Will the Madden Curse Strike Pro Football Every Year?

EA Sports has a true franchise game in it’s Madden Football.  One of the all time best selling, if not the #1 selling sports video game of all time, it has evolved to the point that grown men line up at midnight to get one of the first editions each year.  But along with a great game comes the “Madden Curse”.  What is it?  Well read on football nuts.

The “curse” supposedly says that whichever pro football player graces the cover of the box for this game will have a disastrous season that coming football season. It all started with the 2000 edition of this best selling game.  That was the first year that John Madden’s picture did not appear on the cover.

And here is how it played out.  Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions was on that inaugural cover.  But he decided abruptly to retire for the 1999 season, starting the “curse”

2001 Cover— Tennessee Titans running back had a good year in 2000, but had a key fumble in the playoffs that cost the Titans the game and never had the same production after that.

2002 Cover—Daunte Culpepper was coming off a football season where he led the Vikings to the NFC Championship game.  The year he was on the cover?  A 4-7 season before a knee injury put him out.

2003 Cover—Marshall Faulk failed to rush for a 1000+ yards for the first time in 6 years.

2004 Cover—One day after Madden hit the stores, Vick broke his leg in a preseason game and only was able to play in 5 games that year.

2005 Cover—Ray Lewis gets on the cover and fails to record an interception for the first time in his career and was only responsible for one turnover compared to the previous year total of 8.

2006 Cover—Donovan McNabb was the cover boy this year for Madden Football.  McNabb went from a Super Bowl appearance the year before to suffering a sports hernia in the first week of the season on the way to a 4-7 record and then a season ending injury.

2007 Cover—Shaun Alexander.  Previous year NFL MVP then he fractures his foot after being on the cover.

2008 Cover— Here comes Vince Young.  Young was coming off his rookie season and was predicted to be the field leader for the Titans.  He had a terrible year with most of his statistics going downhill.

Which brings us to the 2009 Cover Boy, Brett Favre.  Can he break the curse?  Well if anybody can, Brett can.  But if I was a gambling man, I wouldn’t bet on it.

One other interesting bit of trivia about this football “curse” that you may not know. Since 1998, the 10 cover players had 39 Pro Bowl appearances among them before being on the cover and only 4 afterwards!!

I’m not superstitious and I don’t believe in jinxes or curses, but boy this one seems to have some legs.  Only time will tell.