Word: underdogs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...environmental activists and oppressed minorities are given sympathetic treatment; big corporations are usually portrayed as villains; government bureaucrats are typically inept or uncaring. But this is probably due less to political calculation than to dramatic necessity. Artists tend to gravitate toward humanistic concerns rather than institutional ones; pitting an underdog against the system always makes for a better story. This is not necessarily proof of liberal bias any more than the proliferation of TV shoot-'em-ups means that Hollywood producers support the N.R.A...
...Bird or Steffi Graf, there are at least 300 athletes with the odds firmly stacked against them. And for every Ben Johnson, there are a hundred others who are neither competitive nor affluent enough to boost their chances with illicit drugs. The Olympics, in fact, are a festival of underdogs: at least 130 of the nations that will compete in Barcelona will have the luxury of being in a can't-lose position -- expectations for them are so low that any achievement will be a triumph. And perhaps 90% of all the athletes can do no more than remind themselves...
That may be one of the reasons why the Olympics appeal more than ever this year to Magic, who is now an underdog for the first time, a newcomer to the event, with the odds (personally) against him. For perhaps the first time in memory, we will not greet another no-look pass with a shrug of familiarity: Magic is an amateur again. Why should he, suddenly mortal, risk his health to play in the Olympics? Why should we race off to watch him play in Barcelona? Because the root of the word amateur -- still the heart of the Games...
Harvard, to say the least, comes into the game as an underdog...
...York was billed as a high pitched battle with Brown as the underdog. But, in that race, the man of many faces was slapped with the reality of his past...