Curse word

Whew. I will not have to spend the 2012 season waiting for the Madden Curse to strike down Rob Gronkowski.

The future hall of fame tight end lost -- badly -- to Megatron (Calvin Johnson) in the online voting to be the cover boy for the video game Madden '13. I guess my 50,000 votes for Johnson helped. My right hand is sore but it was worth it.

Madden is one of the best video games ever created... way back in the late '80s. I was working the overnight shift back then and had time to play a lot of video games while "watching" my daughters. It was quite a change in the sports gaming experience. One that me and my nephews would later play whenever we would get together. My team would always lose. Sorry Ryan.

It's a great game. With an even better curse. Their favorite player gracing the Madden cover has replaced the SI jink as the thing fans should fear the most. Well, other than Eli Manning in a Super Bowl. The big guy himself (Madden) was on the cover for the first decade of the game, but in 1999 EASports decided to start putting star players on the box.

The first choice was runningback Garrison Hearst of the 49ers. He soon broke his foot and missed the next two seasons. Next up (or down) was Barry Sanders -- one of the greatest runners in the history of the game who was in the prime of his career. He decided to retire. Then there was Dorsey Levens (out of the game in a year), Eddie George (fumble to lose a big playoff game), Dante Culpepper (two blown knees), Marshall Faulk (knee), Ray Lewis (wrist), Donovan McNabb (torn ligaments), Shaun Alexander (foot), Vince Young (mental breakdown), Brett Favre (victim of Bounty-gate), Troy Palamalu (ligaments), and last year's cover boy Peyton Hillis who missed games due to a hamstring injury and a strep throat. The Madden Curse is nothing if not creative.

There's one other victim of the curse. The biggest one of all. Michael Vick. The dog whisperer. Vick adorned the game cover in 2004 in his sharp white and red Atlanta Falcons uniform. Vick was the man at the time. The greatest thing to hit football since... well, the previous greatest thing to hit football. My nephew Ryan (Sorry Ryan) took Vick with his first pick in our family fantasy football league. We do the draft down the Cape, often with some preseason football on the TV in the background. The draft had hardly ended when word came that Vick had suffered a broken fibula and was lost to the Falcons (and Ryan) for the whole season before the season even began. Poor Mike Vick. We thought the Madden Curse really got him. Of course the curse was just getting warmed up with #7. A few years later the football world would learn that Vick was holding dog fights at his mansion and that some of the dogs were killed. Vick would be tried and sentenced to jail.

Now THAT'S a curse.

I'll be voting for Aaron Rogers to win the cover competition.

Sorry Packer fans.