Does the Madden Curse Actually Exist? 🎮

Growing up playing baseball, I was conditioned to hate umpires. I saw my coaches argue with them, I heard parents screaming at them, and I watched on TV as professional players openly mocked them.

But then I spent 24 hours as a little league umpire, and my perspective completely changed. More on that at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: Does the Madden Curse Actually Exist?

📉 Biggest Loser: Why Are the Blue Jays Removing Their Owner’s Statue?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How a Broke Surfer Turned a Waterproof Camera into Billions

Is the “Madden Curse” actually real?

Well, the short answer is probably not, but the real story is actually a lot more complicated than you might think.

Madden ‘Jinx’: See, even though the Madden series has been around since 1988, it wasn’t until 2001 that the studio started putting athletes on the cover of each new edition, which caught the attention of a junior copy editor at ESPN The Magazine, who was tasked with writing a story about the game’s 2003 cover reveal.

So, Alyssa Roenigk started looking for similarities between the first two cover athletes:

Which is when she noticed an interesting trend; both guys suffered serious injuries after appearing on the games’ cover.

Even at the time, Alyssa realized that “there’s a good chance, just statistically, that if you have a good enough season… that the next year is not going to be statistically as good.” Still, that didn’t stop her from pitching her idea for an article, then titled “The Madden Jinx,” which, much to her surprise, gained a lot of attention among sports fans.

Still, I’m not even sure she could have predicted what would happen next.

Theory Confirmed: That’s because the 2003 cover athlete, Rams running back Marshall Faulk, seemed to confirm Alyssa’s theory after he missed several games due to injury during his cover season, and failed to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a single season for the rest of his career. Then, the following year, Michael Vick gave fans their best data point yet when he broke his leg the day after his cover was released.

So does this mean the curse is real?

The Truth: As humans, we’re predisposed to suffering from confirmation bias, which basically means that we look for data to prove our pre-existing opinions, not the other way around.

And while it is true that between 2001 and 2010, we’ve had plenty of great examples of the “Madden Curse,” including:

What confirmation bias prevents most fans from seeing is that there are just as many examples of guys who went on to have career seasons after appearing on the cover.

Plus, if you asked the woman who started it, apparently, it ended in 2011 with Drew Brees.

Why are the Toronto Blue Jays removing the statue of the man that their stadium is named after?

It’s not because he got “canceled” or because they’re renaming the ballpark, but instead it’s for a much more ridiculous controversy that most people don’t know anything about.

Rise and Fall: Not long after winning back-to-back World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, the Blue Jays were bought by a Belgium-based conglomerate, InBev, in 1995 and quickly fell from grace, losing a reported $100M from 1997-2000 while failing to make the playoffs in any of those seasons.

But then, on September 1, 2000, Ted Rogers, CEO of the Canadian broadcast giant Rogers Communications, announced that his company would buy 80% of the team for $112 million. And even though the Blue Jays wouldn’t return to the playoffs until 2015, Rogers wasted no time pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the club to get them back on solid financial footing.

Now, Ted Rogers would actually pass away in 2008, after just 8 years of owning the team, during which they had a wildly mediocre record of 647-648; however, that didn’t stop the Blue Jays, who are still owned by Rogers Communications, from erecting a 12-foot-tall bronze sculpture of the former owner in 2013 right in front of the Rogers Centre.

Still, that’s not the controversial part.

Poor Taste: Because not only did the team put up this statue in the middle of a last-place season and 12-year playoff drought, but as one fan pointed out at the time, some found it to be beneath the organization, who, upon unveiling this statue, become one of just two teams in MLB history to put up a statue of their owner before any of their players (with the other being the Los Angles Angles).

That’s why, just this week, the team made the move to officially relocate the statue to the Rogers Communications headquarters in favor of the team’s first player statue, which will honor Blue Jays legend Joe Carter later this summer.

How did this 22-year-old surfer go from selling seashells out of a van to a billionaire in less than 8 years?

Background: This is Nick Woodman, and after graduating from UC San Diego in 1997, he gave himself until 30 years old to make it as an entrepreneur, but four years, two failed businesses, and millions of dollars later, Nick was burnt out and decided to take what was left of his life savings and go on a five-month surfing trip around Australia and Indonesia with his girlfriend.

However, before he even left, Nick had an idea that would end up making him billions.

The Idea: Since he was spending all the money he had left on this trip, Nick wanted to document it for his friends and family; however, in 2001, there weren’t any practical camera options he could take surfing with him.

So, instead, Nick decided to buy a mini-35mm waterproof camera that he strapped to his wrist using surfboard leashes and rubber bands, and even though the pictures they took turned out slightly blurry, the 25-year-old realized that he was onto something.

There was just one problem; he didn’t have any money.

All or Nothing: So, after returning from their trip, Nick and his now wife, Jill, bought a 1971 Volkswagen Bus to live in, and started selling shell jewelry and belts along the California shore. By 2004, the two were able to scrape together $5,000 that they immediately wired to China to receive the first prototypes of a waterproof, 35mm film camera that surfers could strap to their wrists to take pictures while in the ocean.

And even though that same year, Nick made his very first sale at an action-sports trade show in San Diego, his new company, GoPro, wasn’t an immediate success. That’s because after dumping $30,000 more of his own money, $35,000 from his mom, and $200,000 from his dad, GoPro only made $150,000 in 2004.

Still, Nick doubled down, driving up and down the coast in his 1971 VW Bus dubbed “The Biscuit,” where he tried to get his $30 waterproof film cameras into any surf shop that would take a meeting.

Stars Aligned: However, his real breakthrough wouldn’t come until 2006, when Nick ditched his 35mm film cameras for a digital camera capable of capturing 10-second video clips. That year, the company brought in $800,000 in revenue, thanks in large part to the camera’s adoption into other action sports like biking and skiing, as well as the rise of a new video-sharing site called YouTube.

This resulted in sales quadrupling in 2007 to $3.4 million, finally allowing GoPro to hire its third-ever employee, Nick’s wife, Jill.

And after accepting a $200 million investment in 2012, Nick Woodman officially became a billionaire just 8 years after starting GoPro out of his van, an accomplishment which was soon surpassed in 2014 when the company went public and closed at a valuation of $11 billion.

But if all that’s true, then what happened that caused the company’s stock $GPRO ( ▼ 4.31% ) to crash to nearly $1.00 per share?

We’ll cover that part of the story next week.

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

My biggest takeaway from umpiring my first-ever baseball game?

Umpires sit in traffic, too.

This actually isn’t an original thought. When I spent a full day with a youth hockey umpire, he brought up how (for some reason) parents, coaches, and players are allowed to use the various stressors we all experience in our day-to-day lives as an excuse for their (often) poor behavior at games.

However, when it comes to umpires, we forget that they bring the very same baggage to games (like sitting in traffic), but they’re the ones expected to keep their composure.

Maybe we could all just use a lesson in how to take a deep breath.