JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: That was the Tarantella opening. The little "Hey" that we did.

JAD: Was it a little ...

ROBERT: No, it was fine. It was fine. It was good. It was good.

JAD: All right. I could bring it down. Should I bring it down?

ROBERT: No, no, no, no. We keep going. So we're talking about sports.

JAD: And games. 

ROBERT: And emotions.

JAD: And we just did a thing on rules and creativity. 

ROBERT: And now it's time to add yet another element to the mix.

JAD: 'Cause what do you get if you put all of those three things together? 

ROBERT: You get ...

JAD: Robert. 

ROBERT: You get ...

JAD: Bring it. Do it. Say it.

ROBERT: You're a little energized here. You get a story. 

JAD: Exactly.

ALISON GOPNIK: Really good games are sort of story-generating machines.

JAD: For example, here's Alison Gopnik again, talking about a little teeny story that happens dozens of times a game in her favorite sport.

ALISON GOPNIK: One of the great moments in baseball is always that that ball is going out there and the guy is going out there with the glove, and it might end up in the glove and it might not. And he backs up against the stadium wall and he—either he gets it or he doesn't. That wouldn't be nearly as much fun if he was just playing catch, right? That's a fantastic human drama.

JAD: So the question we want to explore now is ...

ROBERT: What kind of drama do you want?
JAD: What kind of drama to you is most fantastic?

ROBERT: Yeah.

SOREN: Think you want the—think you want the headphones the other way around.

ROBERT: That's our producer, Soren Wheeler.

DAN ENGBER: How's that?

SOREN: Yeah, something like that.

ROBERT: Who's out of the bathroom and seems to have made a new friend.

SOREN: [laughs]

JAD: So set that up, who's that guy?

SOREN: So that's Dan Engber.

DAN ENGBER: Senior Editor at Slate magazine.

SOREN: And I brought him into the studio because he told me about this thing that had happened to him ...

DAN ENGBER: When I was watching the NCAA tournament.

SOREN: The basketball, college ...

DAN ENGBER: The men's college basketball tournament.

SOREN: This was just last year.

DAN ENGBER: And I don't know anything about college basketball. It's a—you know, I—I have two or three sports that I can pay attention to. Some people have one, or two, or zero, but college basketball isn't one of them. 

SOREN: But, there's this tournament on every year, it's kind of exciting, so he watches.

DAN ENGBER: Yeah.

SOREN: And what he does, since he doesn't really have any loyalties, he doesn't know who to root for, he just kind of, by default ...

DAN ENGBER: I don't—I just pick whichever team has the lower seed. Whichever is the worse team.

SOREN: Why do you do that?

DAN ENGBER: I have no idea. And it—it came to a head when I showed up at a friend's house, and they had the game between Butler and Michigan State on.

SOREN: It was the semi-finals.

DAN ENGBER: And they were both seeded number five.

SOREN: So it's like your little system is ...

DAN ENGBER: Right, I've—I have no idea which team to—to root for. So I just was—I started rooting for whichever team was losing. And it was a close game, so ...

SOREN: Butler would make a run, then Michigan comes back.

DAN ENGBER: I start feeling sorry for Butler.

SOREN: Every time one would go up he'd switch to the other. And at a certain point, he's like, "Wait a second. This strategy guarantees that at the end of the game when the buzzer goes, I'll have been rooting for the team that lost."

DAN ENGBER: Right. I've actually created a situation where I'm guaranteed to be disappointed.

SOREN: [laughs] You're guaranteed to be disappointed.

SOREN: So Dan decided to figure out, like ...

DAN ENGBER: What the hell is going on. Why ...

SOREN: Why would anyone do this to themselves? 

SOREN: Is that—is that something that's actually been studied?

DAN ENGBER: Yeah. So, there's—there's a small group of psychologists ...

SCOTT ALLISON: That would be me.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: And me.

DAN ENGBER: ... who are interested in this question.

SCOTT ALLISON: Underdogs.

SOREN: Tracked a couple of them down.

SCOTT ALISON: My name is Scott Allison. 

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: Nadav Goldschmied.

SOREN:  Two.

SCOTT ALLISON: University of Richmond.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: University of San Diego, currently.

DAN ENGBER: So there are these studies that are just sort of hilariously simple, where you take a bunch of undergrads and you put them in a room.

SCOTT ALLISON: And we give them scenarios to read.

SOREN: Like a paragraph of ...

SCOTT ALLISON: Yeah, involving, say, two competing teams. So, here's a—a basketball team ...

DAN ENGBER: And it's—there's almost no information, the teams don't even have names, it's just—they're just team A and team B. Team A is playing team B in a game. You don't even have to tell them what sport.

SOREN: Okay.

DAN ENGBER: Team A is considered the better team and is more likely to win.

SCOTT ALLISON: Who you gonna root for?

DAN ENGBER: 80 percent of the students choose the underdog team.

JAD: 80?

SOREN: Yup. In fact, a lot of times it comes out 90 percent.

DAN ENGBER: 9 out of 10. Yes.

