Madden '08

[racermike]

Vince Young on the cover this year, along with subsequent injury

:D

San Diego Chargers fans can take a deep breath and scrap those petition plans to keep LaDainian Tomlinson off the cover of EA Sports' "Madden 08" video game.

This year's honoree/injury-waiting-to-happen will be Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young.

Last year, Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander appeared on the video game cover and became the sixth consecutive cover star to suffer an injury during the season.

Major Adams, Young's agent, said that he and his client didn't fear the so-called "Madden Curse."

"We don't believe in no jinx," Adams told the Tennessean. "People said when they put Vince on the cover of 'Sports Illustrated' [that] it was going to jinx him in the Rose Bowl game, and [Young's Texas team] won the national championship."

Trivia time

Which five other players have succumbed to the "Madden Curse" since 2001?

Chargers fans love Young

Before the Young news came out, some Chargers fans were so concerned about Tomlinson winding up on the Madden cover that they created a Web site and MySpace page called "Save LT From Madden."

[Ankf00]

VY s***s jinxes before breakfast.

http://i.cnn.net/si/si_online/covers/images/2005/1205_large.jpg

[dando]

Thxgiving turkey in Cincy 11/25. :p

-Kevin

[Insomniac]

There must not be enough money for Peyton to be on the cover. I'm surprised he actually turned something down.

[WickerBill]

Tomlinson turned it down due to the money. $100k payment, and you have to make a couple all-day appearances. I'm pretty certain a photo shoot for Sports Illustrated pays that much and only takes a couple hours.

Personally, my days are not worth $50k each, but I bet LT's are.

[Stu]

VY s***s jinxes before breakfast.

Throwing sample size out the window, the SI jinx has shown to be bogus, while the Madden curse has been very consistent over the years.


According to SI’s own researchers, 37 percent of the time bad luck of some sort strikes a person or a team within two weeks of a cover appearance. Almost 12 percent suffered injury or death.

If that sounds like near-certain certainty to you, that’s because you wasted your youth reading box scores and think post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a quote from Vince Lombardi.

As writer Wolff explains by interviewing a statistics professor, the Jinx merely illustrates a "regression to the mean." In sports talk, that means athletes who get hot eventually get cold.

In the end, Wolff admits it is impossible to prove or disprove the Jinx without an enormous amount of real statistical research. But he has lots of good fun playing around with a pernicious superstition that, by the way, didn’t hurt the fortunes of SI’s Top 3 cover boys Michael Jordan (51 times), Muhammad Ali (38) and Jack Nicklaus (23).

but...

Madden Curse: George, Culpepper, Faulk, Vick, Lewis, McNabb, and Alexander have all had significant injuries the years they were on the cover.

Vince Young is going down. :thumbup: :D ;)

[Brian_R]

At least we know from previous research his injury won't be concussion related (Gotta love the Wunderlich test!) :laugh:

[Ankf00]

F the haters. VY's the greatest thing around since the Paleozoic Era. :gomer: