It wasn’t a matter of flukes, it was a matter of keeping up with the Russians in speed and conditioning. Herb Brooks knew that. That’s why he had to be a real hard-ass whipping up these college kids to keep up with the Russian pros. “Flukes” only happen if you are at the right place at the right time catching your opponent in the wrong place at the wrong time…that would only happen if you could keep up with them, all 3 periods. The Russians lead in shots, 39 to 16. The college kids still had problems keeping up with the Russians in that department, but the goalie (Jim Craig) played the ultimate game of his life to keep them in it. Remember, the Russians beat these kids only two weeks earlier, in a 10-3 rout.
After all this, it still comes down to college all-star kids beating an all-star pro team with the most impressive national Olympic history that had the best goalie and the best coach at that time. There were many other Russian pros that got turned down because they could only have 20 players on a team. This is true David and Goliath matchup we’re talking here.
Below average college teams beating top-ranked college teams is quite an accomplishment, but a good college team slapped together for a season versus seasoned pros and coaching from an established olympic dynasty is entirely on a different level.
Nonsense. If you put me all by myself on the ice versus that Russian team, I can still put a strong upper bound on the odds at 6*10[sup]115[/sup] to one against (that being the approximate chance for every member of the Russian team to drop dead during the game). If I knew how long the window was from when the team had to be finalized to the gametime, I could cut that down considerably (for instance, if the team had to be finalized the day before, that knocks about 27 orders of magnitude off the odds). Well, OK, so that’s still a bit implausible (though far short of infinity to the googolplex power), but now consider the possibility of one or two of the Russian star players suffering injuries sufficient to keep them out of the game. That sort of thing happens all the time, even in less violent sports, and can have a radical effect on a team’s ability.
And surely Vegas had some line on that game (though admittedly, the odds given by a bookie are not indicative of the true probability). Doesn’t anyone know what they were?
I agree the infinity and googleplex was ridiculous in that such a statement shows an amazing lack of insight into the true proportions of those ridiculously large numbers.
However, your counterexample is orders of magnitude off. First off, hockey is truly a team sport in a way that baseball is simply not. If they were comparable at all, the Rangers would be as dominant as the Yankees. Since baseball is, in effect, a singles competition (pitcher vs. batter) played in round robin fashion, you can fairly easily buy all the best talent and presto chango you win bunches of world championships. Hockey is no such animal. The Rangers outspend the rest of the league in a similar fashion as do the Yankees, and yet the Rangers are consistently one of the worst teams in the league. Big names sell tickets, but unlike baseball, they don’t win without team cohesion.
Let’s ignore that for a moment. Assuming that baseball were similarly team oriented to hockey, let’s look at your example. If the Yankees were beaten by college all-stars. Well, where do those college allstars go on to play? MLB. They feed into the system that creates the Yankees. The US college kids were allstars feeding into the NHL. The NHL allstars got embarassed by the Soviets.
A more proper analogy would be to consider a team of European college allstars beating the Yankees. Simply unthinkable. Even then it wouldn’t be as crazy, considering the team unity required to win at hockey, and how long the Soviets had been playing together. The actual Yankees haven’t even been playing together as long as those Soviets had. In fact, very few teams in any major sport in North America today have the longevity the Soviets enjoyed. Back in the day we did; the Steelers of the 70s would be a good example. Also similarly dominant.
So there’s the proper analogy. Take the best college football players from Canada, Germany, or Australia and send them back in time to play the 70s Steelers in the Superbowl, and have them win.
What were the odds for North Korea advancing to the quarterfinals in the 1966 World Cup? Nobody knew anything about them before they got there. Nor does anyone know anything about them now.
I think the odds on a sweep by either team in a World Series would always be less than 100-1. The Dodgers were the defending champs, but if I could have bet at the time (being 9 months old then, legal betting avenues for me were limited), I wouldn’t have given more than 20-1 against EITHER team sweeping.
A more recent upset in a World Series that ended in a sweep would have been 1990 when Cincinnati swept Oakland. I doubt that a Reds sweep went off for more than 20-1.
Baseball has a fair share of upsets. So much so that you rarely hear the word used in conjunction with the sport.
Last year the St. Louis Cardinals were 105-57 and the Arizona Diamonbacks were 51-111. Arizona still managed to win one game against St. Louis.
I think we hijacked this thread to hell (since I don’t think we know any of the posted odds), but I’ll throw another out there.
Rulon Gardner’s upset victory over Alexander Karelin in (Greco-Roman?) wrestling at the Sydney Olympics has to be up there. Again, I’m sure that individual upsets are less longshots than in team sports, but…Karelin had been unbeaten and UNSCORED upon in a decade. Tremendous tribute to both Karelin and Gardner.
Not so. Chaminade was not just a “below average college team.” It was a team from an entirely different level of competition. An NAIA school (not a member of the NCAA) comprising 800 students. Essentially a club-level team or a very good high school team vs. the number one team in the NCAA, which featured the most dominant player in college basketball. (Nor was it a one-man team-- UVA made the Final Four the year after Sampson left.)
And again, as I pointed out, hockey is a low-scoring game which is especially prone to upsets. Who knows where that puck might fly? A good (or lucky) game by one goalie (maybe combined with a bad game by the opposing goalie) can turn the tide.
It seems to me that there are many more upsets of magnitude in college basketball than in hockey. But then again that could be because the disparity in talent is much greater in basketball and because college hoops gets much more press.
I noted Chaminade is Div II and UVA is Div I, but still…college kids v. college kids. I can see this more like a AAA (maybe even AA) team beating it’s affilliated pro team. But also note, age, maturity and experience are also factors that are not lopsided between those two teams like it was between the Americans and Russians. These among other factors were all tilted in the Russians favor.
It might help to note that the USSR demolished the U.S. Team just a week before the Olympics started, 10-3. And that result was actually favorable to the Americans.
Well, no, it’s somewhere in between. It would be more like the Yankees losing to an all-star team of college players just drawn from Pennsylvania.
The American team was comprised of SOME very good amateur players, some of whom became NHL players, and Broten and Ramsey became All-Stars. But the great majority of the world’s best amateur hockey players in 1980 - and in every other year hockey has ever been played - were Canadian, and the USA was most assuredly not in second place. At the time the American hockey system wasn’t as advanced or as productive as it is now. (Whereas your college baseball team would in fact contain over half of the world’s finest amateurs.) Furthermore, it is probably not true to say the Russian team was the absolutely best team ever; Canada did win a heck of a lot of international tournaments against them. The 1987 Canadian team was probably better. The 1980 Soviets were close enough for government work, though.
I am still of the opinion that is was the greatest upset in sports history, but it’s not as if the Americans weren’t hockey players.
Chaminade was playing in the NAIA when it upset Virginia back in 1984, but it has subsequently joined the NCAA and plays in Division II in a conference along with Hawaii-Hilo, BYU-Hawaii, Montana State at Billings, Hawaii Pacific, and Western New Mexico.
Pulykamell may know about this one. While perhaps not the biggest upset in sports history, Hungary’s 6-3 victory over England at Wembley in 1953 marked the first time England had ever lost to a football team at home from an overseas team. It was considered to be quite the upset in its time.
This isn’t Vegas odds, but here in Australia during the 2001 AFL football season, a bookmaker offered odds of 4000/1 for the Brisbane Lions to win the next three grand finals.
Hungary’s win over England at Wembley in 1953 was a big surprise, but that Hungarian team was one of the greatest sides ever. It was only an upset because the English thought they could never lose at home.
It was more of an upset when that same Hungarian team lost in the 1954 World Cup final to West Germany.
I would have thought that Brazil would have been a big favorite over Uruguay in the 1950 final playing at home in front of 200,000 people and needing just a tie to win the title.