The 10 Most Famous Curses in Sports History
The most famous curses in sports, from the Bambino and the Billy Goat to Bobby Layne and Béla Guttmann: how each one started and which are still running.
The Cubs won the World Series 10 years ago this week. On Nov. 2, 2016, they beat Cleveland 8-7 in 10 innings in Game 7, ended a 108-year title drought, and put the Billy Goat curse to rest. That night in Cleveland has its own story.
The goat is the second most famous curse in sports, behind the Curse of the Bambino, the name for Boston’s 86 years without a title after it sold Babe Ruth. Five of the curses below first showed up in print decades after the fact. Three of the droughts are still running as of November 2026: the Lions, Cleveland, and Benfica. The two cover jinxes have no end date.
10. The Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx (Every Sport, 1954-Present)
The jinx started with the first issue.
Sports Illustrated’s first issue, dated Aug. 16, 1954, put Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves on the cover. The Braves’ 9-game winning streak ended. A week later, Mathews hurt his hand and missed 7 games.
In 1957, Oklahoma had won an NCAA-record 47 straight games when SI’s Nov. 18 issue asked, “Why Oklahoma Is Unbeatable.” It hit newsstands the same week unranked Notre Dame went to Norman and won 7-0.
In 2002, SI investigated itself. The Jan. 21 issue put a black cat on the cover, over a story called “The Cover That No One Would Pose For.”
The usual explanation is regression to the mean. SI puts athletes on the cover at the top of a hot streak, and hot streaks end.
9. The Madden Curse (NFL, 1999-Present)
Caleb Williams said, “No more of this Madden curse.” Then he tore his hamstring.
John Madden was on the cover of his own video game through 1998. Then players moved onto the cover, and they started getting hurt. Garrison Hearst, coming off the best season of his career, badly hurt his ankle in the 1998 playoffs and didn’t play again until 2001. Michael Vick made the 2004 cover, broke his fibula in the preseason, and missed the first 11 games.
SI counted 15 of 28 cover players who got hurt or fell off sharply in their cover season. CBS Sports found only 3 of 10 from 2015 to 2025. EA has denied the curse exists.
This year’s cover went to Caleb Williams, the first Bear on a Madden cover. He tore his right hamstring in Week 2 against Minnesota and missed 3 games, then came back on Oct. 18 and completed his first 12 passes in a 31-23 win over Atlanta.
8. The Curse of Billy Penn (Philadelphia, 1987-2008)
The curse started when a skyscraper rose above William Penn’s hat and ended with a little statue on a steel beam.
A statue of William Penn stands on top of City Hall, and for decades a gentlemen’s agreement kept every building in Philadelphia below his hat. In March 1987, One Liberty Place rose above it. The story goes that the city’s 4 major teams stopped winning titles once it did.
The Flyers lost the Stanley Cup Final in 7 games that spring. The Eagles lost 3 straight NFC title games, then lost Super Bowl XXXIX to New England by 3.
On June 18, 2007, ironworkers Dan Ginion and John Joyce fixed a small replica of the Penn statue to the last beam of the 975-foot Comcast Center. On Oct. 29, 2008, the Phillies beat the Rays 4-3 to finish a World Series Game 5 that rain had suspended 2 days earlier, ending the city’s 25-year title drought.
“If there was a curse,” Ginion said, “it’s not there anymore.”
7. The Curse of the Colonel (Hanshin Tigers, 1985-2023)
Osaka fans threw a Colonel Sanders statue into a canal in 1985, and the Tigers didn’t win another Japan Series for 38 years.
The Hanshin Tigers won their first Japan Series in 1985. During the celebrations, fans at Ebisu Bridge in Osaka’s Dōtonbori jumped into the canal, one for each player. Nobody looked like Randy Bass, the team’s bearded American slugger. So they grabbed a plastic Colonel Sanders statue from a nearby KFC, beard and all, and threw it in.
The story goes that Hanshin wouldn’t win again until the Colonel came out. The Tigers spent most of the next 18 years at or near the bottom of the Central League.
On March 10, 2009, construction divers found the statue. At first they thought it was a barrel, then a body.
Hanshin still waited 14 more years. On Nov. 5, 2023, the Tigers beat Orix 7-1 in Game 7 at Kyocera Dome Osaka. Fans jumped into the canal again, and the crowd threw in a fan dressed as the Colonel.
6. The Curse of 1940 (New York Rangers, 1940-1994)
The Rangers waited 54 years, and rival fans chanted about it.
The Rangers won the 1940 Stanley Cup in Toronto, beating the Maple Leafs 3-2 in overtime of Game 6 on Bryan Hextall’s goal. After that, the story goes, Madison Square Garden paid off its mortgage, and management burned the papers in the bowl of the Cup.
In the 1950 Final, the Rangers lost Game 7 at Detroit’s Olympia in double overtime. They lost the Final again in 1972 and 1979. In 1981, Islanders fans started chanting “1940!” at them, and the chant spread to other rinks.
In 1994, Mark Messier guaranteed a win in Game 6 of the East final against New Jersey, and Stéphane Matteau won Game 7 in double overtime. On June 14, 1994, at the Garden, the Rangers beat Vancouver 3-2 in Game 7 of the Final. Messier scored the winner. It ended the NHL’s longest title drought at the time, and the Garden crowd chanted “1940!” one more time.
5. Béla Guttmann’s Curse (Benfica, 1962-Present)
Benfica has lost 8 European finals since its coach walked out.
