The jinx of the Sports Illustrated cover -Super Sonic

Taken directly from page 511-512 of Thomas J. Craughwell's book, "Urban legends, 666 absolutely true stories that happenesd to a friend... of a friend... of a friend..."

Since 1954, the first year Sports Illustralted was published, athletes, teams and coaches have dreaded appearing on the magazine's cover. This dubious honor has proved to be bad juju for more careers and sabotaged more winning seasons than any thing short of a pact with the devil. Let's look at the mayhem that appearing on the Sports Illustrated cover has wrought.

-October 29, 1956: The Saturday after Paul Hornug of Notre Dame appeared on the cover, the Fighting Irish went down to igominious defeat~40-0~to Oklahoma. Notre Dame went on to lose games to Navy and Pitt, finishing the season 2-8.

-April 18, 1960: If anyone seemed a shoo-in for the U.S. Olympic swimming team, it was Carin Cone, For four years she had been undefeated in the 100-meter back stroke. At the nationals, a few weeks after appearing on the cover of SI, Cone finished second. As if that weren't bad enough, at her next meet she failed to qualify for the Olympics.

-Halloween eve, 1978: Runner Bill Rodgers had just won his seventh marathon in a row when he was invited to be SI's cover boy. He agreed- and in his next marathon he came in sixth.

-December 6, 1982: The undefeated Redskins made SI's cover. The week the magazine came out, the Redskins played the Cowboys and lost 24-10.

-March 27, 1989: Steffi Graf looked great on SI's cover. She didn't look so good two weeks later when she suffered her first loss of the 1989 season.

-May 24, 1993: Barry Bonds of the giants seemed unstoppable. Within two weeks of appearing on the SI cover, his batting average plummeted 40 points.

-January 14, 2002: The SI issue with Michael Jordan on the cover was at the printer when word came out that Jordan's wife had filed for divorce.



-Super Sonic

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