HellaFrank

Ok, maybe there’s a little. If poker can be considered a sport, it’s safe to say that getting bad cards over and over can be attributed to a stroke of “bad luck” but, for the most part, no matter how “lucky” a feat in sports seems, chalking it up to luck just isn’t right. I wrote about this a bit on the LaunchSquad blog, but had some more thoughts I wanted to add here.

I started thinking about this idea when I saw the Jumpman23 commercial that ran during the NCAA basketball tournament that claims: There Are No Cinderellas.

I concur.

The term “Cinderella team” refers to an underdog who was fortunate enough, lucky enough, to beat its rivals and win the ultimate prize. Though, in sports, it’s usually a trophy of some sort, not a prince.

This idea of being fortunate and lucky just doesn’t fly with me though. As the commercial accurately shows, all of these “Cinderella” teams worked damn hard and fully prepared to get themselves in a position to win and accomplish the unexpected. To attribute any accomplishment of these teams to luck gives no credit to what they did to get themselves where they are.

So, I say let’s be done with the term Cinderella in sports. While I haven’t thought of a good replacement yet, I think in the interim the word BADASS should be used instead. Imagine Bob Costas or Jim Nantz saying something like:

“And now taking the floor is number 10 seeded Davidson Wildcats, the 2008 NCAA basketball tournament’s BADASS team.”

Much better than Cinderella. I like it