What do George Mason, Appalachian State, Butler, Gonzaga and Barton have in common? Besides being upstanding NCAA member schools, they all know what it’s like to win as the underdog in athletics.
Few will forget George Mason’s improbable run to the Men’s Final Four in 2006. Barton looked beaten until scoring 10 points in 45 seconds to win the 2007 Division II Men’s Basketball Championship. And how about Appalachian State from the Football Championship Subdivision stealing the headlines on a Saturday reserved for Football Bowl Subdivision teams with its upset of Michigan last year?
To be sure, nothing is as exciting – or inspiring, for that matter – as David knocking off Goliath (unless you are Goliath, I suppose). Quite frankly, people love the underdog. And nowhere does the underdog roam more freely than in college sports.
We certainly are one of a kind in that regard. While there are upsets in professional sports, the opportunity for teams from schools with vastly divergent student bases and missions to face each other is far more frequent in intercollegiate athletics. Combine that with an already passionate fan base and you get what makes college sports so special – the likelihood that on any given day, the little guy will succeed.
After all, why are the first two days of the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship in March among the most popular in sports? Aren’t early-round match-ups supposed to be the most uneven? Not in college basketball, in which the term “Cinderella story” is an annual mantra.
It’s the same with college football, in which every Saturday is a playoff atmosphere in all three divisions.
The NCAA is familiar with the underdog role. In some ways, intercollegiate athletics is itself an underdog. The collegiate model is uniquely ours. Nowhere else in the world do athletics and higher education share the bond that they do in the United States – and our model has repelled negative pressures to change from external Goliaths for more than a century.
In college sports, players are students, not commodities, and teams represent institutions of higher learning, not franchises. The players’ skill at the college level may not be as great as that of their professional counterparts, but the uniforms they wear conjure a formidable allegiance from their fan bases.
We love the little guys – the Davids – in college sports. We even structure our rules to maintain as level a playing field as possible, so that David is on equal footing with Goliath.
So the next time you turn on your TV and your heart is captured by an underdog making a run, remember what makes college sports so compelling.
After all, every underdog has its day.
– Myles Brand, NCAA President