SOREN: In the absence of any reason to choose one or the other.

SCOTT ALLISON: That's almost universal.

DAN ENGBER: You can do the study in all different ways, and the answer always comes out the same. You can describe it as two political figures.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: You know, running for election.

DAN ENGBER: Or, you can talk about two businesses.

SCOTT ALLISON: Mom and pop's electronics store against Walmart.

DAN ENGBER: Or you can talk about two landscape painters who've painted pictures and are now trying ...

SOREN: Wait, wait, wait. Landscape painters?

SCOTT ALLISON: Yes, we gave participants a painting, half the participants were told this painting was done by a successful, established artist.

DAN ENGBER: You know so-and-so, who has a gallery show downtown.

SCOTT ALLISON: And the other half of the participants were told this same painting was done by a starving artist ...

DAN ENGBER: First-year art student.

SCOTT ALLISON: Who's trying to make it in the art world.

SOREN: Who only has one arm and ...

SCOTT ALLISON: Yeah, exactly.

DAN ENGBER: And people have this very strong bias in favor of the underdog painter. 

SOREN: So what else do we have? We got landscape painters, unnamed sports teams ...

DAN ENGBER: Businesses, politics ...

SOREN: Businesses, politics.

DAN ENGBER: And my favorite: shapes.

SOREN: Shapes.

DAN ENGBER: Yeah.

SOREN: What would an underdog's shape be?

SCOTT ALLISON: It's just a circle, about an inch in diameter, moving left to right across the computer screen.

DAN ENGBER: Moving up what could be a hill.

SCOTT ALLISON: Exactly. As the circle moves up, the circle slows down as it goes up the hill.

DAN ENGBER: Nudging up and then dropping back a little bit, and then nudging up and dropping back a little bit. 

SOREN: Quivering. 

DAN ENGBER: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SOREN: And then, along comes ... 

SCOTT ALLISON: A second circle that has no trouble getting up that hill.

DAN ENGBER: Cruises past the slowpoke circle.

SCOTT ALLISON: Zooms right past it.

DAN ENGBER: And sure enough, people have a real preference in some way or another. They're really rooting for circle B.

SOREN: The struggler.

DAN ENGBER: We get people emotionally reacting to a geometric shape.

SOREN: When they're sitting there are they like, "C'mon, c'mon, you can do it?"

SCOTT ALLISON: Yes, yes.

DAN ENGBER: You're pulling for it. It's going to be like Rudy, you know?

SCOTT ALLISON: This is how deeply ingrained the underdog phenomenon is in us. 

SOREN: At this point, like, my question is ...

JAD: Why? What's going on here?

SOREN: Why, exactly.

JAD: Why do we do this?

SCOTT ALLISON: Well ...

DAN ENGBER: Well ...

SOREN: Well ...

DAN ENGBER: Well, I think there—there are two different approaches to—to that—to that "why" question.

SOREN: One of them is this kind of what they call an emotional economics argument, and it goes like this. 

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: If you know that you have an underdog and you have a top dog. So,the top dog is expected to win, right?

SOREN: If you think of this, like, the way a gambler would think of it. Like, if you go with the top dog they're expected to win, so you're not gonna get a big payout if they do win.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: Minimal emotional payoff.

SOREN: But you'll lose a lot if they lose.

JAD: Meaning, you won't feel too good if they win but you'll feel really bad if they lose.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: Yes. But if you go with the underdog ...

SOREN: It's the reverse.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: Right.

SOREN: They're expected to lose. So if they do lose it's not that big a deal because you kind of figured that's how it was gonna go. But if they win you feel great.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: A significant emotional payoff.

JAD: So it's like betting on a long shot horse. You can put in five bucks, you're probably gonna lose it, but if you win you might get back like a hundred.

SOREN: Exactly.

JAD: Hmm.

SOREN: I don't think ...

JAD: That just does not feel at all like how I watch sports.

SOREN: Well, there's—there's another argument, which is these guys say that maybe it's something about fairness.

SCOTT ALLISON: That deep down we want to live in a fair society where there’s an even playing field.

SOREN: And—and there is research that shows that fairness is a pretty deep instinct in us. But I don't know. I mean, like, none of that seems to—I guess, the thing is that this whole thing feels like a lot more basic.

JAD: Yeah.

SOREN: If you look back at, like, the stories we tell, this underdog story is ancient.

SCOTT ALLISON: The Iliad, The Odyssey, great epics from Asia, Africa, it's all the same story.

SOREN: And so Scott says, you know, maybe we love the underdog because we feel like we are the underdog. I mean, in some sense, just to be a living thing is to fight against the odds. 

SCOTT ALLISON: Think about newborns. You can't be any more weak and helpless and small. 

SOREN: You know, I mean, it’s just a baby. I guess that's true. But I don't know. I mean, I don't remember being a baby and feeling like—but I do remember junior high, and I do remember feeling like I would never get a job, and I do remember feeling like there's no way that girl is ever gonna like me ...

JAD: Yeah.

SOREN: You know?

