We Americans--we love us some underdog. We love our Cinderellas; our dark horses; our long shots. The old warrior pulling one last victory out of his butt. The unknown schmuck who brazens his way into the winners’ circle. The Aztecs in the Final Four.

These archetypes reinforce our nation’s egalitarian ideal: given a little luck, a little pluck, a little bit of grandiose inspiration, anybody can be dancing jubilantly around the ring with his arms up. Independence Day is around the corner: The celebration of the triumph of our forefathers, the upstart colonials, ultimate underdogs.

The reigning champion thus becomes the villain in the tale--mostly because he or she has a vile history of … winning … excellence … domination. Like the way people hate the Yankees or the Lakers or the Celtics, I suppose. (Or maybe the way people world-wide hate America?)

What I want to know is this: What’s so bad about rooting for a winner to keep on winning?

Give me the overdog every time.

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Naturally, I have a theory. We Americans love us some underdog because the underdog isn’t really expected to win. We can root for him or her or them—-in them we see ourselves, like the guy in that NBA apparel commercial who finds himself in a dream on the floor during a professional game with the ball in his hands at the last second … and puts up a winning shot. If our underdog wins, we can do the Snoopy dance with him in a downpour of streamers and balloons. And if he loses, well, we never really expected him to win in the first place, did we? We don’t feel so very disappointed.

The lesson of the underdog: Everybody can try but few can win. Sometimes you get lucky. Usually you don’t. Beer me.

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The thing is, you don’t become the perennial favorite without hard work and sacrifice over a long period of time. You have to find the mental fortitude to sustain and improve your effort, to keep pushing, even when you’re in the lead, even when you know that every other person in the race wants to catch up and shred your testicles (or ovaries).

The lesson of the overdog: the only person you’re really competing against is yourself and your own limitations.

Another lesson of the overdog: Once upon a time, he was the underdog. Call it the Use Curve of American Celebrity. One day he can do no wrong. He’s jumping out of the gym, passing like a wizard, presiding over the court like a king. Then something happens. A screw turns a half a revolution too tightly and we decide we’ve had enough. Too much, even.

Suddenly he’s jumped the shark. (Right, Lebron?)

The underdog becomes the overdog. And somehow, mixed in all that delicate psychology of hero worship, something inside the fans changes, too. We’ve loved him so much we start to hate him.

Like Britney, like Whitney, like Maria and Madonna. Like Beckham, Kobe, Michael and Kareem. Like all the celebs we’ve used up over time.

Lady Gaga’s next, you watch. The harder they fall.

Already there are rumblings about the Bieber. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s flying straight into the sun. That hairdo of his will spontaneously combust. Only the dead are exempt. Their reputations etched in stone.

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We build them up and then we tear them down, we sour. We take out all our bad feelings and frustration on these people we don’t even know. Somewhere along the way, a line is crossed and we no longer feel happy for a person’s success, we just feel jealous. We feel betrayed. It’s like we love and worship and imbue these celebrities with all this power in our lives and imaginations, and they never even know we exist, let alone share their wealth and power and accomplishment and lifestyles with us, at least not personally. It is unrequited love most pure. So I guess we start to hate them instead, like that cousin who makes it big and won’t even give you the time of day. Fuck him.

Even as we dance on the grave of the 2011 Miami Heat, celebrate Derek Jeter’s calf injury just this side of his record, and issue a hearty round of disapproving I-told-you-sos regarding Whitney Houston’s possible emphysema, Angelina Jolie’s rumored heroin relapse, and Barack Obama’s faulty vision as a commander-in-chief, let us not forget how blindly we once worshipped these folks, each for their own unique and non-conventional qualities.

Turn off the gossip shows and put down the tabloids. Be a doer. Seek to discover how it feels to run at the front of your own race. Be the perennial winner of your own world championship.

Be the overdog.

Then see how you feel.