PhotoDude.com

Sun. Aug 17, 2003

Curses and Jinxes

Last night, Michele said to “blame it on Fark,” who started a “Photoshop Mike Vick” contest a week ago. It would seem a sufficient jinx to explain the fact Vick broke a bone in his leg last night, and may be out six weeks.

But just like a flush beats a straight, a Curse beats a Jinx. In this case, the Madden Curse, and for Vick it goes back to mid-July: “This is the fourth year that EA Sports has opted to put a promising young athlete on the Madden cover (rather than pudgy broadcaster and namesake John Madden, who was pictured on all previous covers). Each of the featured players has suffered a sharp decline soon after appearing on the cover of the game.”

“Last season, perennial record-breaker Marshall Faulk was the Madden cover boy [...] Faulk, considered an iron man during his career, fell to injuries and missed six games.”

“Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper had his picture on the cover of Madden 2002. He was coming off a breakthrough year, which saw him throw for nearly 4,000 yards, 33 touchdowns, and only 16 interceptions [...] Over the course of the past two seasons, Daunte has compiled totals of 32 touchdowns and 43 interceptions as the Vikings have put together an ugly 11-21 record.”

“The first to feel the wrath of the Madden Curse was Tennessee running back Eddie George [...] ...his yards-per-carry took a nosedive each of the next two years, as injuries slowed George.”

Last week, there were numerous articles about Vick being featured in the new release of the Madden game, and the very next weekend, he’s knocked out for six weeks. This curse has become more potent than the vaunted Sports Illustrated Cover Curse: “Too bad Sports Illustrated never put Geraldo Rivera on one of its 2,456 covers. Or Osama bin Laden. If it had, the powerful SI jinx that allegedly has turned so many sports champions into crippled has-beens, phenoms into flops and winning teams into losers might have done the world beyond sports a favor.”

But it could be a lot worse. Vick is 23 years old, likely to take this lickin’ and keep on tickin’. He’ll miss maybe four regular season games, and by the time he returns, I’d bet [1] the Falcons will be at least 2-2 if not 3-1 with 12 games left, and [2] there will be about eight NFL teams who will have realized that Vick’s backup, Doug Johnson, should be starting for them.

And in a cold comment on the above, someone else (not me) said, “This is the second time Ray Lewis was in Atlanta when someones year was ended.”

Ouch.