SCOTT ALLISON: We need these stories.

SOREN: Just to make it through.

SCOTT ALLISON: They're part of who we are as human beings.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: There's actually a very interesting story about Haruki Murakami, the famous Japanese novelist.

SOREN: Yeah, author. Yeah.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: He was awarded the Jerusalem Literature Prize, and this was in the midst, or immediately after Israel invaded Gaza and there were more than 1,000 Palestinian dead.

SOREN: Yeah.

NADAV GOLDSCHMIED: In his delivery speech he said the following, "Between a high solid wall and an egg that breaks against it I will always stand on the side of the egg. No matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong, perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: " ... value would these works be?" That's an interesting word. It's almost like he's saying, like, a story's job is—it's beyond morality, it's beyond truth, like, it's job is somehow to—to tell you that the world could be a way that we know inherently it never will be. I think that's what he's saying.

ROBERT: Or maybe he's really saying that I stand with the powerless, and the powerful can take care of themselves. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add a little weight to people who have no muscles of their own.

JAD: I'm gonna put a little pebble on the scale.

ROBERT: That's the job of the story.

JAD: And I guess if the scale is always weighted in the wrong direction, then that's why we love the story 'cause we need more pebbles.

SOREN: Well, yeah. But there's a question we haven't asked here.

ROBERT: Which is ...

JAD: What?

SOREN: Well, four out of five of us root for the underdog or the struggling circle, but that's not everyone.

DAN ENGBER: One out of five people are like, "Screw that circle, I'm excited about the circle that ..."

SOREN: Yeah, you could probably do some interesting follow up studies on, like ...

DAN ENGBER: Yeah. Who are those psychopaths, yeah?

SOREN: So you assume they're psychopaths. [laughs]

DAN ENGBER: I do.

JAD: Actually, oddly we ended up bumping into a guy who falls into this group.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: It's Malcolm.

ROBERT: Yeah, hi.

JAD: His name is Malcolm Gladwell, he's a writer.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: For the New Yorker magazine. 

JAD: He's also written a bunch of best selling books. 

ROBERT: And in the middle of a conversation, unbidden by the way, he suddenly says ...

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Oh, I never, ever cheer for the underdog.

JAD: You don't?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: No.

JAD: Why? Why not?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, because I'm distressed by the—by the injustice of the person who should win not winning.

JAD: The injustice of the—what?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Losing for the favorite. That is the most exquisitely painful situation to be in. So, I remember as a kid, the first time I ran. I was a huge track and field fan. '76 Olympics Dwight Stones lost the high jump, even though he was still far and away the greatest high jumper in the world, because it rained. His technique required absolutely perfect footwork and he would slip on the tarmac. And I just remember sitting there as a kid and I was just devastated because I could feel his pain, right? And his pain was so much greater than anybody else's.

ROBERT: What's wrong with you?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: It's too painful if they lose. When Dwight Stones loses the high jump, it is literally one of the most painful experiences of my young life, I can't—I thought about it for weeks afterwards. I just couldn't wrap my mind around how he must have felt going home. And ever since then I was like, there's no way you cannot cheer for the overdog because they will suffer. Like—I mean it's—it's the only humane position. Because you are trying to end human—end human suffering.

ROBERT: This is as tortured and twisted a logic as I've ever heard.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I mean I—I—I always thought this was, you know, rare evidence of my empathy that I—I felt ...

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs] I'm so sorry to have brought you the news.

JAD: Exactly.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: No, it's also—you know what it is? There's another part of this too, and that is—that it is— that I have a—a deep distrust and unhappiness with luck. So I do not like it when the outcome turns on an—an unrepeatable sequence. So Georgetown losing to Villanova in—is it the '82 NCAA college basketball championships? There is no way—you could play that game 100,000 times and Villanova would still win only that one time. That just—that game, it did more than upset me, it outraged me. I mean, I just thought, this is not—it's just not right, it is like—it is a violation of everything. You shouldn't be able to shoot 78 percent from the floor or whatever—I forgot what the number was, a preposterous number they—and I just, you know, if I had been on Georgetown I would—to this—I would wake up every night in a cold sweat to this day, just thinking, "This is outrageous! Like what? How did this happen?"

ROBERT: That's so weird, 'cause you're a storyteller by trade. Like, what if Hans Christian Andersen had woken up every morning and said, "Here, I have a great story. There's an ugly duckling and it just stays ugly. Because, you know, why should it get lucky and be a swan? It's just an ugly duckling."

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Robert, we're not talking about stories, I understand stories. To me, a game is not a story. To me, a game is—it is a contest between two parties, according to certain rules, and when the—when expectations and rules are violated, some part of me takes offense.

