“Don’t ever underestimate the heart of a champion!”
Former Houston Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich spoke these words right after his team captured the NBA championship with one of the most improbable runs in sports history. Since they were seeded last in the playoffs, everyone they would play would have better records than them. In fact, the Rockets beat the four teams with the best record in the NBA that season and crushed a young and powerful Orlando Magic team in the Finals
Nobody expected them to do it. They just believed they could.
In 2005, the Houston Astros were terrible during the first half of the season. At 15 games under .500, the Astros weren’t thinking about winning the World Series. They were just trying to win some dignity and self respect! But something happened on the way to a lousy season; the team forgot how to lose. During one of the most remarkable in-season turnarounds in Major League Baseball season (and the first time since the Boston Braves did it in 1914) Houston clinched the Wild Card on the last day of the regular season and overcame both perennial nemesis Atlanta and St. Louis’ best attempt to crush the psyche of the Astros (Albert Pujols home run, anyone?) to end up in the first World Series in franchise history.
Nobody expected them to do it. They just believed they could.
If you are a sports fan, the previous two stories illustrate one of the major reasons why you love sports in the first place. The fact is that on any given day your team, no matter how good or bad they are, can pull of something remarkable and YOU were along for the ride. It happens all the time in sports. Something in the chemistry and collective psyche of a team comes together and the players almost literally will themselves to do something they shouldn’t be able to do. But what happens when an entire season, perhaps even an entire league, collectively, truly believe they can win against any odds?
I give you the 2007 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision season and the birth of the Appalachian State Corollary.
In case you have been in a foreign country or under a rock the past month, here is a brief refresher on the events of this season. It is customary for college football powerhouses to schedule cupcake teams during the first few games of the season to prepare their kids for the “real” season of conference play. These teams from the “lower” divisions of college football understand that their role is to be cannon fodder. They will make money, get some TV exposure, then go home to lick their wounds. Sometimes these teams get uppity and win a game or two, but almost invariably against a “big” school having a down year – or decade.
At the start of the 2007 season, the University of Michigan was ranked 4th in the country and, many believed, had the talent to win the national championship. Three highly touted seniors postponed their pro careers and millions of dollars in pay to return for that reason. The contest against Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA) program Appalachian State was a warm-up game, a chance for these mighty Wolverines to flex their muscles, integrate the new kids into the team and shake off the rust of a long off-season. Except that they lost. In arguably the most historic and unprecedented upset in sports history, the school that hardly anyone outside of North Carolina had ever heard of stood toe-to-toe with the biggest boy on the block and came out a winner. In literal terms, if not in socially significant ones, this was the college football equivalent of the USA-USSR hockey game at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980.
Most likely, Michigan was guilty of nothing more than looking ahead, underestimating an opponent because they didn’t have the same pedigree. This happens everyday, both in sports and in the real world. But because Appalachian State literally did not belong on that field, because they did something so unbelievable, a collective wind swept through the ranks of every other team in the college football landscape.
“If App State can do it, why can’t we?”
This became the rallying cry for every program that had the talent to win at the highest levels of college football, but lacked the pedigree and, by virtue of the wonderful world of the uncharted human brain, the self-confidence – or, in this case, the collective team confidence – that is required to achieve at the highest levels. All of a sudden, every underdog truly believed they could win. More importantly, every powerhouse suddenly understood that they could lose. I mean, really understood, for the first time ever. All that “On any given day” talk suddenly became real. The “It will not happen to us” syndrome, that every teenager that has ever lived feels, was suddenly and very visibly shown to be “It CAN happen to us”.
Some might argue that the Boise State win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl last year was the true start of this season’s phenomenon. Although exciting and certainly an upset, it doesn’t fit in to the same category as they App State win for two reasons.
1) Boise State’s win came at the end of the season where they proved that, at the very least, they belonged on the same field as the big boys. After an undefeated season, they earned the chance to play Oklahoma.
2) Boise State is a Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly I-A) school. In other words, they have the same pedigree as the big boys, they just haven’t had it as long.
What App State did was truly uncharted territory, and we have already seen its effects. The smaller schools are playing loose; they are playing aggressive; they are playing to win. The big schools are playing tight, they are playing conservative, and they are playing NOT to lose which, as anyone can tell you, is almost a guarantee that they will.
And so, thanks to the hundreds of young men who were deemed unworthy to play for the big boys, thanks to the collective chip on their shoulders, and thanks to the most stunning win in college football history, I give you the Appalachian State Corollary to the 2007 college football season:
“Why Not Us?”
