OT: 33 years ago today

Is auctioning his jersey, stick, and gloves I remember reading recently. The jersey is expected to fetch around a million. He said he'd never part with the gold medal though.

If you ever find yourself in the Adirondack mountains make sure you go to Lake Placid.  You can do a tour of the rink and it is incredible when they play the footage from that night.

I am old enough to remember it clearly. Forgive the grumpy old man nature of my comments, but it's really hard to understand just how important this was if you didn't live through it. It's not just the incredible nature of it as a sports upset (remember, American hockey back them wasn't nearly as strong as it is now, so it wasn't just the best team in the world losing to a bunch of college students, it was them losing to a bunch of *American* college students - as McKay said, sort of like the Steelers losing to a group of Canadians). But the political context of the time - hostages in Iran, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, etc. - made it (forgive the cliche) more than a sporting event. People who normally wouldn't care about hockey, or even the Olympics, cared about this. I doubt we'll ever see anything quite like it again.



Oh, and while no Wolverines on the team, I believe there were two Michigan natives - Ken Morrow and Mark Wells.

I was 2 weeks old so no personal memories of it. But it's a story you never get tired of.

First, the moment wasn't live broadcast.  By the time of the telecast some 3 hours later, the outcome was known.  More people watched just to see how the heck it happened.

Second, events like the Iran Hostage crisis were occurring and Americans were hungry for some national pride. 

Third, we didn't have much info on the USSR and their sports teams were robots. Iron curtain.

It was good vs evil and the good guys desperately needed a win. Cue the music . . .

in french, which i could speak back then (still can, but not a ton) and translated for my father and one of my brothers.  we were living in detroit and could get a CBC-french station.  if you waited for abc, you saw the game hours later.  this was long before computers in every home and even hand-held devices that we have now that would kick the crap out of the PC's of the day. 

still ranks as one of the greatest upsets of all time, nearly as big as david and his sling taking out goliath.  

USA, USA, USA

In Winter 1980 I was a Michigan Junior, and I remember watching the game in the morning on cable in a house on Hill Street. I really can't tell you whether or not the game was live, but in pre-internet days, things were different. (IIRC, for whatever reason, we had the channel and were watching live.) It was an incredible experience.

I am not enough of a hockey fan to know all the intricacies and relative strengths of different teams, and will defer to many others. However, I will concur to say that this was one of those rare events that many Americans agreed upon in terms of rooting interests. Unlike figure skating and the other typical "Olympic" sports, Hockey was something many sports fans could get behind. And yes, there was definitely the sense that the Americans were playing over their heads, and that winning this game was inconceivable.

I did think of one potential analogy, by the way. The Dream Team vs. all comers. The USA Olympic Basketball Team with Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Scottie Pippen, Clyde Drexler, and a few more was a juggernaut. That team was so overwhelming that the competition was no competition . . . the other teams were just happy to be on the court vs. basketball royalty.

30 years ago today i was born at osu medical center and have been running from my past ever since...now someone kindly upvote me to 100 so i can stop running.

my goodness.  the debate over who was right or wrong in the cold war misses the point.  everyone who is old enough to remember that game grew up hiding under their desks in school because of the fear from a russian nuclear attack.  whether you hate communism or love it or are indifferent to it, you have to understand that people who are old enough to remember 1980 were terrified of it.  and terrified of the soviets.  period.  thats why this is a bigger deal than all the other upsets you could list.

As a Lake Placid resident, I drive by the Herb Brooks arena/1980 rink every day. In fact, I work across the street from it. When our school has an evacuation drill, we all walk across the street to the arena and sit in the stadium where it all happened. We enter at the athletes' entrance and walk right out through the tunnel the teams came out of. Some of the younger people at school joke about it, but to be honest, I can still get chills, probably because I'm old enough to remember the game (and the Sweden game on Sunday).

I unfortunately was not alive yet but I watched it on espn classic and it was awesome. I can't imagine what it must have been like live, back then, when the tension between us and the soviets could cut a knife. Amazing.

But I thought Rocky beating Ivan Drago was a much bigger upset.

Thank you Herb