WTH do you mean wasn't as big an upset ??? 10 days before the start of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid - the USSR BEAT THE CRAP OUTTA THE USA 12-3 in Madison Square Garden ...
The USSR was the best team on the planet, having won 4 straight Olympic gold medals ...
They knew they would beat the USA, expected to beat them - and that is exactly WHY they lost to the Miracle Team ...
They didn't take them seriously ...
As a matter of fact, my wife and I watched “Miracle” just this evening.
The Russkies beat us 10-3 at the Garden, not 12-3, and it was 3 days before the start of the game.
Everything else you said is absolutely true.
I personally believe that game was the start of what Ronaldus Magnus called “Morning in America”...the first twinge of light in the darkness that we were in.
So much of the talk about this monumental "David vs. Goliath" upset was driven by several factors:
1. Hockey wasn't a popular sport in the U.S. at the time, and didn't get much media coverage at all. When you hear recurring descriptions about the U.S. team as a group of unknown players, the description is accurate. But they were unknown players mainly because the people watching the Olympics -- and most of the media covering those Olympics -- wouldn't have known the difference between a hockey puck and a Drake's Ring-Ding. This relates to Point #2 below.
2. The U.S. roster was filled with players who had either already been drafted by National Hockey League teams or would be drafted and signed to play in the NHL later. Some of them went on to have long, successful careers. Defenseman Ken Morrow, for example, joined the New York Islanders right after the 1980 Winter Olympics and immediately became an impact player in their four consecutive Stanley Cups.
3. Herb Brooks had spent the nine months leading up to the Olympics assembling a team that was built for the sole purpose of matching up against the Soviets. He wanted a certain prototype of a player for this: fast enough to keep up with the Soviets, tough and relentless enough to play a grinding game when necessary, and smart enough to learn a new system of hockey. This last point was probably why Brooks was a much more successful coach with college players than he ever was in the NHL. With this in mind, the U.S. had a disproportionate number of players who fit a certain mold that wasn't very common in hockey at the time: small, fast and skilled -- and yet strong as bulls.
4. The Soviets outplayed the U.S. in that game, but U.S. thoroughly outplayed the Soviets in one key area of hockey that matters an awful lot: goaltending. This also happened to be the one position in hockey where Americans had made their mark previously in the NHL even when Americans were rare at every other position.
Was the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" an upset? Sure it was. But that U.S. team was far better than anyone realized at the time. It was won behind the bench more than on the ice itself, with Brooks making all the right moves in terms of roster decisions, player personnel, and motivational tactics. Meanwhile, the Soviet coach made one blunder after another ...cutting one of his top players (Vladimir Lutchenko) from the team shortly after the Soviets' 10-3 victory at MSG ... pulling goaltender Tretiak after one period in the U.S. game ... and showing up in Lake Placid with a team that was overconfident, unprepared, or both.