The Joy of Upsets

Last night I watched and cheered as 8 seeded Robert Morris closed off an upset victory against 1 ranked Kentucky.  I also saw a barrage of Facebook statuses praising the Colonials for taking down the Wildcats.  Why is it that people liked the underdog so much in this game.  It seemed to me like even more than usual, the little guy was the fan favorite.

I think that a lot of this bias comes from the difference in how these two teams are constructed.  The Kentucky basketball advertises itself as the place for talented high school basketball players who need to get one year of college in before they go pro.  This means their team is generally full of extremely talented but also pretty young players.  It also means that pretty much every year all of their starters leave and they have to completely rebuild their team.  The Robert Morris team on the other hand is made up of much less individually talented players, but much of their team has been playing together for four years.

I think we generally like teams similar to Robert Morris better than those like Kentucky because they fit in better to American values.  It's like following the American dream; players on Robert Morris aren't anything exceptionally special when they join the team but through four years of work they build themselves into a successful group.  Members of the Kentucky team, while I'm sure they also work incredibly hard, don't have to build themselves into anything after they join the team, they already have most of it.