or a player with enough courage—and maybe just a bit of luck—can overcome them. Every matchup between an alpha dog and an underdog, so to speak, fits into a deeper cultural script.
Beyond our national psyche, the popularity of the underdog can be understood through broader human psychology. As counterintuitive as it might seem to root for the team poised to lose, researchers have found that people naturally sympathize with those perceived as disadvantaged, for multiple reasons.
One explanation is the instinctive human desire for fairness. When one team appears to be overwhelmingly dominant, whether that means they are better funded, more prestigious, or just more favored to win, it creates an imbalance that feels unfair and uncomfortable. Supporting the underdog thus becomes a way of restoring equilibrium, reinforcing both the promise and appeal of the American dream: that merit and effort ultimately outweigh privilege.
There is also a subconscious emotional calculation at play. Rooting for the favorite carries little risk, and consequently, little reward. If the dominant team wins, victory feels expected and perhaps even a little boring (for everyone who is not a superfan). Backing the underdog, however, introduces a certain level of uncertainty and anxiety.
Fans knowingly invest in a long shot and risk the greater, more likely possibility of disappointment in exchange for something extraordinary. Take, for instance, Leicester City’s 2015-16 Premier League win. They had 5,000:1 odds of winning, yet ended up defying every expectation. Rooting for them early on was a gamble few would have taken, but the reward was far more than a victory; it was a sort of catharsis that traveled far outside the small city in England.
The payoff here was magnified precisely because the odds were so extreme; when the impossible became reality, the reaction was euphoric. This is a prime example of the psychology behind the underdog—the greater the uncertainty, the greater the emotional return.
More than that, the underdog is not just appealing, but necessary for sports to exist. If outcomes were always guaranteed, games would lose their tension and become far less compelling to watch. We follow sports not only out of loyalty, but also because we never know what will happen. The possibilities that underdogs create keep uncertainty alive, and with it, the excitement that makes sports worth watching.
While it may seem difficult to describe Harvard as an underdog in any context, the university has its own Cinderella story in its athletic history. Harvard’s upset of the No. 1 Stanford Cardinal in the 1998 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament stands as a prime example of an underdog accomplishing what once appeared impossible.
Unlike many powerhouse programs, Harvard did not offer athletic scholarships and operated with far fewer athletic resources than its competitors, making the matchup seem dramatically lopsided from the start. At the time, a No. 16 seed team had never defeated a No.1 seed in either the men’s or women’s NCAA tournaments.
This victory was significant precisely because Harvard is rarely imagined as an underdog. In most contexts, a victory attached to Harvard’s name would hardly register as surprising or symbolic. Yet in the realm of athletics, Harvard competes without the funding advantages and athletic scholarships that power many other Division 1 programs, putting its teams at a real structural disadvantage against opponents with greater resources.
This upset was not simply meaningful for Harvard or even for the Ivy League; it was historic for the sport itself. By defeating a No. 1 seed when a No.16 seed had never done so before, Harvard did far more than win a single game. It challenged the perceived limits of what was possible for both the school and the tournament itself. The victory broke through the assumption that certain hierarchies and rankings are untouchable and that outcomes are predetermined by institutional athletic prowess.
Our attachment to the underdog reveals as much about us as it does about the games we watch. We are not just cheering for an underfunded, perhaps underskilled, team, but rather a story that affirms something we desperately want to believe exists in either the world or in ourselves. The victory of the overlooked feels like proof that mobility is real and that effort can overcome entrenched power.
Whether it be a group of college hockey players defeating a global superpower, or a No. 16 seed rewriting tournament history, these moments endure because they satisfy both our national myth and internal human instinct. They resolve imbalance and incentivize risk for reward. In celebrating the underdog, we affirm a deeper conviction: that giants can fall, and that the impossible is in fact in reach. That is why we keep watching even when the outcome seems obvious, and why we keep rooting for the underdog.
Adin Hootnick ’29 (ahootnick@college.harvard.edu)always roots for the underdog.