The Bad Luck Club

Author:
SI Staff
Publish date:
Jan 18, 2008

The Bad Luck Club

Jessica Simpson

Call her Yoko Romo. After the singer-temptress and the Cowboy Pro Bowl quarterback became an item last month, Dallas suffered a 10-6 loss to the Eagles on Dec. 16 as Simpson watched from a luxury box. The Jessica Jinx struck again last weekend; a 21-17 playoff loss to the Giants in Dallas after the couple enjoyed a vacation in Los Cabos, Mexico. Romo is scheduled to play in the Pro Bowl, which means we like the AFC in that game. Send comments to siwriters@simail.com.

Alyssa Milano

We love her baseball blog but we're wary whenever she dates an athlete, especially if he's on our team. Milano has dated former NHLer Wayne McBean (No. 4 overall in the 1987 draft), Carl Pavano (top inset), and Barry Zito (bottom inset), all of whom suffered statistically after dating the actress. (Ex Brad Penny has proven to be an exception.) Former All-Star Pavano has been inactive so long that he has been tabbed by the New York dailies as "American Idle."

Anna Kournikova

Is she responsible for defusing the Russian Rocket? Pavel Bure (top inset) played in six All-Star games prior to a rumored engagement to Kournikova in Feb. 2000. His numbers afterward dropped precipitously and he retired in 2003 after a lingering knee injury. (Alas, the two never made it to the altar). Sergei Fedorov (bottom inset) said he married Kournikova in 2001 and divorced her in 2003 (she denied it). He made six All-Star teams prior to 2003 and won three Stanley Cups with Detroit. Over the past three years he has scored just 38 goals in 179 games. Singer Enrique Iglesias, Kournikova's current flame, has proved immune to any curse.

Martina Hingis

Tennis Magazine dubbed her "The Black Widow" for the venomous effect she has had on the career of her tennis-playing boyfriends. The list of victims includes (inset, top to bottom) Justin Gimelstob, Julian Alonso, Magnus Norman, all of whom took a tumble in the rankings after dating Hingis. The harshest bite suffered was Norman, who reached No. 2 in the world after playing in the 2000 French Open final, and began seeing Hingis around the same time. He hurt his hip in 2001 and retired prior to the 2004 Stockholm Open after missing the previous year.

Carmen Electra

It's not like Dennis Rodman was a paragon of stability prior to his five-month marriage to Electra in Nov. 1998 (the couple filed for an annulment just 10 days into the marriage) but he was one of the NBA's most dominant defenders. After leaving the Bulls -- and Electra leaving him -- he played in 35 NBA games for the Lakers and Mavericks. Rodman was a much more successful player when he married himself in 1996.

Tyra Banks

It seemed like a match made in hype heaven: he was an All-Star power forward with the Sacramento Kings, she, an SI swimsuit cover girl whose "fierce" beauty set tongues wagging on the NBA's press row. When the gossiping into his relationship with Tyra Banks became suffocating, Chris Webber treated beat writers to a profanity-rich polemic at his locker. His frustrations mounted in 2003, when a potential MVP season was cut short by a potentially career-ending knee injury, and ultimately peaked with him taking a timeout from Tyra after more than three years together. In the years since, Tyra has reinvented herself as a television mogul with mainstays such as The Tyra Banks Show and America's Next Top Model; CWebb has made few NBA cameos since undergoing microfracture surgery.

Carol Alt

The No. 2 pick in the 1992 draft, Yashin was considered one of the NHL's brightest young stars; he scored 94 points during the 1998-99 season for Ottawa and was runner-up for the Hart Trophy. That year he started dating Alt, and while he had productive seasons, he has never lived up to his lofty draft status. He signed a 10-year, $87.5 million deal with the Islanders in 2001 following his trade from the Senators and last summer the team bought out the final four seasons of his contract. He now plays with Yaroslavl Lokamotiv in the Russian Elite League. The good news? He is still dating Carol Alt.

