Super Bowl curse

The Super Bowl Curse is a phrase referring to three types: Super Bowl participants that follow up with lower-than-expected performance the following year; teams that do not repeat as World Champions; and host teams of the Super Bowl that do not play the game on their own home turf.

Also called a Super Bowl hangover, it has been used, for example, to explain both why losing teams may post below-average winning percentages in the following year and why Super Bowl champions seldom return to the Super Bowl the following year. The term has been used since at least 1992, when The Washington Post commented that "[t]he Super Bowl Curse has thrown everything it's got at the Washington Redskins. The Jinx that has bedeviled defending champs for 15 years has never been in better form". The phenomenon is attributed by football commentator and former NFL manager Charley Casserly to such elements as "a shorter offseason, contract issues, [and] more demand for your players' time". Casserly also notes that "once the season starts, you become the biggest game on everybody's schedule." The curse comes in many forms.

There are three types of the Super Bowl Curse:

The Winners' Curse

While the first five Super Bowl winners of the 2000s posted above average winning percentages the year following their Super Bowl appearance, the losers of the same games posted below average winning percentages in the follow-up year. The Super Bowl curse is also said to apply to winners of the game, as since 1993 few winning teams have followed up their Super Bowl successes with a second Super Bowl appearance (Denver Broncos, Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots won; Green Bay Packers lost) or even advanced to a conference title game in the subsequent season (Dallas Cowboys). In the Super Bowl era two teams have lost the Super Bowl, then won it the following season. The first was the Dallas Cowboys, who lost Super Bowl V to the Baltimore Colts, but came back in 1971 and defeated the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI. The Dolphins repeated the feat in 1972 when they rallied to go a perfect 17-0, capping the season with a win over the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII.

Losing teams mentioned in connection to the curse

Super Bowl losing teams who went on to poor follow-up performance include:

• Cincinnati Bengals. (Super Bowl XXIII). 1988 season: 12-4; 1989 season: 8-8.
  • Cincinnati started a long streak of losing with their 1989 Season mark and it ended with them making the playoffs in the 2005 Season.
• Denver Broncos. (Super Bowl XXIV). 1989 season: 11-5; 1990 season: 5-11.
  • The Broncos would rebound to advance to the 1992 AFC Championship Game vs Buffalo
• Buffalo Bills. (Super Bowl XXVIII). 1993 season: 12-4; 1994 season: 7-9.
• Atlanta Falcons. (Super Bowl XXXIII). 1998 season: 14-2; 1999 season: 5-11.
• New York Giants. (Super Bowl XXXV). 2000 season: 12-4; 2001 season: 7-9.
• St. Louis Rams. (Super Bowl XXXVI). 2001 season: 14-2; 2002 season: 7-9.
• Oakland Raiders. (Super Bowl XXXVII). 2002 season: 11-5; 2003 season: 4-12
• Carolina Panthers. (Super Bowl XXXVIII) 2003 season: 11-5; 2004 season: 7-9.
• Philadelphia Eagles. (Super Bowl XXXIX) 2004 season: 13-3; 2005 season: 6-10.
• Chicago Bears. (Super Bowl XLI) 2006 season: 13-3; 2007 season: 7-9.

Exceptions

There have been several exceptions since this curse supposedly began in 1977.

• Buffalo Bills. (Super Bowl XXV). 1990 season: 13-3. In the 1991 season, they went 13-3 again, and made it to Super Bowl XXVI where, they lost to the Washington Redskins. In the 1992 season they slipped to 11-5, but after what came to be known as the The Comeback, they won the AFC conference playoffs, and went on to play in Super Bowl XXVII, where they lost to the Dallas Cowboys. The following season, 1993, they improved their record to 12-4, and after winning the AFC East division, qualified for their fourth straight Super Bowl appearance in Super Bowl XXVIII, where for the second straight year, they lost to the Dallas Cowboys.

• San Diego Chargers. (Super Bowl XXIX). 1994 season: 11-5. In the 1995 season, they went 9-7, although they made it to the playoffs, they lost 35-20 to the Indianapolis Colts. They would later go through 8 losing seasons (2000 being the worst because they were 1-15 and their only victory was by one point, which was obtained on a last-second field goal). They would return back to the playoffs in the 2004 season only to lose 20-17 to the New York Jets. Even in one of their best seasons in 2006 they still lost their first game to the New England Patriots 24-21. They finally made it to the playoffs in the 2007 season and were close to the Super Bowl only to lose to the Patriots again.

• Pittsburgh Steelers. (Super Bowl XXX). 1995 season: 11-5. In the 1996 season, they went 10-6, and won the AFC Central division. However that was only thanks to a weak division & they ended up losing in a blowout against the New England Patriots 28-3 in the divisional playoffs.

• New England Patriots (of 1997). (Super Bowl XXXI). 1996 season: 11-5. In the 1997 season, they went 10-6, and won the AFC East division. But ironically lost to the Steelers in the divisional playoffs 7-6.

