Sports Illustrated Cover Curse !

It seems that it is not a great thing to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

We made the following broad findings: Of the 2,456 covers SI had run, 913 featured a person who, or team that, suffered some verifiable misfortune that conformed to our definition -- a Jinx rate of 37.2%.

The majority of those instances (52.7%) were bad losses or lousy performances by a team, followed by declines in individual performance (44.6%), bad loss or lousy performance by an individual (25.2%), postseason failure (13.4%), injury or death (11.8%) and blunder or bad play (4.6%).


sportsillustrated.cnn.com...


Sure this possibly could be explained away,...but the numbers span almost 5 decades !!


It occurs to me that some players have been featured many times, with no bad results.

Michael Jordan
Muhammad Ali
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Magic Johnson
Jack Nicklaus

The 'fab five' graced the cover for a total of 166 times.

These extremely popular players in my opinion, bias the average mearly by weighting it for the positive.

If I were to reduce the total by this amount, then add back 5, and recalculate the percentage, you get this...

39.78% of cover story players experience the 'curse'.

If junior could comprehend the actual facts, daddy might hear, "But Daddy, I want to be a doctor instead !"



edit--corrected calcs

[Edited on 22-1-2004 by smirkley]

Glad I'm not in sports!

Magic Johnson got AIDS, does that count? itresting find

wow, I guess anything looks bad or like a curse or conspiracy if you try to look at it that way hard enough. So, do you buy into the mummys curse as well... cmon, think about it. Theyre rich anyway, how bad could it be....

Originally posted by SpittinCobra
Magic Johnson got AIDS, does that count? itresting find

When did he ever get AIDS???

AIDS & HIV are not the same thing. HIV can cause AIDS...

SW...this was a SI story they did on themselves !!

40 percent is a fairly big number statistically, over almost 50 years!

[Edited on 22-1-2004 by smirkley]

this is just like the game "Madden" for video game systems. For about the past 5 years i belive, whatever person on the cover seems to get a season stopping or long term early season injury.

Wasn't LeBron featured on the cover of SI a few months back? He is now on the IL with a sprained ankle.

Originally posted by TheBandit795

Originally posted by SpittinCobra
Magic Johnson got AIDS, does that count? itresting find

When did he ever get AIDS???

AIDS & HIV are not the same thing. HIV can cause AIDS...

The only thing keeping him alive are the millions of dollars of drugs he keeps pumping in his system. If he ever stopped, I'm sure he'd shrivel up like a raisin within a da y:p

Originally posted by SpittinCobra
Magic Johnson got AIDS, does that count? itresting find

He is HIV positive. He has not contracted AIDS.

To generalize it some ...

between one third and one half of all cover feature players fall into this 'curse' !!


Guess I am going to have to bet against any major player and his team that is featured, in vegas,...maybe it's an opportunity to trim the betting odds.



[Edited on 22-1-2004 by smirkley]

Hiv /Aids, what ever , you got me on a tenicality. Your right, as far as we know it hasnt turned. To be honest I dont think he even has Hiv.

Originally posted by Esoterica

Originally posted by TheBandit795

Originally posted by SpittinCobra
Magic Johnson got AIDS, does that count? itresting find

When did he ever get AIDS???

AIDS & HIV are not the same thing. HIV can cause AIDS...

The only thing keeping him alive are the millions of dollars of drugs he keeps pumping in his system. If he ever stopped, I'm sure he'd shrivel up like a raisin within a da y:p

Most probably, and I think that his very positive attitude is a factor also. When I was in medical school I learned that they were beginning to accept that the state of mind has an influence on the health of a person.

Btw... How about SI swimsuit edition, does that have a curse also?

So the Panthers are on the most recent cover !!!


Maybe I spoke too soon in my NFL projections.

Btw... How about SI swimsuit edition, does that have a curse also?

Mmmmm....maybe time to volenteer for a new study on this one...