The Madden cover Jinx, and Curse

With the NFL Draft coming this weekend and the gradual leaking of info on Madden 09 or as they are calling it XX, I thought I could address a component to the Madden gaming legacy. It is well documented that there is a "Madden Cover Jinx". It seems that it will be moot this year, at least on the football field. Sources state that Brett Favre will be the cover athlete this year. One could argue that he was pre-cursed with that awful pick he threw in OT against the Giants.

I actually think that a post-playing days Madden curse/jinx/voodoo could make for some interesting hi jinks in a family comedy setting. They could double dip and make it a "Single White Female" type story with an obsessed Madden going after Brett, dressing in his clothes...well maybe not. I digress.

The genesis of the Madden Cover Jinx is generally believed to be with Eddie George who was the cover athlete for Madden 2001. While that is true for the US versions there were two prior and lesser known players who had their own jinx issues; Garrison Heart and Dorsey Levens.

Here is the info on them, (until I looked up specs I was unaware of them, in terms of Madden, I knew who they were in a real world football context) and any info would not have any "real world" flavor from me.

From Wikipedia:

Garrison Hearst (1999)
Garrison Hearst was the first player to ever be featured solo on a Madden cover, appearing on Madden NFL 99. Hearst's 1998 season was the best of his career, rushing for 1,570 yards and seven touchdowns. He led the San Francisco 49ers to the playoffs and a wild card win over the Green Bay Packers, but on the first play of the divisional game versus the Atlanta Falcons, he suffered a bad ankle break and his team would go on to lose the game. He did not play again until 2001.
(It is worth noting that there are two versions of the Madden NFL '99 cover, one with an image of Hearst--primarily on European market PAL versions--and the more common one in North America with John Madden's image.)

Dorsey Levens (2000)
Dorsey Levens emerged as one of the premier running backs in football in 1997, rushing for over 1,400 yards and he also got into voted to the Pro Bowl. However, he injured his knee during the 1998 season and was never quite the same. He gained over 1,000 yards for the Green Bay Packers in the 1999 season, but was mostly used in a reserve role for the next two years. Levens was released by the team in 2001, used sparingly in a back-up role with the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants after that, and was essentially out of football by the end of 2004.
(Levens was the cover athlete for the European PAL versions of Madden NFL 2000.)

I think it is strange that the Wikipedia article chose to have it listed under Madden Curse, rather than Jinx ( the other colloquialism used to describe this phenomenon). Curse to me evokes blood rituals, slaughtered animals and a wanton desire to do harm to anyone. While I do believe that many chickens (presumably deep fried) have been sacrificed to the Madden belly, I have a hard time seeing (or wanting to see) John hovering shirtless over a flaming pit with chicken blood dripping from his man boobs cackling that wrong be done to Eddie George and his career since he stole the cover from him. And curse, like it or not, brings that image to my head. From here on in I will refer to the common knowledge issues that player have after appearing on the cover as the jinx, and I will save curse for later.

So in terms of jinxing, it works. Players clearly have had sub par or injury riddled seasons after appearing on the cover.

Madden 2001 - Eddie George - Career high in fumbles including a costly "fumble-six" in a playoff game in a 2001 playoff game.

Madden 2002 - Daunte Culpepper - Back injury costs him the last 5 games, and it saves him from living what will become common place for him after the cover appearance...a lot of picks.

Madden 2003 - Marshall Faulk - Ankle injury and subpar team performance post appearance.

Madden 2004 - Michael Vick - 5 days after release of the game he snaps his ankle in a preseason game. It costs him the first 11 games. Those are fun, sodomy free ( at least in some ways I am sure) days that I am sure he wish he had about now.

Showing the Cube some love....Much Love

Madden 2005 - Rayenthal Lewis - He broke his arm at the end of the year and went from phenomenally talented ahole, to aging and slowing down ahole from that point.

Note: I could not find images but the back of the cover of this game had Ray destroying TO with a hit stick tackle;TO being the cover athlete for NFL 2K5. Not to be outdone in terms of pettiness 2K5 had an image of TO stiff arming Rayethal.

Madden 2006 - Donovan McNabb - Sports Hernia + TO issues...this was a rough one for me as I have ben a fan since his days at the 'Cuse

Madden 2007 - Shaun Alexander - Broken foot and sub 1000 Yard season for his cover year.

Madden 2008 - Vince Young - 1 to 2 TD to Int ratio and a quad injury.

