Perhaps the most highly anticipated video game every year is the Madden NFL series from EA Sports. Madden has been on the scene for 21 years, and pretty much everyone who is a fan of football or video games has picked it up and played. The team behind Madden even attends the NFL Draft every year in order to get headshots of rookies in their NFL uniforms as early as humanly possible. Along with the game's popularity has grown a huge pro gaming industry, and now the world's top Madden players can make a living playing in tournaments or even just online. You may have also heard the term "Madden Holiday"...and it just goes to show how incredibly popular it has become.
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. For the 12 years Madden has been boasing an annual cover athlete, those athletes chosen seem to either play poorly that year, or suffer serious and season-ruining injury.
In the first week of the 2009 season, the Madden curse had already reared it's ugly head. In 2009, there were two players on the cover for the first time in the franchise's history. Troy Polomalu was shown head-to-head with a man he covered in Super Bowl XLIII; Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals. Troy Polomalu was injured in the Steelers' very first regular season game against the Titans. He didn't return.
One would think that everyone in the league would have learned to avoid Madden by now. When EA Sports comes calling, it's probably in everybody's best interest to decline the offer regardless of how prestigious and financially rewarding the opportunity might be. 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.
Historical examples of the Madden 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: As the 2003 cover athlete, St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk had an ankle injury all season and failed to reach 1,000 rushing yards for the first time since 1996, while the Rams team went 7-9 and missed the playoffs.
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 featured on the cover of Madden 06, and in week one of the 2005 season, you guessed it, Donovan McNabb suffered a hernia. It plagued ihim all season, and he eventually missed the last 7 games of the season.
That's the history of the curse. So, what will happen to this year's cover star?
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