Paris Hilton

The Bears' star linebacker had his worst season statistically in 2003 (2 1/2 sacks) after being spotted with the hotel heiress socialite in Las Vegas. Hilton also attended a Bears home game wearing his jersey shortly after; Chicago lost. Urlacher would not return to form until 2005, when he played in all 16 games and made 121 tackles with six sacks.

Madonna

The Material Girl famously played host to the former American League MVP, Jose Canseco, in her New York hotel in May 1991. Though he finished the season with 44 home runs, his career went downhill quickly from there. Injuries limited his playing time; he wouldn't play close to a full season again until 1998, when he appeared in 151 games for Toronto.

Tim Montgomery and C.J. Hunter

Few women have chosen poorer mates. One year after winning the 100 at the 1997 world championships in Athens, Marion Jones married shot putter C.J. Hunter, who introduced her to a new coach, Trevor Graham, who led Jones to multiple Olympic golds (since stripped) in 2000 through performance-enhancing substances. (Hunter was nailed for doping two months before the Sydney Olympics, though the result was not made public until the middle of the Games; the two later divorced). In June 2003 Jones gave birth to a son with sprinter Tim Montgomery, who was eventually banned from the sport for steroid use. Jones later admitted to lying about her knowledge of the involvement of Montgomery in a scheme to cash millions of dollars worth of stolen or forged checks. She was given a six-month prison sentence for lying to federal investigators over her use of steroids.

Tatum O'Neal

John McEnroe had won seven majors and was ranked No. 1 in the world (from 1981 to 1984) when he took a six-month break from the tour and married the Bad News Bears actress in 1986. It was bad news for his tennis career. He never reached the finals of a Grand Slam again and won just seven titles after winning 70 prior to his marriage. The two divorced in 1992 and later trashed each other in books.

Brooke Shields

Trophy wives don't come more decorated than Brooke Shields, a four-time People's Choice winner, former Calvin Klein model and ex-wife to eight-time Grand Slam champion Andre Agassi. Want to know what got between her and Andre? How 'bout a nagging wrist injury that limited him to just 24 matches and saw his ATP ranking plummet to a career-low No. 141? Soon after the couple's 1999 divorce, Agassi rebounded to a 6th-place world ranking, a landmark win in the French Open -- a win that made him the fifth man to net all four Slams in a career -- and, most satisfyingly, into a relationship with Steffi Graf, whom he married two years afterward.

Lisa Lopes

Left Eye, as she was known by her stage name, burned down fiancé Andre Rison's $2 million house in Atlanta in June 1994. Rison would catch 81 passes the next season, his fifth consecutive campaign with at least 80 receptions, but had only one more 1,000-yard season after that, in 1997 with the Chiefs. Lopes died in a car accident in Honduras in 2002.

Jeff Gillooly

Prior to marrying Gillooly (now Jeff Stone), Harding was a skating wunderkind who would ultimately win the U.S. Championships in 1990. She later became notorious as part of her husband's plot to attack rival skater Nancy Kerrigan. (Harding pleaded guilty to hindering the investigation of the attack; Gillooy was found guilty of conspiring with others to attack Kerrigan). The two were divorced in 1993 and Harding later became a professional palooka with a 3-3 record in the ring.

Brigitte Nielsen

The most prolific member of The New York Sack Exchange, Mark Gastineau quit abruptly seven weeks into the 1988 season to spend more time with his new fiancé, Brigitte Nielsen, who was feared to have uterine cancer (it was a false alarm). Later he admitted part of the reason he quit was the fear of testing positive for steroids. Two years later a comeback attempt in the CFL lasted only four games. He then moved on to professional boxing with little success.

Barbara Hershey

A young Roy Hobbs, headed for the major leagues and certain glory, runs into ''The Lady in Black'' in the Bernard Malamud novel The Natural and film of the same name. Harriet Bird, played by Barbary Hershey in the film, shoots Hobbs at his hotel, delaying his major league career by 16 years. Send comments to siwriters@simail.com.