Madden 2008 (en Epsanol) - Luis Castillo - Ankle Injury plus loss of roid supplier hurt him Peor que él anticipó.


Looks like he is posing as Robocop. How do you say " You're move, creep", en espanol?

So that is the gist of the Madden Cover Jinx. Now Curse, that is another ball of wax. Here are things that the cover athletes dealt with Post Madden cover that I think might have a prayer of falling under curse ( complete with Ritualstic half naked John Madden).

Madden 99 - Garrison Hearst - in 2004 he was caught up in a fiasco with anti gay comments, and had to make amends for them. In 2007 he lost an appeal to regain 44,316 in taxes that were tied into his signing bonus.

Madden curse level - mild

Madden 2000 - Dorsy Levens - No dirt, seemingly unaffected by "The Curse". He was a pinch hitter for the cover due to Barry Sanders sudden retirement...perhaps he was not work the man boob scrubbing that comes with the ritual for Madden. ( Blood can be hard to get out of man boobs, or so I have heard).

Madden Curse level - none, so far

Madden 2001 - Eddie George - No dirt found, however SPOILER-----He played "Jones" in the Steven Seagal DTV seminal classic " Into the Sun" and gets killed before the opening credits.

Could only score the role of "Club Guest" along side current (hrmm) luminaries Mike Eruzione and Sebastian Telfair in the Dwayne Johnson, errr, Rock headed vehicle, The Gameplan. You might want to get a new agent my man...just saying.

Madden Curse level - middling..even Jesse Ventura made it several reels into Predator

Madden 2002 - Daunte Culpepper - The "Love Boat Cruise", ( he was exonerated for it, but it has haunted him, esp given multiple defense theories), blown out knee(triple threat ACL,MCL, PCL) and getting cut by Miami prior to a 1-15 season.

Madden Curse level - Very high, he must've taken a prime bite out of John's Turducken one year.

Madden 2003 - Marshall Faulk - Loses all class and attacks OCD-stricken Howie Mandel after the latter will not shake hands with him. He then laughs about it while talking with other boring talking heads.

Madden Curse level - For his level of class - high...in relation to Daunte's and the next idiots issues; very low

Madden 2004 - King of the scumbags, Michael Vick - If you don't know what he did you must live in a cave. On top of being a Godfather to Dogfighting he has had the Ron Mexico issue, the water bottle issue, the wanna be Bam Morris issue ( Two men were caught with a truck full of Mary Jane, oh yeah it was registered in his name), and the fact he is a scumbag of the highest order. It is hard to believe he is related to Marcus Vick.

Madden Curse Level - The king daddy of them all.

Madden 2005 - Rayenthal Lewis - I think he is a decent man, or at least he has become one. He does a lot of charity work and seems to have learned some life lessons the hard way. Still he was involved in a murder investigation in 2000 and indicted on obstruction of justice. He settled with the victims and families of the victims in 2004 for 1,000,000 to one child of a victim and an undisclosed amount to the other. These are clearly actions of a completely innocent man.

Madden Curse Level - Low, but you can almost feel Karma knocking at the door, and it is not for a social visit.

Madden 2006 - Donovan McNabb - TO, and the fact that someone actually believes that Kevin Kolb might be a better quarterback in the next decade...not much there..Then again I love Donovan. Stay healthy, man.

Madden Curse Level - Lower than Andy Reid's cholesterol, by a mile.

Madden 2007 - Shaun " Andy Stitzer" Alexander - Cut two years after MVP award. He really has had it easy , esp when you look at Mr. Mexico.

Madden Curse Level - Lower than Mike Holmgren's cholesterol, by a mile.

Madden 2008 - Vince Young - Quoted "You gotta respect the boss of the NFL but at the same time I feel like he wasn't convicted of anything so maybe he should've got a couple of games, 8 games, something like that. At the same time, you have the commissioner trying to keep guys out of trouble and trying to clean stuff up, so you gotta stay out of trouble and respect the stuff he's talking about." in regards to PacMan Jones

He defended PacMan...dumbass.

Madden Curse Level - Lower than Jeff Fisher's Mullet.

Madden 2008- en Espanol - Luis Castillo - nothing of note.

Madden Curse Level - Lower than Norv Turner's pockmarks. Was that wrong? Did I go too far?

The last four are dull in terms of the curse, but Mr. Mexico looked good for a while...watch out boys...