JAD: Well, I'm curious, how do you feel about the people who always root for the underdog, which happens to be most people? Do you feel like that's the weaker position, morally?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Is it weaker morally? I mean, there's a—there's a—there's a very unflattering interpretation of this, and that is that on some deep level I think of myself as a favorite, not an underdog, right? You know, that's like I say an unflattering way of interpreting my motives. But, you know, unlike many of my peers, I grew up in a tiny, tiny town and went to a kind of an unexceptional high school where everyone left at 16 to go home and milk the cows. So it was like a situation where I did sort of grow up as the—if you had parents who had gone to college, you were the overdog in my universe growing up. So I—you know I do, sort of—when I was in seventh grade and someone got a better grade than me, it was outrageous to me, right? Because no one should get a—only my friend Bruce should get a better grade than me. You know, he's the only other person in the class whose parents went beyond the ninth grade or who had books at home or who had left the province of Ontario. So, maybe there's something—there's something in that. That if you grow up in these impoverished environments where you—you're forced into a particular dominant role, right? You just—you come back to it again and again long after those circumstances have changed.

ROBERT: That's Malcolm Gladwell.

JAD: Defender of winners everywhere.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I do. I do hate when winners lose. It is true. It is true.

ROBERT: That's so strange. [laughs]

JAD: Now he may hate it when the winner loses, but ...

ROBERT: We have one that will tempt him to go the other way. I mean, it certainly caught our attention.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: This is a fantastic story about losers who win.

JAD: It is actually one of the best stories of that kind that at least I've ever heard of, except for Chariots of Fire. And it comes to us from our producer Pat Walters.

PAT WALTERS: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

JAD: You took a trip. Sort of set it up for us.

ROBERT: Yeah, where'd you go?

PAT: I went to Stevenson, Alabama. It's this tiny town in northeastern Alabama.

JAD: Tiny, like, as in, like, one convenience store tiny? Or ...

PAT: Maybe two.

JAD: Maybe two?

PAT: Yeah. Really small. Anyway, my first stop in this town was this high school.

PAT: Walking up now to North Jackson High School.

PAT: Because I'd heard this story about a basketball game that happened in this school in the gym here.

PAT: How many people could fit in here, do you think?

DAVID SMITH: Maybe 1,500?

PAT: That is like a miracle.

ROBERT: Like a what?

DAVID SMITH: It was a one-in-a-million night.

PAT: This is David Smith. He's an ag teacher at the school.

DAVID SMITH: Been here since we started the place.

PAT: And he says that even now he has kids who don't believe it happened.

DAVID SMITH: These kids come in every year and they'll say, "Mr. Smith, did the two really beat five?" I said, "Yes, they did." If you want me to go in there and lay my hand on the Bible I will. I bring 'em in here and show 'em that picture on the wall there that you just seen.

PAT: Behind him, there's this little newspaper clipping from 1992, and it shows these three basketball players. The one in the middle is this tiny white kid who actually doesn't really have too much to do with our story.

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: But on either side of him are the two guys that did this amazing thing.

DAVID SMITH: Those two guys could've said, "Well, you know, it's all over with," and dropped the ball out of bounds or ...

PAT: On the left ...

ROBERT COLLIER: My name is Robert Louis Collier Jr.

PAT: He's this huge guy.

ROBERT COLLIER: Oh, I was fat. [laughs] I was fat.

PAT: And on the other side is, like, his exact opposite.

CHAD COBB: I'm Chad Cobb.

PAT: Tiny little guy.

CHAD COBB: I was about 5'6"-7", somewhere in there.

PAT: Yeah. And you could dunk if somebody said stuff to you?

CHAD COBB: Yeah. Like, somebody—you know, because I jump balled for us.

PAT: You jump balled?

CHAD COBB: Yeah.

PAT: At 5'6"?

CHAD COBB: Yeah, 5'6", 5'7". Yeah, because I was real small but I could jump real good.

PAT: Yeah. How did your—how did you work on your ...

JAD: So—so what happened?

PAT: Okay, let me set it up here.

JAD: Okay.

PAT: It's February.

CHAD COBB: February 14, I think.

PAT: 1992. 5:00 p.m. home game, and the gym is completely packed.

CHAD COBB: There were people everywhere.

PAT: About a thousand people in the stands.

CHAD COBB: There were people everywhere.

VIC GRIGGS: We had a good crowd at that game.

PAT: That's Vic Griggs, he's the assistant coach.

VIC GRIGGS: Because of the rivalry.

PAT: The game that night was against the Fort Payne Wildcats.

VIC GRIGGS: And Fort Payne has been a huge rivalry from the very get go.

PAT: They were the enemy.

VIC GRIGGS: Football, basketball, baseball, it don't matter.

ROBERT COLLIER: With Fort Payne, we go at it.

PAT: Fort Payne team had more resources, they even had more players. And that year, everyone agreed that they were just plain better.

CHAD COBB: Yeah, I think we would've been considered an underdog that night.

PAT: Everyone pretty much thought that the Chiefs were gonna lose.

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: Chiefs are our team.

JAD: Go Chiefs.

PAT: But the game was really close, and in fact in the second half, the Chiefs took the lead.

JAD: Go Chiefs!

PAT: Then they lost it.

JAD: Dammit!

PAT: [laughs] Then it's just going back and forth and back and forth.

ROBERT COLLIER: It was a close game, other than, like, the refs ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: And we've got a foul call.]

