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“We wanted to champion the underdog and bite the ankle of the overdog.”

The ability to make us root for the overdog, after all, is one of the super-est superpowers that pop culture has.

“Calhoun deployed his concern for the underdog only to help the overdog,” Jentleson writes.

That groundswell of response, with its complicated alloy of heartfelt generosity and overdog guilt, was surely the boon and the bane for “Troop 6000,” the book that Stewart has expanded from her initial article.

In six episodes, “Cheer” documents the lead-up to Daytona, and the series is a quick, compulsive watch, combining the savage thrill of watching an overdog dominate and the emotional pull of witnessing an underdog’s rise.