Underdog vs Favorite
I recently read an article which surveys hundreds of athletes from all levels of competitions and asked them if they would rather be the underdog or the favorite. The results indicated that 75% of athletes would prefer to be the underdog. This makes sense if we believe the philosophy of Yogi Berra who said the 90 per cent of sport is 50 percent mental. The thinking is that all the pressure is on the favorite. The underdog really has nothing to lose since they are expected to lose, so they can go all out and take risks. The thinking is that most sports ultimately come down to the mental game. In the last few minutes of the game, if the game is close, that is when the mental game takes over. The underdog thinks, "it's close, it is within reach, this is really possible." and the favorite thinks, "this isn't the way it was supposed to turn out, they shouldn't have had a chance". People love to cheer for the underdog in sports. The crowd, the ...