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Sport and Competition

The Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx

Is success a curse?

Here are the five Major League Baseball players with the highest batting averages in 2014:

Gary Smith
Source: Gary Smith

Let’s see how they did the next year, 2015:

Gary Smith
Source: Gary Smith

Every one of these top-5 players did worse in 2015 than in 2014. It is tempting to think that these superstars got complacent. After being the best in 2014, they ate too much food, gave too many speeches, and didn’t work as hard they used to. Many sports fans are convinced that champions choke—that athletes who achieve something exceptional usually have disappointing letdowns afterward.

Perhaps. Let’s see how they did in 2013, the year before they were on top:

Gary Smith
Source: Gary Smith

Every one of these top-5 players not only did worse in 2015; they also did worse in 2013! How could they have been worse the year before and the year after they were on top? How about their career batting averages?

Gary Smith
Source: Gary Smith

Also worse than their top-5 year, 2014. The real pattern is not that they did badly in 2013, in 2015, and in their career, but that they did unusually well in 2014. Their top-five year was the aberration.

There is skill in baseball, but there is also luck. Trying to guess what type of pitch will be thrown, deciding in less than half a second whether to swing at the pitch, using a slender rounded bat to hit a small round ball traveling 90+ miles per hour and veering in different directions, hoping that a hit ball won’t go directly to a fielder.

A major league player can go 0 for 4 one day and 4 for 4 the next. Bat 0.320 one season and 0.280 the next. Those players who finish among the top 5 in any season are more likely to have had good luck than bad luck. Their ability is not as far above average as is their performance that season. The thing about luck is that it cannot be counted on to continue. The players who are luckiest one season probably probably will not be as lucky the season before or the season after or over their entire career.

Photo Works / Shutterstock.com
Victor Martinez in 2011
Source: Photo Works / Shutterstock.com

This is a statistical phenomenon known as regression to the mean. There is regression in baseball and other athletic performances in that a player or team that accomplishes something exceptional most likely benefited from good luck and will regress from that exceptional performance.

While we’re on the subject, how would you explain the sophomore slump in baseball or any other sport? Regression to the mean perhaps? The sophomore slump is just a variation on the rookie-of-the-year jinx. Any athlete who is one of the top players in his or her sport during their rookie season most likely had more good luck than bad. How many athletes could perform below their ability and still be one of the best players? So it is with most awards, including the Cy Young award, which is said to cause the Cy Young Jinx. One tabulation of 70 Cy Young winners found that only three did better the year after they won the award. Thirty did about the same and 37 did worse. The sportswriter who made this tabulation speculated that the pitchers wore themselves out during their Cy Young year, even though baseball players have six months to rest between seasons.

Regression also explains the Sports Illustrated cover jinx. After Oklahoma won 47 straight college football games, Sports Illustrated’s cover story was, “Why Oklahoma is Unbeatable.”

Oklahoma lost its next game, 7 to 0, to Notre Dame. After this debacle, people started noticing that athletes who appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated are evidently jinxed in that they do not perform as well afterward. In 2002, Sports Illustrated ran a cover story on the SI jinx with a picture of a black cat and the wonderful caption “The Cover No One Would Pose For.” More recently, we have the Madden Curse, which says that the football player whose picture appears on the cover of Madden NFL, a football video game, will not perform as well afterward.

The Sports Illustrated Jinx and the Madden Curse are extreme examples of regression. When a player or team does something exceptional enough to earn a place on the cover of Sports Illustrated or Madden NFL, there is essentially nowhere to go but down. To the extent luck plays a role in athletic success, and it surely does, the player or team that stands above all the rest almost certainly benefited from good luck—good health, fortunate bounces, and questionable officiating. Good luck cannot be counted on to continue indefinitely, and neither can exceptional success.

Something to remember when you have an exceptional game, week, or year in the sports you play—or in your job. Something to remember for those of you who play fantasy sports. Something to remember for general managers thinking about paying millions to sign this year’s hot shot.

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