Sports fans are a superstitious, cowardly lot. In an intersection of probabilities as complex as professional athletics, with dozens of insanely gifted competitors on either side, it can be almost impossible for the human brain to rationally process events. So we instead turn to the metaphysical and the mystical. Case in point: the classic "sports curse," where a series of coincidences get combined to indicate higher forces at play. They're all bunk, right? We're not so sure. Read on to learn about ten sports curses that might have a little more to them.
The Billy Goat Curse
Animal sacrifice is a key element of many religious rites, but how can a single goat doom a baseball team to seventy years of failure? When an irascible local pub owner named Billy Sianis brought his
pet goat Murphy to the fourth game of the 1945 World Series, Cubs management forced him to leave the stadium due to his animal's smell. On his way out the door, Sianis yelled "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more!" History has proven him right. Since 1945, the Chicago Cubs haven't made it to the World Series once. How can they dispel this curse? Maybe inviting a herd of goats to Wrigley Field for a game would do it.
The Curse Of Bobby Layne
When a player is traded from a team they've bonded with, it can be a bit like going through a messy divorce. Tempers flare, and sometimes accidental invocations of dark powers can place irreversible hexes on the guilty. When the Detroit Lions traded an injured Bobby Layne--the man who had led the team to three NFL championships--in 1958, he reportedly
responded by saying that the Lions "would not win for 50 years." Guess what? He was right. The Lions plummeted to the bottom of the league's rankings, holding the worst record of any NFL franchise. In 2008, the last year of the curse, they became the first team to ever go an entire season without a single win.
The Talladega Jinx
Crashing is just a part of NASCAR, but some people believe that one of the country's most famous racetracks has a
spiritual vortex that inspires disaster. Legend has it that a Native American shaman placed a curse on the land when his tribe was forced off of it long ago. The track has a reputation for bizarre events, like when driver Bobby Isaac got out of his car because he heard mysterious voices talking to him, or the massive 21-car wreck in 1973 that many drivers call the worst they've ever seen. Bizarre events have happened every few years since, and nobody has a good explanation as to why.
The Cardinals Curse
Many sports curses root from one single traumatic moment, and the reason the Arizona Cardinals might be a legendarily sucky team could date all the way back to 1925.
Lore goes that the Pottsville Maroons should have won the NFL championships that year, but they were suspended from the league after playing an unauthorized exhibition game. The Cardinals--then in Chicago--quickly arranged a few authorized games against tomato can teams (at least one of which featured high school players!) to beat their record and win the title. That underhanded maneuvering enraged Pottsville fans, who put a hex on the Cards that has dogged them to the present day. They remain the NFL team with the longest championship drought.
The Witch Doctor Curse
Most of the curses on this list have been perpetrated by amateurs, but in at least one case, a sports team
deliberately tampered with forces beyond their control and got screwed for it. At the 1970 World Cup Qualifier in Mozambique, Australia's Socceroos consulted a local witch doctor for help in their match with Rhodesia. They won, but when it came time to pay the shaman the $1000 he wanted, the team skipped out. He vowed revenge, and in their next game three players got sick and they lost, eliminating them from the tournament. Since then, no Socceroos squad made it to the World Cup until TV host John Safran traveled back to Mozambique and hired another witch doctor to reverse the curse.
The Curse Of Coogan's Bluff
Teams moving locations seems to really upset the spirits, but there's one player in particular we can blame for the Curse of Coogan's Bluff. The New York Giants played at the Polo Grounds, where a
plaque in center field commemorated Eddie Grant, the first MLB player killed in World War I. When the Giants announced their move to San Francisco, the plaque vanished when fans rushed the field at the last Polo Grounds game. The team's World Series luck came crashing to a halt, including their loss in the '89 series that saw a huge earthquake delay the game. When a replacement plaque was installed in AT&T Park in 2006, it lifted the curse and the Giants went on to win the Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.
The Curse Of Billy Penn
Sometimes sports curses come at you from beyond the grave. A statue of William Penn stood atop Philadelphia's City Hall for decades, and the city's Art Commission had an unspoken rule that no building would be constructed higher than Penn's eye level. In 1987, they broke that rule with the construction of One Liberty Place. No sooner did the building go up than all of Philly's previously dominant sports teams took a
nosedive into the toilet. For the next 20 years, no Philadelphia team would take home a world title. The curse ended in 2008 when the Phillies won the World Series after ironworkers put up a new statue of Penn atop the Comcast Center, giving him back his unobstructed view.
The Madden Curse
One would think that being tapped to appear on the cover of EA's insanely popular Madden NFL games would be a good thing. But if you examine the careers of the football players who have done it since 1999, you'll notice a
troubling trend. Nearly every athlete who gets the cover slot goes on to have a pretty terrible season. From Garrison Hearst in 1999 who would break his ankle and not play again until 2001, to Michael Vick being injured less than a week after the game came out in 2004, to Adrian Peterson being suspended for child abuse in 2014, the Madden curse certainly seems legit. The game's developers deny any occult doings behind the scenes, but you'd expect they would.
The Red Devils Curse
Colombian soccer team América de Cali's logo is a red devil, and many players believe that the horned one was responsible for the team's
disastrous three-decade run. The story goes that in 1948 the team's owners were in heated discussion about transferring América de Cali into the professional league. One owner was so against it that he said "I swear to God they will never be champions!" He was right, sadly--the team has never made it all the way to the Cup. Although, after an exorcism on their home field in 1980, they went on to win five national championships, meaning the curse got weakened a little bit but not broken.
Bambino's Curse
When a team trades away one of the most legendary ballplayers of all time, it can create
severe disruptions in the fabric of reality. In 1919, the Boston Red Sox made one of the dumbest plays of all time by trading Babe Ruth off to the Yankees. Prior to that trade, the Sox were one of the most dominant teams in the country, winning the first World Series and steamrolling almost everybody in their path. After the trade, they went 86 years before winning another Series in 2004. Meanwhile, the Yankees became one of the most successful teams in history. Lord knows why the curse wore off, but maybe Ruth's potent mystical presence finally departed this plane for the afterlife.