It’s official: following a gruesome ankle injury during FSU’s Saturday game against Duke, first baseman Myles Bailey is out for the season. Fans flooded the comments under the team’s Instagram post addressing Bailey’s injury with support, prayers, and a full recovery. Others commented and shared GIFs like Pedro Pascal crying, and Matthew McConaughey hitting the glass in Interstellar.
As soon as the camera panned to Bailey’s injury, it’s safe to say many fans were thrown back to FSU’s 2023 football season with Jordan Travis’ career-ending leg injury against North Alabama. Naturally, it didn’t take long for the editors to get to work and create absolute masterpieces of cinema to solidify this FSU deja vu on the internet.
This edit was posted to Instagram and TikTok and has garnered over 100K views, painting the unmistakable connections between clips of FSU athletes Jordan Travis and Myles Bailey, layered over Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over.” I’m broken. The TikTok comments were filled with FSU fans’ despair, with “When will it end?” and “Idk if this city can get any more cursed.”
Bailey’s injury has led to yet another resurfacing of FSU’s bad luck over the years. The Seminole bullpen has seemed to be on an endless roundabout of injuries since head coach Link Jarett’s start at FSU in 2023. Honestly, it seems there was a canon event for FSU Athletics across the board.
Of course, it would be a crime not to mention the “what could’ve been” story of Cam Leiter, a talented UCF transfer who was primed to be the team’s ace for the 2024 season. He pitched in only seven games before a shoulder injury landed him in rehab. After wavering availability and recovery, he decided to leave for the MLB Draft in 2025 and would never return to the Seminoles’ mound again.
As far as 2026 is concerned, there are already several losses for the team, even excluding Myles Bailey. Before the season opener in February of this year, freshman pitcher Braxton Varnes was ruled out by an arm injury. On top of this, pitcher Jacob Marlowe, a transfer from UCF (like Cam Leiter), will miss this season due to his ongoing battle with health complications.
Now, it’s important to recognize that in sports, there are always going to be injured or unavailable players. The real issue that makes FSU stand out injury-wise is the fact that they keep happening to key players who have a serious impact on team performance.
FSU’s curse is also based on the awful history of bad timing at our beloved university. These key player injuries typically happen leading up to big series, post-season, or before the regular season even starts. The main reason why the supposed FSU curse keeps coming up is that fans constantly fall into the cycle of falling for the pre-season or post-season hype, then get the rug swept from under them.
It’s not just bad injury timing that affects our sports teams, but also the timing of our recruitment, which is usually unlucky. Many fans know that championship sports teams are created by things like talent recruitment and development, but some don’t realize the role of sheer luck in determining which team ends up hoisting the trophy at the end of the season.
Across sports, especially baseball, FSU has struggled to have that perfect formula of a championship defense and offense at the same time. Naturally, finding this sweet spot is a tall task for every team and is just part of the game, but for FSU in particular, the cards just never seem to line up.
To back this up, we have the historical, record-holding lore of FSU at the Men’s College World Series in Omaha. Currently, FSU holds the highest number of CWS appearances without a championship title to show for it. Take a minute, take it in.
Even outside of baseball, FSU has yet to get a national title in the men and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s tennis, cross-country, and indoor volleyball programs, to name a few. For the bucket of cherries on top of our losing streaks, our nationally recognized football program has yet to win another title since 2013, despite being close in 2023.
If the FSU curse is real, there are no signs that these sports programs are finding a way out soon. Maybe it’s time to dust off that old rabbit’s foot for next year.
Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest!