The Most Jaw-Dropping Underdog Stories in Sports History

I don't care how many Marvel movies they make or how many seasons of prestige TV you binge -- nothing, and I mean nothing, beats a real underdog story in sports. No writer's room could dream up these plots. If any were pitched as movie scripts, they'd get tossed for being "unrealistic."

And yet they happened. Every one. On live television. With millions of witnesses.

1. Leicester City Wins the Premier League (2015-16)

The most statistically absurd thing to ever happen in professional sports. Leicester City was given 5,000-to-1 odds to win the Premier League. For context, the bookmakers gave better odds to Elvis being found alive. Kim Kardashian becoming president had better odds.

This club barely avoided relegation the year before -- dead last at Christmas in 2014-15. Their wage bill was a fraction of Chelsea's or Manchester City's. Jamie Vardy was playing non-league football five years earlier. N'Golo Kante cost about seven million pounds.

And then they just... won the whole thing. Beautiful, ruthless, counterattacking football for 38 matches, finishing 10 points clear of Arsenal. When Tottenham drew at Chelsea to mathematically confirm the title, the entire sporting world erupted. Greatest underdog story in team sports history, and I will argue that with anyone.

2. The Miracle on Ice (1980)

February 22, 1980. Lake Placid. A bunch of American college kids versus the Soviet hockey machine -- four consecutive Olympic golds, 6-0 demolition of the NHL All-Stars the year before. The most dominant dynasty in international hockey history.

The US team's average age was 21. Coach Herb Brooks had been the last man cut from the 1960 Olympic team and carried that chip for twenty years. He drove those kids mercilessly.

Going into the third period, the Soviets led 3-2. Then Mark Johnson tied it. Then Mike Eruzione -- the captain, a guy who never played a single NHL game -- fired a shot from the high slot. 4-3 USA. Al Michaels asked the question that still makes the hair on my arms stand up: "Do you believe in miracles? YES!"

Fun fact: that wasn't even the gold medal game. They still had to beat Finland. But nobody remembers Finland. Everyone remembers that call.

3. Buster Douglas Knocks Out Mike Tyson (1990)

February 11, 1990. Tokyo Dome. Tyson was 37-0, the undisputed heavyweight champion, the most terrifying athlete alive. Douglas was a 42-to-1 underdog. Most casinos didn't even post odds -- foregone conclusion.

Douglas's mother had died 23 days before the fight. Nobody gave him a prayer. Tyson was supposed to walk through him on his way to a bigger payday against Holyfield.

Instead, Douglas boxed the fight of his life. In the eighth round, Tyson dropped him with an uppercut. Douglas got up at nine. Then in the tenth, he hit Tyson with a right-left-right combination that put Iron Mike on the canvas for the first time in his career. Tyson fumbled for his mouthpiece, couldn't beat the count. Don King tried to get the result overturned. It didn't work.

4. Greece Wins Euro 2004

Nobody picked Greece. Their odds were roughly 150-to-1. They'd never won a single match at a major tournament before Euro 2004.

Then Otto Rehhagel turned them into the most suffocating defensive unit in European football. They beat hosts Portugal 2-1 in the opener. People called it a fluke. Then they beat France 1-0 in the quarters. Czech Republic in the semis. And in the final, they beat Portugal again. In Lisbon. 1-0. Angelos Charisteas header, 57th minute.

Cristiano Ronaldo -- 19 years old -- cried on the pitch. Greece beat the host nation twice to bookend the tournament.

5. 2004 Boston Red Sox -- The Reverse Sweep

Down three games to none against the Yankees in the ALCS. No team in MLB history had ever come back from 3-0 in a seven-game series. Zero teams in over a hundred years. The Red Sox hadn't won a World Series since 1918 -- the Curse of the Bambino, 86 years strong.

Game 4: down 4-3 in the ninth, Mariano Rivera on the mound. Dave Roberts steals second. Bill Mueller singles him home. Sox win on a David Ortiz walk-off. Game 5: another Ortiz walk-off. Game 6: Curt Schilling pitches on a sutured ankle, blood soaking through his sock on national television -- the "Bloody Sock Game." Game 7: 10-3 blowout at Yankee Stadium.

They swept the Cardinals in the World Series. The curse was dead. Grown men across New England wept openly.

