Upset Special

These days in sports, no matter the level of competition, be it professional, collegiate, high school, pee wee, backyard pickup games or even video games, there is one constant.  It certainly isn’t effort:  no athlete or pseudo athlete wants to dog it and put up a less than stellar performance, even in defeat and be known for “dogging it” or being a quitter.  Teams staying constant in the same place or with the same mascot names?  Have you WATCHED pro sports in the past decade?  Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL have all had teams move in the past fifteen years, and the NFL has watched the typical Al Davis shuttle from the LA Raiders to the Oakland Raiders.  So that’s not the case either.

You can’t even count on the season and the games to actually be played.  The NBA had a lockout in 2004-05 that led to the season being shortened to 50 games.  Major League Baseball had their strike in 1994, depriving the Montreal Expos, who had the best record in the league, a chance at the postseason.  There was no World Series that year, and the 1995 season got off to a late start as well due to these incidents.  The NHL has suffered twice in the past fifteen years from labor strife:  at the end of the 93-94 season, there was a lockout that prevented the 94-95 season starting on time, and led to an abbreviated 48 game slate.  Then after the 2003-04 season, more labor strife and the fight over a salary cap led to another lockout, this one wiping out the entire 2004-05 campaign.  The NFL has had labor troubles before, but you have to go back to 1982, when the season was shortened to nine games, and then 1987, when one game was lost, and a few others were played with replacement players, to find any serious work stoppages.

The players?   Not in this era of free agency, trades and players going to the highest bidder.  Players are more like rentals than long term investments as they were in previous generations.  Rare is the player that spends his entire career in one locale and becomes an icon in a city.  Heck, most of the time you can’t even keep players in college for a full four years, provided they go at all, which is a trend on the upswing, especially in basketball.

So what is the one constant you find in sports then?  If not the teams, the cities, the players, or the games themselves?  What’s left?  In a word:  upsets.

You see upsets litter the sports landscape on a daily basis, though they of course, are more pronounced in bowl games, playoff series, and contests where it is win or go home.  Don’t think they happen?  Ask the Patriots, who took an 18-0 mark into the Super Bowl against the Giants two years ago.  They patented 19-0, and were expected to win.  An improbable catch, where David Tyree pinned the ball against his helmet and a touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone to Plaxico Burress a few plays later, and the Patriots were out of the lead, and shortly thereafter, out of luck and time.  Ironically, neither of those receivers are still with the Giants:  Tyree was cut in the offseason after an injury plagued 2008, and Burress is in prison after accepting a plea in a weapons case that stemmed from an incident in a nightclub last year.

With it being election season in the US, why not talk about a few upsets?  After all, they happen in sports and politics.

The antics and exploits of Joe Willie Namath: The New York Jets were 18 point underdogs going into Super Bowl III, despite being the AFL champions.  They would face the 13-1 NFL champions, the Baltimore Colts.  This was actually the first game called the Super Bowl, the previous two were the AFL/NFL Championship Game, and were called the Super Bowl retroactively.

The Colts were led by Earl Morrall, who stepped in for Johnny Unitas, who had suffered an elbow injury early on in the season.  Morrall led the league in quarterback rating (93.2), threw for 2909 yards and 26 TD passes.  Tom Matte was the Pro Bowl running back, and they also featured deep threats in Jimmy Orr and Willie Richardson to go along with bruising tight end John Mackey.  Defensively, the Colts were dominating, as they entered on a ten game win streak, during which they allowed just seven touchdowns.  They allowed just 144 points on the season.  Their trip to the Super Bowl was complete when they pummeled the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in the NFL Championship, avenging their lone loss of the season.

The Jets were 11-3, and were led by the cocky Namath, who threw for 3147 yards despite completing just 49.2 percent of his throws and having more interceptions than TD passes (17-15.)  Matt Snell was the leading rusher, while Don Maynard and George Sauer were the big receiving targets, both men eclipsing the 1000 yard mark on the year.  Jim Turner booted 34 field goals and 43 PAT’s for a total of 145 points.  The Jets run defense was the best in the league as well, allowing just 1195 yards total on the season with the ground game.

After winning the AFL championship, Namath said there were at least four quarterbacks in the AFL, including himself and his backup, 38-year old Babe Parilli, who were better than Earl Morrall.  Despite the Jets’ accomplishments, AFL teams were generally not regarded as having the same caliber of talent as NFL teams. However, three days before the game, Namath appeared at the Miami Touchdown Club and boldly predicted to the audience, “We’re (Jets) gonna win the game. I guarantee it.” Namath later claimed he only made his famous “guarantee” in response to a rowdy Colts fan at the club, who boasted the Colts would easily defeat the Jets. Namath later claimed he never intended to make such a public prediction, and never would have done so if he had not been confronted by the fan.

