I’ve been watching a lot of the World Cup of late. I have some die-hard “footy” fans in my family (I learned to stop calling it soccer years ago), and one of our crew is laid up post-knee surgery. Add in a heatwave for extra credit, and it’s led to a shocking number of hours with the TV turned on and tuned in to the competition.
What the rest of the world calls football truly is a beautiful game to behold. And I love watching the sheer joy of the fans, draped in flags, wearing their team kit*(see below) and rooting for something as simple as a goal, a win, a chance to move on, and as complex as pride in their home country.
With every new match-up, I consider which team to root for. Sometimes I cheer on players I’m familiar with (Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka on England’s squad are favorites), sometimes the crowd draws me in (hard not to love the Norwegian fans breaking into a group “row”) and sometimes the sheer heart and hustle of a team is impossible to resist (I’m looking at you Cape Verde!). But if I have no gut reaction of my own, I usually ask one of the before-mentioned fanatics in my house which team is favored to win, and then I root for the other one. I’m a sucker for the UNDERDOG.
I’ve often wondered if this is a uniquely American tendency, that we love to see the “little guy” who “doesn’t have a chance” defy expectations and rise to the top—the personification of the so-called American Dream. Like the Miracle on Ice in 1980, we like to believe that with enough hard work and determination, anything it possible. We revel in rags-to-riches stories, small town heroes who make it “big,” and under-rated or under-appreciated individuals who refuse to give up in pursuit of their dreams.
The term UNDERDOG, as it turns out, derives from actual dog fights, which were (sadly) popular in the 1880s, particularly in England. The underdog was the dog that had been flipped over onto its back and held there by its rival. The “top dog” was declared the winner. Contrary to our current usage, the underdog was so named because it had already lost.
Interestingly, the word UNDERDOG does not appear in my go-to resource on such matters, my Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary from 1934. While the term was surely understood as a concept in the US by the 1930s, its lack of inclusion in this 2,800 page tome suggests that it wasn’t nearly as widely used as it is now. It does, of course, appear in my 2003 Merriam Webster Dictionary, and is cited as originating in 1887.
Underdog, n, a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest.
—Merriam Webster Dictionary
It’s not hard to root for the underdog. Expectations are low, so there is only upside. When the tables are turned, it makes for a great story. But what happens when the underdog not only wins, but keeps on winning? When the small-town hero takes over not just the big city, but dominates everywhere? What happens when they become the very symbol we were previously rooting against?
This brings to mind the Apple of long ago. One of the most impactful ad campaigns in my memory was their 1984 Superbowl commercial. Hard to remember these “before times,” but this was well before iPhones, iPods and iPads, back when Apple first introduced the “MacIntosh.” PCs had not yet proliferated. Computing power belonged to the corporate world, and the top dog in that world was IBM. The idea of the ad was to grimly suggest that if we leave computing power in the hands of big corporations, we will all become automatons, unable to think for ourselves, all marching blindly forward into a bleak future (a little too frighteningly relevant now). The savior of our collective future would be Apple.
In the commercial, Apple was represented by a female athlete in bright red shorts sprinting into a room full of men in gray prisoner-like jumpsuits, sitting in rigid rows and staring blankly at a movie-theater-sized black & white screen. On it, the face of an old white man drones on, telling them they will support “one resolve, one cause, and we shall prevail.” As a swat team chases the woman to stop her, she wheels around and heaves a huge metal mallet into the screen. As it shatters in an explosion of white light we are told, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce MacIntosh, and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
It doesn’t escape me that Apple made the bold choice to have a woman represent the underdog. Apple didn’t want to be seen as “just another guy who would replace the old guy.” Not only was the female athlete not risky to root for (not possible that she’ll take over the world, right?), but the mere suggestion that a woman might have the strength to disrupt the corporate world was outlandish enough to make people sit up and take notice. What the heck was Apple up to?
The following year, in my freshman dorm room, I proudly unwrapped my first Mac (with a whopping 128K of memory!). I loved everything about it. Beyond the revolutionary technology, Steve Job’s entrepreneurial story was one for the ages, and one that gave me no small amount of inspiration as I set out cofound a company in 1996. As an entity, Apple was ground-breaking in every way, including prioritizing user-oriented design and ushering in a new way to build company culture a lasting brand. They were new, small, and ambitious. In short, they were easy to root for.
But now? Apple is now considered the second most valuable publicly traded company in the world based on market capitalization (behind Nvidia), and has insinuated itself into every corner of our daily lives. If there were one company to point to as most responsible for the proliferation of cellphones and our collective epidemic-level addiction to the little screens in our hands, we don’t have to look much further than Apple.
Who do we root for now?
I guess this thought and the world in general has led me toward local and small whenever possible: the independent bookstore, the small retail shop in town, the farm stand, the non-chain coffee shop. These businesses represent a different kind of underdog, I think. It’s less about defeating the monster in their industry and more about proving that creating jobs, delivering a valuable product or service all while developing community, is a dream worth pursuing. In my book, that’s something to root for. What do you think?
Until next time, my best regards,
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