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Is There A Madden Curse? 39

Posted by simoniker from the don't-step-on-cracks-in-sidewalk dept.
Linda writes "GamerDad looks at the 'Madden Curse' for those featured on the front cover of the videogame, year by year, and talks about how it might have come a bit early this year: 'Sports fans know about the Sports Illustrated cover curse (athletes that grace the cover tend to get hurt, really bad, a lot) but a lesser known curse is the one caused by EA Sports' powerhouse Madden franchise. It began just a few years ago when EA took the big lug himself off the cover.'" There's another good synopsis of previous cover stars' woes at the AJC.com site, after Mike Vick of the Atlanta Falcons, this year's star, broke his leg at the weekend.
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Is There A Madden Curse? More

Is There A Madden Curse?

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  • Troy Brown (Score:5, Funny)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMpudge.net> on Monday August 18, 2003 @04:51PM (#6726159) Homepage Journal
    Troy Brown was the top offensive player on the Patriots, who won the Super Bowl in 2002. He should have been on the cover instead of Marshall Faulk. He set records for receiving, and had some plays on punt return that propelled them into the Super Bowl. He allowed Brady to open up his passing game.

    And then, in 2002-2003 season, he got injured, and missed a bunch of games, all without being on the cover of Madden! The curse extends even to players who SHOULD have been on the cover! IT IS THAT POWERFUL.

    • Re:Troy Brown (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Alkaiser ( 114022 )
      Eh, this goes farther than Madden. Look at the NCAA football game...Cade McNown?!

      Alonzo Morning made the cover of NBA 2Night the season he got diagnosed for kidney failure. EA put out a press release talking about how Dikembe Mutombo would be their cover athlete, and was the first Atlana Hawk ever to be on a game cover...DAYS before he was traded to Philadelphia.

      I've mentioned the video game cover curse for a long time now...it's powerful stuff.

      • Re:Troy Brown (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Golias ( 176380 )
        All "cover curses" come down to this: Players tend to get attention when they play beyond expectations. That means that "Joe Pointguard" is going to get on the cover of "Fantasy Basketball Player Annual" right after playing the season of a lifetime.

        So, the players that get on covers are players that just had great performances. Those performances will be tough to match by the same player, especially now that all the players who compete against them will no longer be taken by surprise by what they can acc

  • I'd sure hate to be paid millions of dollars for playing a game. Damn the luck. Oh well, put me on the front of Madden 2005 and SI. I'll take my chances.

  • Same thing for NHL (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) * on Monday August 18, 2003 @05:01PM (#6726275) Homepage
    I think the same thing may very well go for the EA Sports NHL series as well. Off the top of my head:

    2003: Jerome Iginla - awful 02-03 season (by his standards).

    2002: Mario Lemieux - awful Penguins 02-03 season, plus injury-plagued.

    2001: Owen Nolan - injury-plagued, trapped on also-ran Sharks for years. Unable to save Maple Leafs' during playoffs last year.

    2000: Chris Pronger - out with injuries for most of 02-03.

    1999: Eric Lindros - Concussion Boy; also, Lung Filling With Blood Boy.

    1998: Peter Forsberg - Had to have spleen removed last year.

  • Speaking as a Skeptic... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by avalys ( 221114 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @05:03PM (#6726286)
    Short answer: No.

    Long answer: No, you superstitious fool!
  • They're playing sports with high risk of injury and they're pushing their bodies to the limits (which is what gets them on the covers in the first place), and then they think it's a curse when they get hurt?

    Alex.

    • The most famous Wheaties box covers are usually Olympic stars. For them, getting on the Wheaties box usually caps the end of their Olympic careers, because their event won't be played again at the Olympics until four years later, by which time they probably will no longer be at the peak of performance which allowed them to get the gold.
  • Though I'm by far one of the least knowledgeable people on the subject of football and the playars of said sport, I would assume that the "best" playing make it to the cover of magazines or videogames. That said the best players most likely play harder and more often. Lets look at the big picture (how many people get hurt baddly and what percent were featured on the game) before drawing conculsions.
  • I thought the article was going to be about the curse of the game itself, as in: I have 23 page paper due tommorow at 1pm, but for some reason my body is physically unable to stop playing Madden and start writing it.