ROBERT COLLIER: Man, they was calling some unbelievable stuff.

PAT: And that's the thing that ultimately would make this game so dramatic is that there was just a crazy number of fouls called.

JAD: Like, how many? Like, how many are usually called?

PAT: In, like, your typical NBA game, there might be 50 fouls.

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

PAT: But in this game with three minutes left ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: That is number 71.]

PAT: 71 fouls.

ROBERT COLLIER: All over. It was like, man!

PAT: Yeah, I was gonna ask, was it a rough game, or was it that these guys were just, like, calling a ton of fouls?

ROBERT COLLIER: Yeah, I think there was a little bit of both.

CHAD COBB: They wouldn't let us play for real, just actually play ball.

PAT: Because according to Robert, how they used to play, it was like anything goes.

PAT: When did you—do you remember, like, the first time that you played basketball? Do you remember how you learned to play?

ROBERT COLLIER: My cousin. My aunt used to have—my great aunt, she used—we used to have, like, a—we called it dust bowl, you know what I'm saying? Back then there wasn't no gravel, there'd be no concrete. There's just dust.

CHAD COBB: Dust coming up everywhere.

ROBERT COLLIER: My cousin had a basketball goal.

CHAD COBB: Right down the street.

ROBERT COLLIER: Everybody from the projects, they come down and play.

PAT: Grown-ups, mostly.

ROBERT COLLIER: Every Sunday I used to watch my uncle and them go out there and play. Like, they'd get out of church and play and everything.

PAT: The only way for Chad and Robert to get on the court ...

ROBERT COLLIER: You know, we'd play with the older guys, you know what I mean? Go at it.

PAT: Hard.

CHAD COBB: We would tie 'em up.

ROBERT COLLIER: [laughs]

PAT: Because, you know, maybe deep down they maybe believed that the game wasn't just a game.

ROBERT COLLIER: You know, we'd go out there and be somebody else, you know what I mean?

PAT: What—who would you imagine you were?

ROBERT COLLIER: Oh back then? Dr. J.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: A fantastic move by the Doctor!]

ROBERT COLLIER: As a kid, I'd say Dr. J. And my dream was ...

PAT: That maybe he could also be a professional athlete.

ROBERT COLLIER: And get my daddy out of prison, get mama in a big old house, you know what I'm saying? Take care of my family and everything.

PAT: Back in the game, two seconds left on the clock.

JAD: Go Chiefs!

PAT: We have the ball, and this scrawny little guy named Travis Smith from the end of the bench is on the free-throw line.

ROBERT: He's gonna shoot the foul shot.

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: Here's what's important, though: we're down by two points.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

PAT: Travis has three shots.

JAD: Oh, he got fouled shooting a three-pointer?

PAT: Exactly. Which means ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Travis Smith will go to the free-throw spot.]

PAT: ... he could win the game right now.

JAD: Do it, Travis!

PAT: First one?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: He hits the net.]

JAD: Missed it.

PAT: Puts up the second one.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Next one is up. It's good!]

PAT: Makes it.

ROBERT: Whoo!

JAD: Yes!

PAT: Puts up the third one ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Does he make it? No.]

PAT: Botches the third one.

JAD: Oh!

ROBERT: So we lose.

PAT: Tie game.

ROBERT: Oh! Tie game!

THOMAS LAKE: It ties the game and sends it into overtime.

JAD: And who's that?

PAT: That's my friend Tom Lake. He's a writer for Sports Illustrated. He told me about the game.

THOMAS LAKE: Right here, um ...

PAT: This is where things just get totally out of hand.

THOMAS LAKE: Right.

PAT: The Chiefs take the court. Everybody's in foul trouble.

JAD: What does that mean?

PAT: In basketball, if you get five fouls, you get thrown out of the game.

JAD: Oh.

ROBERT: And these guys have, like, close to five fouls?

PAT: Yeah.

ROBERT: Oh.

PAT: And the first thing that happens ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: The officials just blew another one.]

PAT: ... Travis Smith, the guy who put us into overtime ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: On Travis Smith. He's out of the game.]

PAT: ... fouls out of the game.

THOMAS LAKE: When Travis fouls out 59 seconds into overtime ...

PAT: The Chiefs have only five players left, which means no subs.

THOMAS LAKE: The game keeps going. With 1:41 left ...

PAT: They lose another guy.

THOMAS LAKE: Another guy fouls out. There are now four.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: The Chiefs only have four players now.]

PAT: Four against five.

JAD: Four against five.

THOMAS LAKE: Two seconds later ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: The shot is up ...]

THOMAS LAKE: ... yet another guy fouls out, so there are three.

PAT: Now there's just three.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Are you kidding me?

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: Is that—can that happen? There's no rule against that?

PAT: Why would you make a rule against something like this? What are the odds it's ever gonna happen?

THOMAS LAKE: So 1:39 ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: 1:39 to go here.]

THOMAS LAKE: ... there are only three Chiefs.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Down to three against five.]

