Disaster stuck this past weekend, your favorite gaming culture columnist’s fantasy football team: The Fightin’ FourTens lost their most potent scoring threat to injury. Seattle running back Shaun “Sure-Feet” Alexander broke his namesake appendage (actually just the left one) and will be out of action for an unknown amount of time.

Now no true fan of football wants to see a player injured. Even if the player is on your team’s biggest rival, you want him in there trying to beat your guys. You want your team to beat them in a fair contest, with no ‘what ifs’ clouding the outcome. In that case Shawn’s injury is absolute tragedy even to Bears fans like me.

But it’s also one of the best things that has ever happened.

Shaun Alexander is not just another talented young athlete cut down by injury; he’s the latest talented young athlete to be cut down by injury after appearing on the cover of the same year’s Madden Football entry from Electronic Arts. Yes, the coincidence now commonly known as the dreaded “Madden Cover Curse” has struck again! Don’t believe me? Look at this chart I stole…errrr…sampled from the Chicago Sun Times:

2001 — Daunte Culpepper: Missed final five games with knee injury.
2002 — Marshall Faulk: Missed two games with injured ankle.
2003 — Michael Vick: Missed 11 games after breaking leg in exhibition game.
2004 — Ray Lewis: Missed last game of season.
2005 — Donovan McNabb: Missed final seven games with sports hernia.
2006 — Shaun Alexander: Out indefinitely with broken bone in left foot.

(but you knew that last one already, so your welcome)

Six times in six years! What is it about appearing on the front a black/green plastic case that causes men in the physical prime to succumb to harm? Is the gentle breeze caused by the rapid closing of one case in Hong Kong generating the kind of chain reaction of events that causes an injury half a world away? Are long ignored, but highly talented, defensive players involved in a six-tenths decade old conspiracy against their flashier and higher paid opposite numbers? Ray Lewis plays what? Oh never mind.

So why is this columnist smiling? (he is, trust me)

I am smiling because when the so-called Curse rears its head it makes news. Not gaming news, real news. It’s just a quirky enough a coincidence to get picked up beyond the usual circles of gaming or sports news. And even though Shawn’s on the shelf, and the hopes of a Seahawks Superbowl start to slide, one question is always asked by our “notoriously diligent” news services:

“Knowing of the curse, why would anyone want to be on the cover?” Shawn himself put it best:

‘’Curse or no curse, everybody, and I mean everybody, wants to be on that cover. I don’t know one person that would say no.'’

It’s not just the truck full of money EA backed up to his house, Shawn is a gamer. Almost all pro athletes are. The vast majority of them are in their 20s and 30s, and they grew up playing Tecmo Bowl just like we did. To be on the cover is a dream come true, and that pride shows when they get asked about the “curse.” These are professionals, millionaires, successful in their fields and they game. That reflects well on all of us: the professionals, the thousandaires, the successful modern gamer.

For a news cycle, it’s a “Madden Curse,” for gaming culture; it’s the “Madden Blessing.”

Oh and, since John himself is on this year’s “Hall of Fame” edition, he’s better watch his step.

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Back of the Bus is © 2006 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.