    If anyone wants to write THAT article, talk to me.
  • The older you get, the more you look like Boris Yeltsin.
  • What kind of question is this to ask on /.? Of _course_ there's a curse! Who doesn't believe in curses and devils and daemons? Many of us like unix-like OSs, which have many daemons in them.
  • Actually, it's hardly limited to injury. Lots of the SI cover jinx has to do with SI picking their #1 college/pro football/baseball/basketball team, and that team falling flat on its face that season.

  • hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by pizza_milkshake ( 580452 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @05:33PM (#6726573)
    i can think of a couple of people i'd like to see on the 2005 cover...

  • Regression to the Mean (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Monday August 18, 2003 @05:36PM (#6726624) Homepage Journal
    No. It appears as though this is a classic example of regression.

    Players who make the Madden cover have amazing, exceptional years. The next year, we look at their play to see that (most of the time) it isn't as good as the previous year. Why?

    Well, these players have an average performance. The year before they made the cover, they were way above their average performance. The next year, it should follow that their performance isn't as good as this amazing season (two of these incredible seasons in a row is unlikely). Whether we claim it's because of injury, bad luck, or the Madden cover, either way, it's usually just a decent example of Regression.

    We could point out that players who perform extremely poorly and therefore have terrible stats in Madden games go on to improve wildly in their next year. This is the same statistical phenomenon. :)
    • I think that this regression would have to be over a much longer period of time than one season. Look at the Atlanta Braves, for example. Nobody has had the regular season success that they have, and they've done it for 12 years in a row.

      They're probably making up for earlier years when they weren't very good, and so there may be a r/m going on, but it's certainly not valid from year-to-year.

      • Of course it could be.

        There's an average player performance in football. We can pick out an "average" football player.

        We can also pick out exceptional ones - people so exceptional that we ought to put on the covers of video games. By the nature of the sport, that person is likely to not have as exceptional season as the year before. Since he was on the cover of Madden, instead of attributing his decline in performance to regression (Football player X is likely to perform as a non-exceptional player, all t
        • Your first post implied that all athletes or teams who had a stellar enough year to be listed on SI's cover or the cover of the Madden game will have a less-than-exceptional year the next year, and this is demonstrably false. Duke Basketball, for example, was listed on the '92 College Basketball Preview issue of SI because they'd had an excellent year prior, by winning the NCAA Championship, and SI thought they would do it again. They did.

          I understand your point about the Rookie of the Year issue, but yo
          • Let me restate my point again.

            Given any current player (Smith) of any sport:

            1) Player Smith has an average skill level, which can't be measured in any way but by observing his in-game performance. (Practices, Games, Contests, etc.)

            2) Given all the statistics for all of the players in his sport, Player Smith is most likely to appear in the middle of a normalized curve.

            3) Player Smith has a fantastic Rookie year and is placed very high on this normalized curve.

            4) Exceptional seasons are caused by both pl
            • And let me point out two assumptions that make it flawed:

              First, that assumes that the mean is static over time. In order for the mean to be returned to, the average player's statistics will have to be unchanging from year to year. This is patently false. The only way one can tell whether Player Smith is an "average" player is to compare the statistics for a single year only. This is part of the reason it's so exceedingly hard to compare players of different eras: the average is not static, and there are
  • 1) Football is a dangerous game
    2) People featured on Madden box are usually at the top of their game.
    3) Hence, they've not been injured (too much).
    4) So, those players try to push harder and harder, and then injure themselves.

    Just my 2 cents.

  • Bo Jackson - 1991 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Satan's_Tool ( 224845 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @06:23PM (#6727166)
    Super Tecmo Bowl - 1991

    Bo Jackson hip injury - 1991

    'nuff said

  • Curse?? HOGWASH!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by flikx ( 191915 ) on Monday August 18, 2003 @07:01PM (#6727524) Homepage Journal

    If you play a dangerous sport, you WILL get hurt.

  • And for Madden 2005... (Score:3, Funny)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @04:50AM (#6730834) Journal
    ... due to extreme pressure from the NFL Player's Association, EA Sports decided to no longer feature players on the cover of their sports products.

    For Madden 2005, they went back to showing John Madden on the cover.

    During week 5's broadcast of Monday Night Football, John Madden dropped dead, after shouting "BOOM" while watching Terrell Suggs lay into Rex Grossman. He was 68.

    John Madden, R.I.P. (1936-2004)

  • Curious Facts:
    Mike Tyson came out of his prime [Lost to Buster Douglas, and we all know what has happened after] a few years after Punch Out!!! came out.
    Curiously, Sega published 'Buster Douglas Boxing' and he lost the title in his first defense.
    Bo Jackson had "Bo Jackson Baseball" and then his back got all screwed
    Bill Lambeer had a 'Combat Baseball' game made and the Pistons never won again - and I guess most of you don't know who Bill Lambeer is anyway
    Nigel Mansel had a Data-East published NES ga

  • Article doesn't have the facts straight. (Score:3, Informative)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @12:07PM (#6733964) Journal
    Madden years run ahead 1 year of the actual NFL season. What madden is calling "Madden 2004" is actually for the 2003 season. The person who wrote this article has the years mixed up.

    Madden 2001 which was released at the start of the 2000 season a season in which the Titans went to the playoffs and lost the ravens. Eddie George [nfl.com] who was on the cover that year had an impressive season...He rushed for 1509 yards and 14 TD's and had an additional 453 yards recieving and 2 TDs.

    So overall he had 1962 yards and 16 tds. Very Impressive. He got injured the season AFTER that.

    Madden 2002 which was released at the start of the 2001 season had Daunte Culpepper [nfl.com] on the cover. In 2001 Culpepper was injured for a short while, but still managed to pass for 2612 yards and 14 TD's. He also rushed for 416 yards and 5 TD's. So overall he had 3028 yards and 19 TD's. While those aren't pro bowl numbers they aren't too shabby. What is impressive is, he had those numbers in playing only 11 games instead of 16.

    Madden 2003 which was released at the start of the 2002 season had Marshall Faulk [nfl.com] on the cover. In 2002, like Daunte Faulk was injured, although not badly enough to slow his productivity in the games he started. In only 10 Starts Marshall had 1490 all purpose yards and 10 TD's. While that is a down year for Marshall that is impressive for any other RB.

    Now, Madden 2004 has Mike Vick [nfl.com] on the cover who got hurt in preseason and will miss 4 regular season games. The games he will miss are at Dallas, Washington, Tampa bay, and at Carolina. The Falcons will likely go 3-1 without him, 2-2 if they blow the game to Carolina.

    All in all, The Madden Curse didn't apply to Eddie George (he had a good year that year) and Culpepper and Faulk had off years due to minor injuries but their off years were as good as some players who weren't injured. We can't Judge Vick yet.

    I wouldn't call it a curse just yet, now the guys who were on the covers of those old Sega Gensis sports games were cursed.

  • Football Injuries (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Doctor Cat ( 676482 )
    My father taught history at Notre Dame for 30 years, and he had almost all the football players in his classes (maybe it was because of all the dirty jokes he told). He was in as good a position as anyone to know that a HUGE percentage of professional football players get hurt.

    When Joe Montana was a freshman, he was studying pre-law so he could have a well paying backup career option if he didn't get into the NFL. Dad called him aside after class and said to give up football and just be a lawyer. "Joe,"

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