It’s a Madden, Madden, Madden, Madden World

At this point, I cannot write an article about the history of the Madden cover jinx; that ship has sailed. People who have never played Madden know all about the Madden cover jinx, and I would venture to say that there are even some folks who have never played video games who are vaguely familiar with the jinx. On the other hand, I find the whole brouhaha fascinating, and I do not want to go down in the annals of sports journalism as one of those ignorant souls who mistook this overpowering metaphysical phenomenon for mere superstition.

For what it is worth, the Madden cover jinx is not really surprising. Think about the type of player who gets on the cover of Madden: a highly talented player coming off a year or string of years of highly successful play. Even more often, the player comes from a team that has recently pulled off a once-in-a-lifetime feat like an historic Super Bowl run or an Indianapolis-esque offensive surge. So is it remarkable that players fall from such a high point? Of course not; it is called regression to the mean, and anyone who knows anything about economics knows that precisely the types of heroics that get a player on the Madden cover are the types of heroics that make a player ripe for a fall. Especially in football, it is remarkable just to stay healthy and one of the biggest elements of a successful NFL season is avoiding major injuries through the entire year. Getting on the cover requires being at the absolute top of one’s game, and the likelihood of staying there is short in any sport, even shorter than usual in the NFL.

The point is, there is nothing mythical about the Madden cover jinx. But imagine if there was… (stroking chin as harp plays and camera zooms in slowly).

2007: Shaun Alexander graced the cover of the most recent Madden game, dooming himself to a letdown after finally reaching the pinnacle. Alexander had been remarkably consistent, one of the best backs in the NFL year in and year out. Finally, the Seahawks worked him especially hard all the way to the Super Bowl. Alexander started showing signs of wear in the playoffs, and crumpled more decisively under the pressure of following up the NFC title. Alexander is a poster boy for why the jinx is perfectly reasonable, as explained above.

2008: EA Sports finally succumbs to placing Peyton Manning on the cover of their next Madden game, making him the official spokesperson for a majority (251) of the Fortune 500 companies. Due to a little known side-effect of state of the art camera technology, Manning contracts what will soon be known BSD (Britney Spears Disease), an affliction which eats away the part of the brain that controls the impulse to act like a redneck. Manning promptly grows a bad goatee, starts carrying a cooler full of Old Style and a tin of Grizzly chewing tobacco on the sideline, and wears wife-beater undershirts to all press conference. Oddly enough, his drawl remains unchanged. Midway through the season, Manning abruptly retires from the NFL to pursue his lifelong dream of racing those pickups that look like stock cars and drive on dirt tracks. In his first race, Manning refuses to use the safety harness that could have saved Dale Earnhardt, or any other safety equipment, for that matter. He dies after crashing head-first into the wall on the first lap, failing to accomplish racing’s one crucial task: turning left. In his stead, Jim Sorgi leads the Colts over the Patriots in the AFC title game because he has tons of clutch in his big bag of intangibles.

2009: Nobody appears on Madden’s cover, as the No Fun League bans any reproduction of player likenesses, as it enhances the “me-first” attitude that plagues the league. Not a single player experiences any serious injuries or discomfort over the course of the year. Some journalists attribute this happy occurrence to the accompanying rule changes of dressing the players in inflatable sumo suits, and playing games on enormous 100 yd x 53 yd WWE rings made out of canvas and springs.

2010: In a return to tradition, John Madden returns to the cover all alone. During NBC’s first Sunday Night game of the year, Madden’s head explodes, revealing a gigantic Tur-Duck-En atop his shoulders. Al Michaels does not blink, then breaks down the spontaneous combustion with a telestrator, later commenting that it was, “one of the three or four most surprising things [Madden] did on air” during their tenure as coworkers. NBC promptly files breach of contract papers, severing all ties from Madden in fear of PETA protests. FOX immediately signs Tur-Duc-En Madden to an eleven year contract to host a reality show about North Korean refugees living on South Beach.

2011: As a symbol of global unity with the new NFL franchises in Asia and Europe, EA Sports opts for a picture of a globe for the cover. The results are grim. Iran quickly lobs a nuclear warhead toward Israel, causing Israel to retaliate, infuriating Pakistani Muslims, who launch their own weapons over the Kashmir, drawing the US into the war due to allied allegiances with India, setting off the Russian high-alert systems, which prompts the Sino-Russian co-defense system to react by attacking over the Taiwan Strait, and North Korea launching at Japan, for a total of roughly 25 nuclear launches in the 15 minute period following the release of the Madden game, plunging the world into nuclear winter and near extinction, saving for termites, who start their own professional football league, stupidly reviving the Madden franchise 65,000,000 years in the future, once they have evolved into sentient beings capable of making video games systems. [and… exhale].

65,002,012: Termite-human John Madden appears on the cover with Xytralt Obsctraclintoxx3, the best termite-human player who promptly suffers a sprained third thoraxal leg, missing the last 231 games of the season, and causing the New New New Mexico Redskins (which is no longer an offensive term since termite-humans are all red) to miss the playoffs for the first time.

There you have it. Beware the power of the Madden cover jinx, or it could lead to unspeakably wicked consequences, the likes of which we have yet to even contemplate.