It's time once again for EA Sports to announce the coverboy for the upcoming version of Madden NFL Football.

From a poll recently conducted on ESPN.com, it seems most people would want one of the following three players on the cover:

• Shaun Alexander
• LaDanian Tomlinson
• Ben Roethlisberger

All three NFL stars were roughly neck-and-neck in the polls, with Shaun Alexander garnering most of the votes at 32%, Tomlinson and Roethlisberger have so far netted 25% of the votes, Hines Ward 10% and 7% have voted for 'other.'

The announcement will be made live at the 6:00PM EST broadcast of ESPN Sportcenter today, Thursday April 20th. So, be sure to set your idiot boxes to Sportcenter to find out who the next cover athlete will be! There will be an interview with the announced 'winner' that will go over his involvement with the game, the game itself, and video games in general.

A word of warning for those who would like to see their favorite player on the cover of Madden '07, every year since 2001 the athlete who was chosen to grace the cover of that year's Madden NFL Football video game went from a stellar year, the year before to a dismal showing the year he was on the cover. Most have been marred by injuries (the most severe being Michael Vick's broken leg in 2003 and Donovan McNabb's back ailments last season).

Here is a list of the previous cover athletes and how they fared in their respective NFL seasons while on the Madden cover:

Year of Release	Madden Title	Cover Athlete	Potential Curse
2000	2001	Eddie George	Key fumble vs. Ravens in playoffs; team lost in Divisional Playoff after losing Super Bowl in 1999
2001	2002	Daunte Culpepper	Missed 5 games in 2001; team missed playoffs after losing NFC Championship in 2000
2002	2003	Marshall Faulk	Least productive season as a Ram up to that point; team missed playoffs after losing Super Bowl in 2001
2003	2004	Michael Vick	Missed 11 games in 2003; team missed playoffs after losing Divisional Playoff in 2002
2004	2005	Ray Lewis	Critically seen as an off year; team missed playoffs after losing Wild Card Playoff in 2003
2005	2006	Donovan McNabb	Missed 7 games in 2005; team missed playoffs after losing Super Bowl in 2004

Information obtained from Wikipedia.com

So, the real question is... do you want your favorite player on this year's cover?

Here is the link to the announcement by EA Sports.

And the winner is....................


Seattle's Shaun Alexander.

Count me....officially worried for fantasy football.....