• Tennessee Titans. (Super Bowl XXXIV). 1999 season: 13-3. In the 2000 season, the Titans went 13-3 again, clinching home-field advantage. They lost in the divisional playoffs, however, to the Baltimore Ravens. (Coincidentally, exactly the same thing happened in the 2008-09 playoffs, with the same record, playoff losing round, and the team to which they lost.)

• Seattle Seahawks. (Super Bowl XL). 2005 season: 13-3. In the 2006 season, they slipped to 9-7, but won the NFC West division. They lost in the divisional playoffs to the Chicago Bears.

• New England Patriots. (Super Bowl XLII). 2007 season: 16-0. After having the first perfect season in the 16-game schedule, in the 2008 season they went 11-5 and missed the playoffs barely by losing tiebreakers with Miami in their division and Baltimore for the wild card. The "Super Bowl curse" took a different road, since their starting quarterback, Tom Brady, suffered a season ending injury in the opening game of the season.

• Arizona Cardinals. (Super Bowl XLIII). 2008 season: 9-7. In the 2009 season they improved to 10-6 and won the NFC West for the second consecutive season. They lost in the divisional playoffs to the eventual Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints.

• Indianapolis Colts. (Super Bowl XLIV). 2009 season: 14-2. In the 2010 season they went 10-6 and won the AFC South for the seventh time in eight years, however it was the first time in 9 years that the Colts had finished a season with less than 12 wins. They lost in the wild card playoffs to the New York Jets. The following season however, without Peyton Manning, they did experience a significant drop. They started the season 0-13, and finished 2-14, the first time out of the playoffs since 2001.

The Non-Repeat Curse

This type of the curse has affected defending Super Bowl Champions since 2005. Only the 2004 New England Patriots and six other teams have ever made back-to-back visits to the Super Bowl.

Considering the difficulty of winning one Super Bowl in a 32-team league, some wouldn't consider this to be a curse, but rather a difficult feat.

The Home Field Curse

The third type of the curse is one that affects the host team of the Super Bowl. No team has ever played the big game in its own home stadium. The closest have been the San Francisco 49ers who played Super Bowl XIX in Stanford Stadium, rather than Candlestick Park, and the Los Angeles Rams who played Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl, rather than the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Besides those two, the only other Super Bowl venue that was not the home stadium to an NFL team at the time was Rice Stadium in Houston: the Houston Oilers had played there previously, but moved to the Astrodome several years prior to Super Bowl VIII. The Orange Bowl was the only AFL stadium to host a Super Bowl and the only stadium to host consecutive Super Bowls, hosting Super Bowl II and III. MetLife Stadium, which is scheduled to host Super Bowl XLVIII, is the home stadium of two NFL teams, the New York Giants and the New York Jets.

The Indianapolis Colts were in a rare, but not unprecedented, situation at the end of the 2011 season, becoming the fourth host team of a Super Bowl to have the worst record in the NFL for their particular season. This also happened to the 1973 Houston Oilers (Super Bowl VIII), the 1980 New Orleans Saints (Super Bowl XV), and the 1983 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Super Bowl XVIII).

The New Orleans Saints, whose home stadium the Mercedes-Benz Superdome hosted Super Bowl XLVII, were affected heavily by the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal as their Head Coach Sean Payton was suspended for the entire 2012 NFL Season due to the implications against them and former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Some media outlets such as Fox Sports and Sports Illustrated have claimed that the Home Field Curse was in effect there. However, many fans, local and otherwise blame the bounty scandal on Commissioner Roger Goodell. The end result to their season was their elimination from post-season contention in Week 16.

Generally, the host team of a Super Bowl has a VIP section in the stadium during the game.

The last Super Bowl host to make the playoffs is the 2000 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Since then, the hosts of the next 12 Super Bowls have failed to make the playoffs.

From 1966-2011, excluding the 6 Super Bowls held in a stadium without a professional team, the Super Bowl host team had a record of 249-364-2. In those 40 years, the host teams had 11 winning seasons, 4 split seasons, and 25 losing seasons. Mathematically, the probability of that many losing seasons or more occurring by chance (given the variable length of NFL regular seasons and assuming a long-term average probability of winning any one game of .5) is 0.35%. The probability of the combined win/loss record is 0.0002%.

Further reading

• "Credit Belichick for beating Super Bowl curse". The Sacramento Bee: pp. C3. October 25, 2006.
• Freeman, Mike (December 12, 1991). "Fans cry: Off with Giants' Head (Coach)!". The Washington Post.
• Green Jr., Ron (November 5, 2004). "Lost-the-Super-Bowl blues afflict Panthers, Raiders". The Charlotte Observer: pp. 2C.
• "Less and more than rumored Miami and the Super Bowl curse". Sarasota Herald Tribune. January 30, 1999.
• Penner, Mike (August 27, 2006). "Curses are reality to fantasy leaguers". Los Angeles Times: pp. D.2.

External links

• Maske, Mark (June 15, 2006). "Seahawks hope to buck Super Bowl curse". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/06/14/BL2006061401032_pf.html.