Just hours after we posted our story on San Diego Chargers fans desperate to keep their running back free of the long running “Madden Curse” comes word that the cover athlete for Madden NFL 08 has been revealed.
Althought not officially confirmed, Nashville’s The City Paper is reporting that Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young will be the featured player for EA’s next NFL title.
Well, Vince had a good run. Congrats, Mr. Young, and I wish you a speedy recovery! Michael McWhertor
San Diego Chargers fans want EA to remove their MVP running back from the list of cover candidates for next year’s MaddenNFL 08. Why? They’re fearful of the long-running “Madden Curse.”
The Madden Curse, if you’re unfamiliar or too lazy to click to the rich Wikipedia entry on the subject, supposedly dooms that years Madden cover athlete with either poor performance or season ruining injuries. Last year’s featured player Shaun Alexander suffered a fracture in his foot in the first game of the year, keeping him out for nearly half the season.
In an effort to keep Ladainian Tomlinson from suffering the same fate, fans have put together the web site SaveLTFromMadden.com with a petition to urge EA to keep their MVP from harm. Fortunately, petitions always work, so I’d say he’s gonna be okay.
Anyone remember the Joe Montana Sportstalk Football curse? Players who appeared on the cover would be cursed with thinning hair and earned millions of dollars! Not as horrifying. Michael McWhertor
Proving once again that it’s funny when a child gets hurt, we present the end of the Raptors game yesterday, when a small child reaches out to touch the hand of Chris Bosh … and pays the price.
Make sure you watch the left side of the screen. And listen for the yell. Wee!
It all stems from a $50-per-person Masters pool involving Jensen, John Feinstein, Thomas Boswell, Dave Kindred and Leonard Shapiro that Post ombudsman Deborah Howell took issue with, concluding that:
“Maybe the Masters bets next year should be in Oreos, not cash.”
I wasn’t going to write about this (too inside sportswriting), but a friend informs me that TonyKornheiser was talking about it on Washington Post Radio and Deadspin posted about it as well. So let’s get the facts straight:
1. Jensen isn’t just a blogger. Actually, he’s a columnist — for AOL and the St. Paul Pioneer Press — who blogged for FanHouse during the Masters. He’s only Asian-American national sports columnist going, and his entire blog archive consists of maybe 20 posts from the week of the tournament.
2. This is not a big deal. It was a $50 pool amongst friends, at least two of whom (Feinstein and Boswell) must have boxes full of cash lying around. There is no way it had any kind of effect on their coverage.
3. The Post ombudsman has other stuff to worry about.firedoglake offers six such alternatives, all of which sound more important than a once-a-year pool where the winner walked away with $103.
And, yes, I realize this is two posts in a row where I’ve used the term ombudsman. Weird. It brings me to something I’ve been thinking about, though, as we — the sports blogging community — need an ombudsman of our own. Not only would such a person/site be useful, but damn popular too. Volunteers? Nominees?
Back when we lived in St. Louis, we made the mistake of parking our car before a Rams game in the rooftop garage for the Gateway Arch, which is technically federal property. This was not necessarily a problem until we popped open a beer for a tiny, sad little tailgate. Within a matter of seconds, three armed guards were on us, telling us to … calmly … put … the beer … down.
[Brewers manager Ned] Yost was called to the rescue late Thursday night when centerfielder Bill Hall was detained by a National Parks Service ranger after committing a traffic violation while driving a friend’s car. Hall and the friend were returning from a late dinner when the ranger pulled them over for failing to make a turn while in a turn lane. The ranger gave Hall a field sobriety test, which he passed. Nevertheless, the ranger - who was on duty at the nearby Gateway Arch - asked that a member of the team come pick him up, which Yost did.
“It didn’t make sense to me that a ranger was involved,” Yost said. “Billy really didn’t do anything wrong except fail to make a turn in a turn lane.”
Honestly, knowing those Arch park rangers, he’s lucky he’s not still rotting in, we dunno, Gateway Arch jail or something.
Former Washington Post sports editorand ESPN ombudsman George Solomon gets a half-page in the Post’s Sunday edition to muse on the week that was in the world of sports. It’s a treat reserved for the 35-cent version only, so I’m just going to have to type out my favorite note from yesterday’s column:
“The Wizards are having trouble winning tight games without the injured Gilbert Arenas and Caron Butler. But they’re close and have spunk. I like spunk.” (Note: Link and emphasis added by me.)
Wow, that’s quite a revelation to put under your byline in one of the top papers in the country. Regardless, Eddie Jordan’s gang will need a spunk explosion in the playoffs, where Blog Show co-pilot Dan Steinberg deduces that there’s a 66% chance Washington gets swept by Toronto in the first round. Be that as it may, Gilbert needs to go Grindhouse-style for the Wiz to harbor any hope of an upset. In just one game, I mean. Certainly not the whole series. For that we’d need Caron to go machine gun arm as well.
One of the many reasons it’s good to be a famous sports figure: When you want to clear out your house of a bunch of useless, outdated junk, you can slap a “As Owned By …” sticker on it, say it’s for charity and look like a great guy, rather than just tossing everything out to the street corner and hope somebody takes it home with them.
Hence, former Steelers coach Bill Cowher’s charity auction of crap. Mondesi’s House points out some of the stellar merchandise, including a “27-inch Panasonic TV and VCR set.” Sure, you’ll never have any need for either one of these, ever, but Bill Cowher once owned it!
It won’t be long now until they announce who will grace the cover of Madden 2008 — ESPN’s quixotic video games section handicaps the contenders here — and as everybody knows, it has pretty much meant doom for whomever is graced with the honor. Marshall Faulk, Daunte Culpepper, Eddie George, Ron Mexico … the cover has meant nothing but pain.
Some San Diego Chargers fans are doing what they can to cut the curse off at the pass, launching the newfangled Save LT From Madden Web site, designed entirely to keep the MVP from suffering the same fate as his predecessors. ESPN says Peyton Manning is the early favorite, but we would have thought LT was more likely, actually. We think they should put Favre on there; maybe he’ll actually retire this time.
Just hours after we posted our story on San Diego Chargers fans desperate to keep their running back free of the long running “Madden Curse” comes word that the cover athlete for Madden NFL 08 has been revealed.
San Diego Chargers fans want 
Back when we lived in St. Louis, we made the mistake of parking our car before a Rams game in the rooftop garage for the Gateway Arch, which is technically federal property. This was not necessarily a problem until we popped open a beer for a tiny, sad little tailgate. Within a matter of seconds, three armed guards were on us, telling us to … calmly … put … the beer … down.
One of the many reasons it’s good to be a famous sports figure: When you want to clear out your house of a bunch of useless, outdated junk, you can slap a “As Owned By …” sticker on it, say it’s for charity and look like a great guy, rather than just tossing everything out to the street corner and hope somebody takes it home with them.
It won’t be long now until they announce who will grace the cover of Madden 2008 — ESPN’s quixotic video games section 