Béla Guttmann coached Benfica to back-to-back European Cups in 1961 and 1962, then quit over a bonus. The story goes that he said Benfica wouldn’t be champions of Europe again for 100 years.
There’s no record he said it. In April 1963, he told the newspaper A Bola that Benfica would “be champions of Europe again.” The story traces to a loose 1968 translation of a German interview, and the first explicit mention of a curse found in print is from May 1988.
Since 1962, Benfica is 0-8 in European finals. Before the 1990 final in Vienna, where Guttmann is buried, Eusébio is said to have prayed at his grave. Milan won 1-0.
Benfica’s under-19 team won the UEFA Youth League in 2022, and some outlets called the curse broken. The first team’s run is still going. In February 2026, Real Madrid knocked Benfica out of the Champions League, 3-1 on aggregate.
4. The Curse of Rocky Colavito (Cleveland, 1960-Present)
Cleveland hasn’t won a World Series in 78 years, and a 1994 book blamed one trade.
On April 17, 1960, Cleveland general manager Frank “Trader” Lane sent Rocky Colavito, who had tied for the American League lead with 42 home runs, to Detroit for batting champion Harvey Kuenn.
Colavito denied there was any curse. The name comes from Terry Pluto’s 1994 book, The Curse of Rocky Colavito, which pointed to 34 straight seasons in which Cleveland never finished within 11 games of first place.
On Oct. 26, 1997, Cleveland led the Marlins 2-1 in the 9th inning of World Series Game 7 in Miami. José Mesa blew the lead, and Édgar Rentería won it with a 2-out single in the 11th.
Cleveland lost Game 7 again in 2016, to the Cubs. Colavito died in December 2024, at 91. On Oct. 19, 2026, the Guardians lost Game 6 of the ALCS to Tampa Bay, 7-3.
3. The Curse of Bobby Layne (Detroit Lions, 1958-Present)
The curse was supposed to last 50 years, and the Lions are at 68 seasons and counting.
The Lions won the NFL title on Dec. 29, 1957, beating the Browns 59-14. Bobby Layne, their star quarterback, had broken his ankle 3 weeks earlier and didn’t play.
On Oct. 6, 1958, 2 games into the next season, Detroit traded Layne to Pittsburgh. He told reporters, “It’s just one of those things.” The story goes that he also said the Lions wouldn’t win for 50 years. Nobody printed that in 1958. The earliest use in print anyone has found is a 2001 Detroit News column by Jerry Green, who later called the curse “sheer nonsense.”
The Lions went 0-16 in 2008, the 50th year. On Jan. 28, 2024, they led San Francisco 24-7 at halftime of the NFC title game and lost 34-31. The next season, they went 15-2, earned the No. 1 seed, and lost at home to No. 6 Washington, 45-31. Detroit has never reached a Super Bowl.
2. The Curse of the Billy Goat (Chicago Cubs, 1945-2016)
A tavern owner brought his goat to the World Series. The Cubs didn’t win another pennant for 71 years.
On Oct. 6, 1945, Billy Sianis, owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, came to Game 4 of the World Series at Wrigley Field with his goat, Murphy. The goat was turned away or thrown out, depending on who tells it. The Cubs lost the Series in 7.
The story goes that Sianis said the Cubs would never win again. No 1945 report of a curse has turned up. The Chicago Tribune first mentioned it in 1967.
On Oct. 14, 2003, the Cubs were 5 outs from the pennant in Game 6 of the NLCS when Steve Bartman deflected a foul ball away from Moisés Alou. The Marlins won that game 8-3, then won Game 7.
The Cubs clinched the 2016 pennant on Oct. 22, the 46th anniversary of Sianis’s death. Then they came back from 3-1 down against Cleveland to win their first World Series in 108 years.
1. The Curse of the Bambino (Boston Red Sox, 1920-2004)
The Red Sox sold Babe Ruth and went 86 years between titles.
Owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000, and New York announced the deal on Jan. 5, 1920. The legend says he did it to pay for No, No, Nanette, a musical that opened about 5 years later, after Frazee had sold the team.
Ruth never cursed anybody. The curse talk started in 1986, when George Vecsey of The New York Times wrote that the Red Sox were cursed. His Oct. 28 column ran under the headline “Babe Ruth Curse Strikes Again.”
Three days before that headline, Boston led the Mets 5-3 with 2 outs in the 10th inning of World Series Game 6, one strike from the title. The Mets came back, and Mookie Wilson’s grounder went through Bill Buckner’s legs. The Mets won Game 7.
In the 2004 ALCS, Boston lost the first 3 games to the Yankees and won the next 4, which no other MLB team has done. Then it swept the Cardinals. On Oct. 27, 2004, Édgar Rentería grounded back to Keith Foulke to finish a 3-0 win. A total lunar eclipse was in progress.
Honorable Mentions
- The Curse of the Black Sox (Chicago White Sox, 1917-2005). Eight players were banned over the fixed 1919 World Series, and the White Sox went 88 years without a title. It ended on Oct. 26, 2005, with a 1-0 win in Houston that finished a sweep of the Astros.
- Chief Noc-A-Homa’s Teepee (Atlanta Braves, 1982). Ted Turner had the mascot’s teepee in left field taken down. The Braves lost 19 of 21. The teepee went back up, and they won the NL West.
Which curse did we miss? Tell us in the comments.
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