Sport’s weirdest ‘curses’

It’s fair to say that athletes are a suspicious lot – after all, they’re famous for using lucky charms, strange rituals and plenty of other peculiar tricks to get an advantage when it comes to the playing field.

However, one of the stranger aspects of sports relates to the idea of ‘curses’. And it’s not as if these are simply quite rare occurrences – there are literally hundreds and hundreds of stories about teams and players who believe they’ve experienced this sort of bad luck.

Here are two of the ones we’ve found most interesting.

The curse of the Honey Bears

While it sounds a little like a lost chapter from Winnie the Pooh, this curse has had a seemingly huge affect on the Chicago Bears, an NFL team in America.

In 1977, the team created a cheerleading squad called the Honey Bears, which became popular parts of each game’s half-time show. When the owner of the team – George Halas – died, he left the team to his daughter Virginia McCaskey. Virginia always thought the Honey Bears portrayed women negatively, so she decided that after their final contracted year, the Honey Bears would be disbanded.

During their last year of having the Honey Bees, the Chicago Bears did extremely well – losing only one game, and winning the 1985 Super Bowl. However, in the years after the Honey Bears were disbanded, the Chicago Bears haven’t won a single game – causing some to believe that they’re cursed.

The Madden and Sports Illustrated curses

Most players generally enjoy a bit of fame, since it is great recognition for all the work they’ve put into getting where they are today. However, sometimes that recognition seems to set off a chain of events which can have nasty consequences.

Although appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated was seen as a huge achievement, plenty of players who did so suddenly found themselves experiencing injuries and missing games.

The same became true for the Madden computer game series – every time it featured a player on the box, that player suffered an injury the following season.