Infamous sports team curses

We all have our favorite sports teams. Even if you’re not into sports, you still might have a team you root for based on where you’re from. If you’re from New England, you like the Patriots. If you’re from New York, you like the Yankees. If you’re from Toronto, you like the Maple Leafs. If you’re from Illinois, you like the Bulls. Regardless of your favorite team, some of them have been subjected to what many fans think of as curses throughout their history. 

Take the Chicago Cubs, for example, and the curse of Billy the Goat. The story goes that in 1945, during the fourth game of the World Series, tavern owner William Sianis was watching the game at Wrigley Field with his pet goat, Billy. Billy was annoying to other spectators, and the pair was asked to leave. Enraged, Sianis declared, “Them Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” The Cubs would go on to lose the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Lions. The curse lasted for 71 years. The Cubs did not compete in another world series for 71 years. The curse was finally broken in 2016, on the 46th anniversary of Sianis’ death, when the Cubs defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series.

Another famous sports curse is the Lombardi Curse. This time, the curse was on the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1960, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers in the 1960 NFL Championship Game, which ended up being Lombardi’s only playoff loss in his entire coaching career. After his sudden death in 1970, the league honored his legacy by naming the Super Bowl trophy after him. After two devastating Super Bowl losses to the Oakland Raiders and the New England Patriots, many Eagles fans believed the trophy was cursed by Lombardi himself. Maybe the Eagles weren’t meant to win the trophy named after the man whose career they had scarred. This curse was finally broken in 2018, when the Eagles defeated the Patriots to win the coveted trophy at Super Bowl LII — nearly 48 years after Lombardi’s death.

These are just two of the many supposed curses throughout sports history. Whether they affect your teams or not, curses are a very exciting part of the lore of sports culture and history.

By Evan Majors