THOMAS LAKE: Chad Cobb, Robert Collier and Chris Shelby.

PAT: So ...

VIC GRIGGS: With 59 seconds left in the game, Fort Payne's ahead by three.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: So it's 67 to 64.]

PAT: Fort Payne gets the ball, tries to drive it down the court. North Jackson steals it, passes it to Chad Cobb—remember that name. Chad Cobb takes it down the court, pulls up at the three-point line ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Pulls up for three. And he hits it and we're tied at 67!]

PAT: But then with 17 seconds on the clock there's a whistle.

JAD: Oh, no.

PAT: And Chris Shelby, one of the last three remaining Chiefs on the court ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Chris Shelby's out of the game, and now it's five to two.]

VIC GRIGGS: North Jackson only has two players left on the court.

JAD: Two?

ROBERT: Two?

PAT: Two against five.

ROBERT: No!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Robert Collier and Chad Cobb against five.]

VIC GRIGGS: The game's tied 67-67. And by this time, you know, we were thinking, "Well, it's all over. It's all over."

DAVID SMITH: And the next play, the next play just baffles me.

PAT: With 17 seconds left on the clock, North Jackson ends up with the ball.

JAY SANDERS: There was a time-out called.

PAT: This is Jay Sanders, the head coach.

JAY SANDERS: And they came to the side and, you know, what do you tell kids?

PAT: Yeah.

JAY SANDERS: You only have two on the floor. [laughs] What the hell are you gonna say?

PAT: They've got time for one play, one chance to win the game.

JAY SANDERS: And I can remember Chad saying, "How am I gonna get open?"

CHAD COBB: You know, this—this is over.

JAY SANDERS: 'Cause he knew Robert was throwing it in, and he was the only one to catch it. And they got four guys out there.

JAD: Yeah, they could quadruple-team him.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: So now Chad Cobb will have the pressure on his back.]

ROBERT COLLIER: So me and Chad, we went back out there. We played. And Chad, I looked at Chad and said, "Man, look, old school."

CHAD COBB: I just remember I was hollerin' and we was like, "It's backyard."

ROBERT COLLIER: Backyard, you know what I mean?

PAT: Meaning what?

ROBERT COLLIER: Like dust bowl.

CHAD COBB: He's like, "I throw it into you, you just run. Get open"

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: 17 seconds in overtime period. The score is all knotted at 67. They're gonna surround Cobb.]

ROBERT COLLIER: They had one guy on me, two on him and two of them back.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Chad's gotta break free.]

CHAD COBB: I ran, like, one way and I faked back.

JAY SANDERS: Slammed on the brakes and ran straight back to Robert.

VIC GRIGGS: Just hoping he'd get through.

DAVID SMITH: And he was wide open.

CHAD COBB: I was wide open. And that's when Robert seen me.

JAY SANDERS: Robert did the bounce pass in.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: The ball comes in to Cobb. He runs it down the right sideline.]

VIC GRIGGS: He's just dribbling between people.

JAY SANDERS: Trying to get by guys or whatever.

ROBERT: A little guy?

PAT: Yeah.

VIC GRIGGS: And Fort Payne's, you know, trying to come up double-teaming.

PAT: Chad's just weaving in and out of these guys.

VIC GRIGGS: Just out playing backyard ball almost.

ROBERT COLLIER: Everybody was panicked.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: He may take it all the way in. He will.]

CHAD COBB: I went around these guys. I went in and I seen that I had a lay-up.

VIC GRIGGS: And Chad takes his shot.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: He's put it up ...]

VIC GRIGGS: Takes that last—that last shot.

JAY SANDERS: And he banks it and it hits the back of the—it hits the backboard, hits the other side of the rim—and falls off.

CHAD COBB: Shot it a little strong.

JAY SANDERS: You're thinking, "Oh, no!" But all of a sudden ...

ROBERT COLLIER: It hit the rim and just came off the backboard.

JAY SANDERS: ... there's big Robert.

ROBERT COLLIER: And I was in the right spot at the right time.

VIC GRIGGS: And he grabs it. And of course, there's about three Fort Payne people around him.

ROBERT COLLIER: So I pump faked.

VIC GRIGGS: About twice.

ROBERT COLLIER: And when I did, everybody jumped. In my mind I knew. I said, "Oh Lord!"

VIC GRIGGS: And when he puts the ball up against the glass ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Robert Collier on the side. He scores!]

ROBERT COLLIER: I shot it in.

JAY SANDERS: He took the shot.

VIC GRIGGS: The buzzer goes off ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: The Chiefs get the ball, and the Chiefs are gonna win! And the Chiefs have won 69 to 67!]

VIC GRIGGS: And it was just pandemonium.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: I cannot believe this! 69 to 67 as Chad Cobb and Robert Collier ...]

ROBERT COLLIER: I had everybody come off the—off the bleachers.

VIC GRIGGS: I don't even remember walking down to the court, but the next thing I know I'm being hugged by this woman, a North Jackson fan, and she's slinging me. She is literally just—just slinging me left and right, left and right.

