The Madden Curse

Perhaps the most highly anticipated video game every year is the Madden NFL series from EA Sports. The Madden football games took the nascent video game industry by storm, and haven't slowed down yet. It's right there for the annual NFL Draft, creating shots of players on their new teams almost instantly. The game has become so popular that tournaments where professionals play head-to-head for loads of money have made it onto television for our viewing pleasure. And people are known to come up with every excuse in the book in order to get out of work on the very day the game releases - making it as close to a national holiday as the video game industry is likely to get.

 

Amidts the excitement of the game's release, it can be slightly bittersweet for some players, namely those who get rated badly and, above all, the one who graces the game's cover. In 1999, John Madden relinquished the cover of each game to a player...and since then, those players have ahd notortiously rough years.

 

In the first week of the 2009 season, the Madden curse had already reared it's ugly head. For the first time in the series' history, two players graced the cover of Madden NFL 10. It's a classic matchup that re-lives the drama of Super Bowl 43; Larry Fitzgerald of the Cardinals and Troy Polomalu of the championship Steelers. Well, Polomalu got hurt in the very first game he played after being put on the cover of Madden, a medial collateral ligament sprain. He missed the rest of the seson.

 

One would imagine teams and players would have learned their lesson by now. Players a) don't need the money and b) are quite superstitious in the best of times, so you'd think they'd just decline the offer from EA sports. Histroy has taught us that the negative effect of being on the Madden cover, for whatever scientific or non-scientific reason, is a real thing.

 

Notable instances of the Madden NFL curse:

 

2002: QB Daunte Culpepper was honored with a Madden 02 cover appearance folliowing his team's final four appearance in 2000. He followed this up by missing the last five games of the 2001 season with a hurt knee, and his team missed the playoffs.

 

2003: Marking the beginning of the end of the "Greatest Show On Turf", Marshall Faulk of the Rams failed to rush for 1,000 yards in the 2001 season (for the first time since 1996) following his appearance on the cover of Madden 03 and his subsequent nagging ankle injury.

 

2004: The Falcons finished 5-11 in 2003 when their youg star dual-threat QB missed the entire season due to injury. Guess what? He had been featured on that year's Madden.

 

2006: Donovan McNabb was honored with a Madden cover appearance after his team made it to the Super Bowl in 2004. The curse struck him next season, and the sports hernai he suffered early in the year caused him to sit out the last 7 games.

 

That's the history of the curse. So, what will happen to this year's cover star?