Of course, the rest is history.  Snell scored on a four yard run, Turner booted three field goals, and the Colts did not score until the final minutes of the contest.  Namath was 17 of 28 for 206 yards with no TD passes while being named MVP.  He is the only QB to be named MVP while not throwing a touchdown pass.  The Colts turned the ball over five times, four deep in Jet territory, missed two field goals, and were punchless in a 16-7 defeat.

buster-tyson

Buster Douglas stuns Mike Tyson: The date was February 11, 1990, the place the Tokyo Dome in Japan.  Buster Douglas was fighting Mike Tyson for the heavyweight championship of the world.

Almost everyone assumed that the fight was going to be another quick Mike Tyson KO. Only one betting parlor in Las Vegas would hold odds for the fight, and many thought it was just a gag as Tyson was favored 42-1. Douglas surprised the world by dominating the fight from the beginning, using his 12″ reach advantage to perfection, seemingly hitting Tyson at will with jabs and right hands and getting out of range when Tyson launched his own punches. Tyson did not bob and weave and slip his way in—his usual strategy—but rather set his feet and went for the big punch, standing straight up and often lunging in. By the fifth round the champion’s left eye had swollen shut from Douglas landing so many right hands, and Tyson’s corner was grossly unprepared. They had not brought an endswell to the fight so they put lukewarm water into a latex glove and held it over his eye; this was to no avail as it got worse and worse. Tyson told his corner that he would KO Douglas in the 8th, and he almost achieved this, knocking Douglas down with a right uppercut at the end of that very round. But Douglas returned shaken to his feet at the count of six. Then, in the 10th round, boxing history was made as Buster Douglas scored arguably the biggest upset in boxing history.

Tyson looked tired and flat footed from the start of the tenth round, and Douglas tested the champion at around the 55 second mark with a series of left jabs, only one of which Tyson partially blocked. Then at one minute and five seconds of round ten, Douglas continued forward and landed a devastating right uppercut which visibly jarred Tyson’s head. Douglas immediately followed this with a right-left-right-left series of four hard hooks and straight shots, which floored the already dazed Tyson for the first time in his boxing career. When Tyson failed to climb to his feet in time, having in a delirium picked up his mouthpiece and stuck it into his mouth sideways, leaving it hanging halfway out of his mouth, the fight was ruled over, Tyson had been counted out, and Douglas had shocked the world by defeating “Iron Mike” and becoming the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World. The public reaction was encapsulated by the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine, with the headline “Rocky Lives!”, an allusion to the fictional boxing hero Rocky Balboa who, against all odds, KO’d the champion.

Douglas tearfully dedicated his dramatic victory to his mother, who had died of a stroke shortly before the bout. After the fight, he talked about his religion and said he was not scared of Tyson.

Villanova shoots the lights out on Georgetown: In 1985, under the direction of coach Rollie Massimino, the men’s basketball team completed one of the most surprising runs in NCAA tournament history by winning the national championship in the first year of the 64-team field. The eighth-seeded Wildcats beat Dayton, then upset top-seeded Michigan, Maryland and second-seeded North Carolina to win the Southeast Regional en route to the Final Four in Lexington, Kentucky. After defeating 2-seed Memphis State, the only non Big East school in the Final Four, in the national semifinals, Villanova met defending champion and ten-point-favorite Georgetown, led by Patrick Ewing, in the title game.

Top-seeded Georgetown had beaten conference rival Villanova twice during the regular season, and had reached the title game with tenacious defense, which gave up less than 40% of their opponents’ shots from the field in both the regular season and the postseason. But in perhaps the greatest shooting performance in NCAA history, the Wildcats went 22-of-28 from the field to convert a blistering 78.6% of their shots, including a second half where they missed only one basket. The Hoyas hung tough, converting 55% of their 53 attempts, but were unable to overcome the astounding shooting performance as Villanova won 66-64 to claim the NCAA championship. The Wildcat squad remains the only eight-seed and the lowest overall seed in tournament history to win the championship, and their overall team shooting percentage remains an NCAA tournament record for a single game. The game is often cited among the greatest upsets in college basketball history.  Ed Pinckney, who shot 5-of-7 and had 16 points in the game, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player.

