At the Final Four, A Feel-Good Story… for Almost Everyone

Who pulls for the overdog?

Everyone loves the underdog, a cherished archetype in American life. In sports, they’re the scrappy band of outsiders. They came from nowhere. No one believed in them. Can they pull it off? Can they win one for all the little guys?

March Madness 2010 gave us a new set of underdog heroes, like the Panthers of Northern Iowa, shocking superpower Kansas with Ali Farokhmanesh’s crazy 3-pointer. This year, one of those outsider teams even made it to the national championship game: the Butler Bulldogs.

They were a comprehensively appealing underdog. Small school. Real student-athletes. Humble, brilliant, shockingly young coach.

To top it all off, they made it to the Final Four in their home city of Indianapolis, turning the event into an unexpected celebration of a state's love affair with a sport – a relationship immortalized in the iconic movie ‘Hoosiers.’

In the movie, tiny Hickory High (enrollment 64) wins the state high school title against much larger South Bend Central High.  The movie is based, with a fair amount of artistic license, on the 1954 Indiana state champions from the small town of Milan. 56 years later, Bobby Plump, who made the winning shot in the game for Milan, remains a major celebrity in Indiana. He went on to star for Butler, by the way.

Fast forward back to the 2010 version of Butler, a team composed almost entirely of Indiana natives. On Saturday night, the Bulldogs won a tense semi-final against traditional power Michigan State.

Indianapolis erupted. It seemed impossible to find anyone who wasn't rooting for Butler.

Unless, that is, they went to Duke, the school standing between Butler and the storybook finish. As I did.

I love underdogs as much as anyone, but in Indianapolis for the Final Four, I was on the side of the overdog.

I couldn’t resist the Butler story any more than the rest of the country. Indeed, the friendliness and good-natured spirit of the locals made me appreciate the story even more. I spent Easter Sunday with dear friends who were thrilled for Butler, and they – and their friends and families and everyone else I met – were unfailingly good-natured about it all.

Even on game day, when I went to Butler’s campus and into downtown Indy in my Duke apparel, I experienced nothing worse than the occasional sportsmanlike, friendly jibe. It was apparent how much this team already meant to everyone, and how much more a victory would mean. Not just to them, but to all the underdogs.

I felt like a bit of a bad person for hoping that my team would beat theirs (and many would agree that’s what it meant). I told myself, even if we lose, it’s really okay – we’ve won before, and a Butler victory would mean so much to so many people.

At game time, I settled into my seat alongside my Indy friends. The ovation for Butler from over 70,000 fans was deafening, a shock wave of sound. By the first TV time-out, 4 minutes into the game, I wasn’t thinking about storybook endings for the underdog anymore. I wanted my school to beat their school.

And now that I thought of it, this Duke team I’d been following all year had some great stories too. In fact, was Butler really the underdog anymore when they were playing us completely even and at least 50,000 of these people were screaming for them? (Yes, they still were, but I was becoming steadily less objective.)

You know the outcome. In a wild closing sequence, the clock struck 0:00, Butler’s heave from half court hit the backboard, bounced softly off the rim, and dropped harmlessly away. Unlike “Hoosiers,” the Butler story did not end in triumph. After a stunned pause as the entire crowd exhaled as one, confetti began pouring from the rafters, and Duke was the champion.

I reacted with joy… followed very quickly by something like guilt, as I saw the sadness of my crestfallen friends and felt the collective slumping of the shoulders of all the others who had given this team their hearts.

Now, a few days later, I’m still glad Duke won, and I’m still sorry Butler lost. The former outweighs the latter, but it’s genuinely bittersweet.

Yet there’s always 2011, and almost the whole Butler team is returning. They won’t be quite the underdog next time around. But as long as they’re not playing my alma mater, I’ll be rooting for them.

Until then -- Hollywood, how about a sequel? Something like “Hoosiers II: South Bend Central High.” For those of us who find ourselves rooting, from time to time, for the overdog.

From 1986, here’s the trailer for 'Hoosiers.'

And in honor of Butler, and also just because it’s great, here from the summer of ’07 is the music video for ‘The Underdog’ by Spoon.