Leicester city won the premier league out of nowhere in the Premier League. Have there been some similar things in American Sports? I’d love to see it as the whole selling point of the leagues is Parity so there will be some interesting stories.

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  2. I’m having a hard time thinking of anything that comes close to Leicester except for the Miracle on Ice. Some of the closest would likely be single game upsets in college football or a really low seed going far in the NCAA basketball tournament.

  3. Not exactly a Cinderella story, but the [2004 Boston Red Sox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Boston_Red_Sox_season) (Major League Baseball) were down 0-3 in the American League Championship Series (the semi finals). Facing elimination playing their rivals and division champion New York Yankees they won 4 games straight to advance to the [World Series](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/uqw886/why_is_your_baseball_competition_called_the_world/) where they took 4 straight from my St. Louis Cardinals who had won 105 regular season games that season and had the best record in the MLB. This was Boston’s first World Series title since 1918, breaking the so called Curse of the Bambino.

  4. I mean bad teams become good teams all the time, but the rise generally isn’t dramatic.

    Like the Buffalo Bills went 17 years without making the playoffs and now they’re the top team in the NFL.

    I guess it would have been more Cinderella like had Josh Allen won the Super Bowl in his first year with the Bills instead of taking several years for the team to become truely elite.

  5. In 2011 the St Louis Cardinals were five games out of a playoff spot with 15 games to go and slumping badly. They won the World Series. Pretty cool!

    The real Cinderella story here though is a gentleman put $250 on the Cardinals making the playoffs (500:1 odds) and $250 on them winning the World Series (999:1). So a $500 bet turned into $375,000 lol. Awesome shit.

  6. NCAA basketball, due to its format, is the easiest sport in my opinion to have real clear underdog stories. Some famous ones:

    Villanova 1985- 8 seed in the tournament, surprisingly got to the title game and beat the #1 team in the nation, a dominate Georgetown team lead which likely goes down as a GOAT team if they win the national ship. Georgetown was a heavy favorite to win all year

    George Mason in 2006. Completely unknown team reaches final 4, beating the overwhelming favorite Uconn

    St Petes this year

  7. In 2007 the Kansas Jayhawks football team went 12-1 and won the Orange Bowl, which back then was one of the biggest postseason games outside of the national championship

    This is notable because outside of that season, Kansas averages 8 losses per year (on a 12 game season!) and does not attend a bowl

  9. In 2008 the undefeated New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the fifth seed/playoff wild card New York Giants….does that count?

    And in 2010 the Green Bay Packers were the 6th playoff seed and won the Super Bowl.

  10. The Eagles beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2018. The Eagles weren’t supposed to even be there, they lost their starting QB and the backup who was going to retire before the season started led them to victory against Tom Brady.

  11. Sadly, the first examples that come to my mind are the two teams that won in stunning upsets against favored Baltimore teams in 1969, the Mets who beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series then the Jets who beat the Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl. As I am from Baltimore.

  12. Tom Brady was the 199th draft pick in the 2000 NFL draft and ended up being probably the best QB in history

  13. Before the college football playoff started, the 2006 Boise State Broncos were an unheard of team that went undefeated in the regular season and got placed against a school from a Power 5 conference in the Fiesta Bowl – one of the major bowl games of the “Bowl Season”. They went on to win the game with a trick play for a 2 point conversion walk off win. Here’s a [deep dive on the game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXtKTO1hmG8).

  14. 2007 New York Giants

    More David and Goliath

    They limped their way into the playoffs only to get hot and ultimately upset possibly the greatest team of all time … the undefeated New England Patriots

  15. If I remember correctly a bet placed before the season would give 5000:1 odds I don’t think it have ever happened in any mayor sport globally.

  16. Milan, IN.

    They made the movie Hoosiers about them.

    Basically, basketball is huge in Indiana, we used to just have one giant league for high school basketball that included all high schools from the largest to smallest in a massive tournament, Milan was a tiny school with an enrollment of only like 150 students, they had a nearly undefeated season and beat a big school that was heavily favored in a hard fought final game.

    The game was played in Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University in Indiana.

    The University had its own major Cinderella story. Butler nearly won the NCAA college basketball tournament (known as March Madness). They made it all the way to the final game and lost on a buzzer beater shot that very nearly went in. They are a small school with a good but not massive basketball program.

    Brad Stevens who initially was a volunteer assistant coach for the team, became the head coach, led them to the championship, and despite the loss in the final game got hired as the the head coach of the Celtics (NBA team) and is now the president of basketball operations for them, basically the big boss.

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