6. Appalachian State Beats #5 Michigan (2007)

September 1, 2007. The Big House. 109,000 fans in Ann Arbor watching Michigan -- ranked fifth in the nation -- host Appalachian State, an FCS team. This was supposed to be a glorified scrimmage. A paycheck game.

App State won 34-32. They blocked a Michigan field goal as time expired to seal it. An FCS team walked into the largest stadium in America and beat a top-five program. Michigan dropped completely out of the AP poll. ESPN's ticker at the bottom of the screen might as well have read "NO, SERIOUSLY, THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED."

7. New York Giants Beat the Undefeated Patriots -- Super Bowl XLII (2008)

The 2007 Patriots went 16-0. Tom Brady threw 50 touchdowns. Randy Moss caught 23 of them. Two-touchdown favorites in the Super Bowl. They were going to complete the first perfect season since the '72 Dolphins.

Nobody except Eli Manning and his ridiculous, physics-defying helmet catch drive.

Third and five from their own 44, down 14-10, 1:15 left. Manning gets swarmed, somehow escapes three defenders, heaves the ball downfield. David Tyree -- four catches the entire regular season -- pins it against his helmet while Rodney Harrison tries to rip it away. Complete. Manning hits Plaxico Burress for the go-ahead touchdown. Giants win 17-14.

A wildcard team quarterbacked by the Manning brother most people thought wasn't that good ended the greatest season in NFL history. Hollywood would send that script back with notes.

8. Denmark Wins Euro 1992

Denmark didn't even qualify for the tournament. Yugoslavia was disqualified due to the Balkans war, and Denmark got called up as a last-minute replacement. Some players were literally on vacation.

They drew their first two group matches. Beat France 2-1 to sneak through. Beat the Netherlands on penalties in the semis. Then dismantled Germany 2-0 in the final. Peter Schmeichel was a wall.

Beach holidays to European champions in three weeks. That's not an underdog story; that's a fairy tale.

9. Rulon Gardner Beats Alexander Karelin (2000 Olympics)

Alexander Karelin: the most dominant wrestler in history. Thirteen years without a loss. Six years without giving up a point. Three consecutive Olympic golds. They called him "The Experiment" because people believed the Soviets built him in a lab.

Rulon Gardner was a farm kid from Wyoming who'd never won a world championship.

In the Sydney final, Gardner did the unthinkable: he broke Karelin's grip in the clinch. That grip was considered functionally unbreakable -- it powered his famous "Karelin Lift," where he'd throw 285-pound men over his head. Gardner separated the grip, earned a point in overtime, held on 1-0. When the whistle blew, Karelin just stood there. He couldn't process it.

Gardner celebrated with a cartwheel on the mat. A 265-pound man doing a cartwheel. Sometimes sports give you exactly the image you need.

10. The Rumble in the Jungle -- Ali vs. Foreman (1974)

Ali was 32, widely past his prime. Foreman was 25, undefeated, and had destroyed both Frazier and Norton -- the only two men who'd beaten Ali -- in a combined five rounds. Kinshasa, Zaire. 4 AM local time.

Everyone expected Ali to dance. Instead, he invented the rope-a-dope. Leaned against the ropes, covered up, let Foreman tee off on him round after round, and talked trash the whole time. "Is that all you got, George?" he whispered. "They told me you could punch."

Foreman threw everything and slowly, visibly, exhausted himself. Eighth round: Ali came off the ropes, right hand over the top, and Foreman went down. Counted out. Ali was heavyweight champion again, carried around the ring as 60,000 fans chanted his name.

Intelligence and audacity beating raw power. The most poetic moment in combat sports history.

Why We Need These Stories

Every one of these stories follows the same structure: someone who had no business winning went out and won anyway. The experts were wrong. The odds were wrong. The "inevitable" didn't happen.

That's why we watch. Sports deliver moments that make you believe the impossible is possible -- that effort, heart, and timing can overcome talent, money, and history.

These stories aren't just fun to tell at a bar (though they are -- check out the funniest sports moments that had entire stadiums in tears for your next round of bar stories). They're proof that the expected outcome is just a prediction. Not a fact. And predictions, as every entry on this list demonstrates, can be spectacularly, beautifully, gloriously wrong.