The cover of EA Sports' Madden NFL has featured a top NFL player for almost a decade now. Weird thing is, since EA Sports started featuring footballers in 1999, players who've made it to that spotlight later found themselves underperforming, injured, or even sentenced to prison.

Yes, folks. This phenomenon is otherwise known as The Madden Curse. The Madden Curse has had a lot of victims, Donovan McNabb and Marshall Faulk among them.

Michael Vick broke his ankle days after Madden 2004 was released and was sentenced to 23 months for his dog-fighting ring in Virginia. The worst, Moore  said, was Shaun Alexander, who went from MVP to unsigned two years lat er. On this year's cover is Brett Favre, best of luck to him.

"I guess when you look back there's a grain of truth to the Madden Curse," Moore said. "When you look back at the last five, six years, it's a little weird how weird things have happened to guys who are on the front cover."

Luckily, the curse doesn't affect sales - not in a bad way, at least. "Our research tells us we don't see a huge up-tick or down-tick depending on who's on the cover - they're buying Madden." More than 51 million copes of the game have been sold in 17 years, earning about US$ 1.7 billion.

Usually, EA would pick among top NFL stars to decide who will be on the cover. This time around, it'll go to the highest bidder, and all proceeds will go to United Way, the NFL's charity partner.

Moore said that he spoke to EA's marketing team about the auction, and that he still needs to convince them as to the plan's appeal. Who knows? Maybe putting the cover up for a charitable auction just might lift the curse. If not, then let's just hope the curse doesn't spill on to the charity partner.

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