PAT: She's got you and swinging you?

VIC GRIGGS: She's got me in a bear hug, and I'm just like a limp dishrag. I'm just flopping around, of course. And then I start hugging her, and we're bouncing around. And then I remember looking out at the circle at half court, and I promise you there was a pile of bodies six feet tall.

JAY SANDERS: It was a huge, huge pile of people.

VIC GRIGGS: And—and on the bottom of the pile ...

CHAD COBB: I couldn't breathe. It was like, "Oh my God!"

PAT: There was Chad.

CHAD COBB: And I was throwing people. I was trying to get up.

ROBERT COLLIER: But the next day when I woke up it was like, did this just happen? It's just like a dream.

PAT: And on Monday morning when the boys went to school ...

ROBERT COLLIER: Oh, man!

PAT: ... they were mobbed.

ROBERT COLLIER: It was just—it was just crazy.

CHAD COBB: Everybody was, you know, talking about it.

ROBERT COLLIER: Asking us questions, you know, asking.

CHAD COBB: [laughs] I'll never forget that.

ROBERT COLLIER: "How'd y'all do it?" So you've gotta explain, you know?

CHAD COBB: I said over the intercom.

PAT: He says a few people even asked them ...

ROBERT COLLIER: "You think that'll be the world—Guinness Book of World Records?" I said, "I don't know, man."

PAT: And everywhere they went in town ...

ROBERT COLLIER: People knew, you know what I mean? Everybody knew.

PAT: Then a few days later ...

ROBERT COLLIER: David Smith ...

PAT: Actually, it was Vic Griggs.

VIC GRIGGS: Yeah, that's right.

ROBERT COLLIER: ... went and called the news.

PAT: Called a reporter in Huntsville, which is the nearest big city.

VIC GRIGGS: And I was telling him about it, and he said, "Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you say you won with two players?"

ROBERT COLLIER: Hung up on him. [laughs]

PAT: The newspaper did?

ROBERT COLLIER: The news, they hung up ion him. They thought he was crazy.

PAT: But two days later they ran the story, and as soon as they did ...

DAVID SMITH: But this was in the Huntsville Times, Huntsville, Alabama.

PAT: Could you read it to me?

PAT: ... this thing just kind of blew up.

DAVID SMITH: "If they ever found what might cause a miracle in North Jackson. That's what many consider the North Jackson High Chiefs 69-67 victory over the Fort Payne Wildcats last Friday night."

ROBERT COLLIER: It was everywhere from Portland, Oregon to Maine.

VIC GRIGGS: Associated Press. From the Chicago Tribune. Plains Dealer.

DAVID SMITH: "It would have ..."

VIC GRIGGS: Fort Worth.

DAVID SMITH: "... as dramatic an ending as Hoosiers."

VIC GRIGGS: USA Today.

DAVID SMITH: "Ordinarily, there's no way two players can beat five players in a basketball game. Not unless the two-man team is Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan. But North Jackson did it."

CHAD COBB: There were messages to call this person and that person.

ROBERT COLLIER: I just remember, like ...

CHAD COBB: It was crazy.

ROBERT COLLIER: ESPN.

VIC GRIGGS: Sports Illustrated.

CHAD COBB: It was just really exciting.

JAD: So what happens?

PAT: Well, Chad and Robert are riding this high for ...

ROBERT COLLIER: Months and months and months, you know?

JAY SANDERS: Somebody said that Leno or Letterman or somebody even kind of mentioned something on one of their shows at the end of a joke. I didn't see it or hear it.

PAT: It seemed to a lot of people that this would turn into something.

JAY SANDERS: I was really hoping from this deal that it might help Chad get a little notoriety and it might help him get a scholarship, help him get noticed, help him get his name out there, you know? And I—I don't know. We never know what little piece of the puzzle is gonna make that big a difference, do we?

JAD: Whoa. What does that mean?

PAT: Well, nothing happened.

JAD: Nothing happened?

PAT: By the end of the school year, people stopped calling and the story just kind of faded away.

ROBERT COLLIER: Just it was over. I mean ...

PAT: And Robert says the game started to feel like it never even happened.

ROBERT COLLIER: It has been—it's been rough on me. I mean, right now I'm just—it's been messed up for me.

PAT: That spring after the game, Robert graduated high school. He held it together for a while, but eventually fell in with some shady characters.

ROBERT COLLIER: Drinking, smoking weed. You know what I'm saying?

PAT: And kind of lost control of his life.

JAD: Really? How?

PAT: When I went to see him, he was locked up in the Scottsboro County jail.

JAD: For what?

PAT: Lots of different things.

ROBERT COLLIER: Man, I knew the first week. First week I was in here I cried every night. I mean, it's like, "Why am I here? You know, what did I do?"

PAT: So you said, like, this game happened, and then for a while you wouldn't think about it because it seemed like it hadn't even really happened. Like, it was just a dream. Do you think about it ever, besides when somebody comes along and asks you about it again?

ROBERT COLLIER: Not—not really. Not so much. It's like now we got, like, a little basketball goal we made up back there. So everyone was back there doing—when they told me to come up here.