Man O’ War suffers an Upset: In Man o’ War’s only loss, the Sanford Memorial Stakes, he still was circling with his back to the starting line when the barrier was raised (though other accounts give other reasons, such as it was rigged.). After the jockey got Man o’ War turned around, he already was far behind the pack. In frustration, Johnny Loftus, the jockey, made three major errors while in the race. Three times he put Man O’ War in bad positions, getting boxed in by other horses in the race. Despite this, he still came close to winning, losing by only a half-length, as Man O’ War charged across the finish line, going much faster than any other horse on the field, and ultimately finishing second. The horse that won was Upset, whose name is sometimes thought to have popularized a new phrase in sports (“upset” meaning an upstart beating the favorite). Also quite interesting is the fact that Upset’s jockey’s middle name was Sanford. Man o’ War finished his 2-year-old campaign winning 9 of 10 races.

Upset’s defeat of Man o’ War was the only loss that he would suffer in 21 career races, that saw him rack up $249,465 in purses, then sired 64 stakes winners and 200 champion horses.  Still, the Sanford Memorial Stakes loss still haunts horse racing to this day.

North Carolina State shocks Houston: North Carolina State, coached by Jim Valvano, won the national title with a 54-52 victory in the final game over Houston, coached by Guy Lewis. The ending of the final is one of the most famous in college basketball history, with Lorenzo Charles’ dunk at the buzzer off a high, arching alley-oop pass from 30 feet out by Dereck Whittenburg providing the final margin. This contributed to the nickname given to North Carolina State, the “Cardiac Pack”, a reference to their often close games that came down to the wire — in fact, the team won 7 of its last 9 games after trailing with a minute left in the game. Both Charles’ dunk and Valvano’s running around the court in celebration immediately after the game have been staples of NCAA tournament coverage ever since. North Carolina State’s victory has often been considered the greatest upset in college basketball history and one of the best in sports history.

Akeem Olajuwon of Houston was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, becoming the last player to date to earn this award while playing for a team that failed to win the national title.

Then of course, there is my personal favorite:

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Flutie to Phelan: In a game played before a huge television audience the day after Thanksgiving, November 23, 1984, it was Flutie throwing a 48 yard Hail Mary to Gerald Phalen as the clock expired to give the Boston College Eagles a stunning 47-45 win over the Miami Hurricanes, who were led by quarterback Bernie Kosar.  Flutie got the ball back trailing 45-41 with just 28 seconds to go, and went to work.  In three plays, the Eagles had moved to the Hurricanes 48 with six seconds to play.  The rest, as they say, is history:

Flutie called the “55 Flood Tip” play, in which the receivers were to run straight routes to the end zone. Then they were to tip the football to another receiver. Flutie scrambled to his right, narrowly averting a sack. He threw the football from his own 37-yard line, requiring the 5′ 9″ quarterback to throw the ball at least 63 yards against 30 mph winds, after having already thrown the football 45 times throughout the course of the game. The Miami defensive backs doubted Flutie’s ability to throw the ball into the end zone, so they paid no attention to Phelan as he ran behind them. The ball came straight down over the mass of players, untouched, into Phelan’s arms for the 47-45 win for the Eagles.

Flutie to Phelan \”Miracle in Miami\”

Plus with it being election season here, how could I resist putting this one in?

JESSE VENTURA

“The Body” becomes “The Mind”: Jesse Ventura ran for Governor of Minnesota in 1998 as the nominee for the Reform Party of Minnesota (he later joined the Independence Party of Minnesota when the Reform Party broke from its association with the Reform Party of the United States of America). His campaign consisted of a combination of aggressive grassroots events and original television spots, designed by quirky adman Bill Hillsman, using the phrase “Don’t vote for politics as usual.” He spent considerably less than his opponents (about $300,000) and was a pioneer in his using the Internet as a medium of reaching out to voters in a political campaign.

He won the election in November 1998, narrowly (and unexpectedly) defeating the major-party candidates, St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman (Republican) and Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. “Skip” Humphrey III (Democratic-Farmer-Labor). After his victory, bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing the slogan “My governor can beat up your governor” appeared in Minnesota. The nickname “Jesse ‘The Mind’” (from a last-minute Hillsman ad featuring Ventura posing as Rodin’s Thinker) began to resurface sarcastically in reference to his frequently controversial remarks. Ventura’s old stage name “Jesse ‘The Body’” (sometimes adapted to “Jesse ‘The Governing Body’”) also continued to appear with some regularity.

Suddenly, Jesse “The Body” had transformed into Jesse “The Mind” and the world, quite frankly, would never quite be the same again.

jesse-ventura-pointing

Just remember the next time you’re sitting down to watch some of your favorite sporting events that though things might look bleak at the second, that there ALWAYS is a chance for an upset.

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Posted by ckubala on Nov 6th, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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