A Handshake

Most conversations with someone new begin with a handshake and an introduction. So I will begin this blog in a similar way. My name is Austin Bream and I am an underdog. Throughout my life I have found myself to be a longshot more frequently than a favorite. In sports, my flailing limbs leave me the last pick in most drafts. Occasionally, though, I manage to surprise everyone, myself included, with a spectacular diving catch for a football or a three point swoosh with a basketball. I have also been a winning underdog in other areas. After school (I’m a high school senior), I lead two different clubs, Project Earth and Cosmic Ray Club. While one is an environmental club and the other a muon research club, the two do share a commonality; both clubs are underdogs. They are small and, to many, insignificant. But overcoming the odds seems to be my clubs’ motto, and here too underdogs win, as I have restored prairies with Project Earth and published a research report with Cosmic Ray Club. The fact that underdogs can and do win fascinates me, but also makes me wonder if such wins are only exceptions.

The numbers, however, suggest that underdogs beat the favorites quite frequently. Over the past 200 years, more than 70% of wars with heavy favorites have been won by the underdog, according to a report by Ivan Arreguín-Toft titled “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetrical Conflict”. It seems, at least with wars, the exception is actually the favorite winning. But is this true in other areas, like in singing and politics? What about in sports? And when an underdog wins, how is that victory accomplished?

In this blog, I will explore these questions and discover the ways in which underdogs win, from how the US hockey team of the 1980 Winter Olympics beat the Soviets to how the United States won the Revolutionary War. I think we all want to know how we, in the days we spend as underdogs, can achieve victory, and this blog’s goal is to find out. One resource I will use to frame this blog is an article called “How David Beat Goliath”, in which Malcolm Gladwell attempts to explain underdogs’ victories. He explores how using an unconventional approach allows many underdogs to overcome the odds and win. This blog will evaluate Gladwell’s claim in depth and determine if his idea can be applied to a diverse field of underdogs. To get a true understanding, I will choose a different underdog and a different field to analyze every week, looking for the ways in which these underdogs win.

Everyone is an underdog at least once in their life. And in those moments where the magic eight ball says no, it’s nice to know there is some hope. This is a blog about that hope and how that hope can be transformed into concrete steps to achieving victory. This is a blog about how underdogs win, and how you can win too.