PAT: Oh, you were out back playing?

ROBERT COLLIER: No, we was inside. It was like a little box, you know what I mean? We done made a little net, and got a little bag, like, where we put our clothes. You know, they done cut them out, like, for the nets. And just like we just got a lot of socks put together like a ball and play basketball.

JAD: Hmm.

ROBERT: What about the—the other guy? The other one of the two ball players?

PAT: Chad.

ROBERT: Chad.

PAT: Yeah. Chad stayed in town too, and he got married and had a daughter, but about five years after the game ...

CHAD COBB: I was just going around on some back roads.

PAT: ... he got in this motorcycle accident and tore up his knee.

CHAD COBB: My knee bent the opposite way. It's pretty bad, yeah.

PAT: Shortly after that, he runs into his old buddy Travis. Remember him?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: Travis Smith will ...]

PAT: He's the guy who hit the shot that put the game into overtime.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, basketball announcer: It's good! It's tied!]

JAD: That guy.

PAT: Yeah. And they got into an argument.

CHAD COBB: It was basically a situation that shouldn't have happened but it did.

PAT: The details are a little hazy, but apparently Travis thought Chad was bad-mouthing him to a girl.

CHAD COBB: Or something. I don't know what—what exactly. So as I was going home, he was—he left the gym, but when I was going home, he was following me. And he came and was flicking his lights at me to stop or whatever, but I had my daughter with me. Took her home. Came back out. So, you know, we live in a small town. We fist fight. And I got out of my car and I was like, "I only got one leg and can barely hold myself up, but if you get close enough to me," you know, I said, "We can fight." He never said none of this. I said, "Yeah, that's what I thought. You ain't nothing." So I turned around, I put my hurt leg in the car because I was driving. And as soon as I was getting my other leg in the car, I just heard shots. I just seen blood shooting up at the steering wheel and I was like, "Man!"

JAD: This is just not what the story—this is not what I want this story to do.

ROBERT: Yeah.

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: You know?

ROBERT: I thought that this is about, you know, sports in America. It's like a dream factory to some degree. If you have the magic dust then they try to sell it. So I thought these guys had dust all over them after a night like that, and so someone was gonna help them sell it. And ...

PAT: Well, like, my practical response in my head is like, it's a crappy school for basketball. They probably weren't really that good, like, in the whole scope of basketball players that—who have the same dreams. Like, I don't know.

ROBERT: I see.

JAD: Yeah.

PAT: On the other hand ...

PAT: Hi.

CHAD JR.: Hey.

PAT: Is Chad around?

PAT: Even though it was just that one moment, like, that still I feel like it should say something about who they are. And when I went to see Chad, I kind of felt like it did.

CHAD JR.: I'm his son.

PAT: I'm Patrick.

JAD: What do you mean?

PAT: Hi.

CHAD COBB: Hey, man. What's up?

PAT: Well, the playoffs were on and Chad was hanging out with his kids, Janelle and Chad Jr.

JANELLE: Hi!

CHAD JR.: Dad's pulling for the Heat and I'm going for the Mavericks.

CHAD COBB: He just don't like how good LeBron is.

CHAD JR.: I like—I like LeBron, but I'm not just a big LeBron fan.

PAT: They were joking around, watching LeBron just have this mythically terrible series.

JANELLE: LeBron's not playing too good tonight.

PAT: And, you know, Chad's basically raised these two kids on his own. His wife left a few years ago. He gets up very early in the morning, drives an hour and a half to work. Works really long hours, drives home. And it just seems hard. But he keeps doing it. And this might not sound like the ending you want ...

CHAD COBB: Now I might not be in the NBA or whatever, but I just feel like I'm—you know, I'm happy. I mean, I'm happy with my ending. Got healthy kids. I get to see them every day. And if I was to die tomorrow I'm happy with my ending.

CHAD JR.: Daddy, where's LeBron at?

[NADAV GOLDSCHMEID: It's Nadav Goldschmied. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad.]

[ALISON GOPNIK: Our staff includes ...]

[NADAV GOLDSCHMEID: ... Ellen Horne, Soren Wheeler ...]

[DAN ENGBER: ... Pat Walters, Tim Howard ...]

[NADAV GOLDSCHMEID: ... Brenna Farrell and Lynn Levy.]

[MALCOLM GLADWELL: With help from—oh, let me do this again. With help from Douglas Q. Smith, Jessica Gross ...]

[ALISON GOPNIK: ... Lou Cassaniti ...]

[FRANK BRADY: ... Rose Evelyn, Christian Clark ...]

[MALCOLM GLADWELL: ... and Yannis Nahamatan. I'm sure that was not even close. Special thanks to Kim Green, Marjorie Taylor, Elizabeth Hickory ...]

[NADAV GOLDSCHMEID: ... and the chess team at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn.]

[ALISON GOPNIK: And everyone at P.S. 3 in Manhattan.]

[MALCOLM GLADWELL: All right. I'll see you guys later.]

 

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