Sports Underdog Quotes

On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win.

Offhand, I can think of no other sport in which the world's champions, one of the great teams of its era, would not instantly demolish inferior opposition and reduce a game such as the one we had just seen to cruel ludicrousness. Baseball is harder than that; it requires a full season, hundreds and hundreds of separate games, before quality can emerge, and in that summer span every hometown fan, every doomed admirer of underdogs will have his afternoons of revenge and joy.

Their dog, the dog that no one wanted, the pit bull that a ‘no kill’ shelter had wanted to kill, had outrun, out-jumped, out-hustled, and out-hearted all the herding dogs and retrievers and shepherds. In not just one event, but in a grueling series of games and contests that tested every aspect of a dog’s abilities. Wallace was a world champion.

Yet this wasn’t like sports, let alone sports movies. The roles weren’t fixed, nor the meaning of the scaffolding. It didn’t have to be this way. They might have, for instance, all felt stronger. They might have felt stronger and come together. They might have decided that, rather than now, as they’d been mistaken before: that if their enemies cheered the same damage as they, then they weren’t their enemies after all. They might have concluded their interests were mutual, that some other force, earlier—some other enemy—had confused and divided them, and that all those who cheered were thus allies unmasked. Instead they felt bitter, tricked by each other, last-strawed underdogs, suckers on the mend. Their enmity swelled and they fought even harder.

Then Wallace happened. Stepping onto the field something seemed different. As always, he had an energetic quality to him, jumping for the discs and shaking with anticipation, but Roo could sense something else in his bearing, see it in the way he carried himself. His tail was stiff except for the tip, which flicked steadily. His ears were perked, his eyes wide. The music kicked on, the discus began to fly, and Wallace did the rest. He ran a little faster, jumped a little higher. He appeared, if it was possible, to move with a little more grace. He caught nearly everything. As the routine progressed, Roo felt that sensation, that connection and singularity of purpose that had struck him during earlier competitions. He could sense that Josh felt it too, and the three of them worked in perfect synchronicity sharing an instant, almost nonverbal communication.

While other London clubs in fancier neighborhoods—Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea—have all enjoyed long periods as the capital’s preeminent team with championships and trophies to their name, glory has always remained tantalizingly out of West Ham’s grasp. Not that their fans are unduly concerned; they embrace their status as the city’s gruff, blue-collar underdogs with a healthy slice of gallows humor. When Harry Redknapp, a former player at the club, went to inspect the club’s trophy cabinet after taking over as manager, “Lord Lucan, Shergar, and two Japanese prisoners of war fell out,” he wrote. Even the club’s anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” is an old Broadway tune about shattered dreams and disappointment, and it’s bellowed by thousands of supporters wearing the team’s claret and blue jerseys before every game.

The next day they had Australia down at 145 for 6 and Adam Gilchrist was at the press conference. ‘We’re in a bit of a hole and need to figure out how to win from here,’ he said, and in that moment, you could see the difference between the two sides. The underdogs, through years of defeat, were unaware that they were in a winning position. Opportunity had knocked on their door, they didn’t recognize it, because they weren’t ready for it. The champions, on the other hand were always moving ahead, they were focussing on victory. It came as no surprise when Australia won, despite the fact that they had defeat staring them in the face on more than one occasion during the course of the match. Bangladesh was left wondering whether it could have been a turning point in their cricketing history! This is why it is often said that to be a champion, you need big match temperament.

Jack the Giant Slayer needs to be cunning. He needs to be able to analyse giants and detect their weakness and vulnerabilities. He must work out his giant-killing tactics. The holy grail for the giant slayers is the mind. The giants can control the body. They can get the physically best players. What they can’t get is the mentally best players, i.e. the most resilient, robust, fastest-thinking, the best leaders, the most composed, and so on. That’s because they can see the body and not the mind. What they can’t see, they are much shakier on. That’s where small teams have so much scope. Their task is to find mentally better players, more consistent, more able to work in a team, more able to cope with changing circumstances. The sky’s the limit for mental footballers versus physical footballers. It’s time for mental Moneyball, for psychological football – for Sun Tzu and Clausewitz footballers. Jack can outsmart the giants. They’re very big and very rich, but not very smart. It’s time to bring them down and take control of the golden goose. Come on guys, let’s get this revolution started. Let’s beat the odds. It’s time for our day in the sun, lifting the big trophy!

The first week of the NFL is very dangerous. Teams change dramatically from year to year. There is no situational advantage because every team is playing their first game. It is very difficult to handicap these games.