The Curse of the Billy Goat: Any explanation for the Cubs misfortune is a welcome respite to the horribleness of being a fan of the team. The scapegoat has become an actual goat that was dismissed from a World Series game against the Tigers for being too stinky, and it’s owner who cursed the team upon leaving. That was the last year the Cubs ever won a pennant, much less the World Series.

The Curse of Bobby Layne: In 1958, Lions quarterback Bobby Layne was shipped to the Steelers, to which Layne reportedly said of his former team “they won’t win for 50 years.” Not only did the Lions never win the Super Bowl, they had the worst winning percentage of any team during those 50 years. Don’t fuck with Bobby Layne.

The Madden Curse: The cover of the video game is supposed to be a death knell for players, shown most brutally with LaDainian Tomlinson in 2008. But it doesn’t affect everyone; Brett Favre had one of his best seasons after being on the cover of the game.

The Curse of Marty McSorley: In game two of the 1992-93 Stanley Cup Final, Canadiens coach Jacques Demers took issue with the bend in Kings’ defender Marty McSorley’s stick. The refs measured it and indeed it had too much bend, sending McSorley to the penalty box. The Canadiens scored to tie and won in OT, before winning the next three games and the Cup. However, they paid for ratting on McSorley because the Canadiens (nor any other team from Canada) has won the cup since.

The Curse of the Socceroos: The Australian national soccer team (known as the Socceroos) was cursed by a witch doctor they had hired to help them make the 1970 World Cup and then not paid, causing him to reverse the jinx. It wasn’t until a filmmaker found another witch doctor capable of dissolving the curse in 2004 that it was lifted and the team made the next World Cup (and even advanced to their best result ever).

The Curse of Coogan’s Bluff: When the Giants left the East Coast for San Francisco in 1958, a group of fans put a hex on the team in order to prevent them from winning a ring away from New York. Their attempts were prevented terrifyingly by nature; heavy rains postponing a game for three days in the ’62 series and the catastrophic earthquake in ’89. The curse was finally lifted when they broke through and won the series in 2010, 52 years after the move.

The Curse of the Bambino: The most famous curse in sports kept the Red Sox away from a championship from 1918 until 2004, with a big part of it being attributed to the trade that sent Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. The draught included four World Series game sevens before they finally broke through their October nightmare.

The Curse of the Colonel: Even Japanese teams are prone to curses, specifically ones from Western fast food chains. Hanshin Tigers fans tossed a statue of Colonel Sanders off a bridge after winning a game in the 1985 championship series and spent 10 of the next 17 seasons last in the league. They still have yet to win a title even though the statue was finally recovered in 2009.

SI Cover Curse The magazine releases so many covers that the odds are some cover athletes will get injured or stink after making it, but athletes like Pete Rose, Ryan Leaf, Tiger Woods, and Derrick Rose all suffering misfortune after their features has made this a favorite myth in the sports world.

The Curse of William Penn: Philadelphia held onto a rule that blocked buildings taller than William Penn’s statue on the top of City Hall until 1987, when One Liberty Place was built. For 20 years after that, Philly wasn’t able to win a title in any sport, and it wasn’t until the Comcast Center was built with a figurine of Penn attached to the final beam, that the Phillies were able to win the first title for the city.