Sports Illustrated cover jinx
The "Sports Illustrated" cover jinx is an urban legend that states that individuals or teams who appear on the cover of the "Sports Illustrated" magazine will subsequently be jinxed (experience bad luck). Explanations. A common explanation for the perceived effect is that athletes are generally featured on the cover after an exceptionally good performance, which might be an outlier compared to their usual level of performance. Therefore, their future performance is likely to display regression toward the mean and be less impressive by comparison. This decline in performance would then be misperceived as being related to , or even possibly caused by, the appearance on the magazine cover. Most athletes that seemed to suffer the jinx most typically suffered because of an injury to their body, or some other bad luck following their appearance. One prime candidate for this explanation is Eddie Mathews who suffered a broken hand while the team's nine game winning streak came to a close following the cover. In this case, the odds are that a player will suffer an injury while playing any given sport. Injuries are a given in a physical contact sport such as American football or baseball, which  is what Mathews played. Even injuries in individual sports such as skiing can fall under this explanation as it is common to make a bad move in this sport and get caught up in a massive mistake of the athlete's own doing which results in injury. Finally, winning and losing streaks come to a close in all sports and this includes Milwaukee's nine-game winning streak in 1954. This makes the 1972 Miami Dolphins perfect season, 2007 New England Patriots perfect regular season, and the 2008 Detroit Lions winless season all the more remarkable. "SI" addressed its own  opinions on the alleged cover jinx in a 2002 issue that featured a black cat on its cover. Notable contradictions to curse. While the list of examples of the so-called jinx may be extensive, some records contradict the existence of a curse.